Position Responsibilities
Middle School Educator Responsibilities
- Foster a sense of student belonging by cultivating joy and purpose throughout the Middle School.
- Cultivate a caring and culturally responsive learning community in Advisory, as well as the classroom, taking into account physical, emotional, and intellectual well-being of students.
- Identify essential learning and use a planning framework with standards, learning targets, real-world issues, and a culturally responsive curriculum.
- Design quality formative, summative and self-guided assessments that provide students with frequent feedback and communicate students’ growth and achievement.
- Plan and implement engaging learning experiences that are inquiry-based, collaborative, culturally responsive, and differentiated.
- Respond to learners’ diverse needs using responsive, measurable, and research-informed interventions and extensions.
- Collaborate as a member of a Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) that creates a supportive community, plans curriculum, gives and receives feedback with one another, and engages in professional learning and reflection.
- Actively engage in professional learning and growth through regular observation and feedback cycles with Professional Learning Community Coaches and Principals.
- Design and implement inquiry-based learning experiences in and beyond the classroom to prompt learners to question, investigate, create, and reflect.
- Experience with or interest in co-teaching in a flexible learning environment.
- Demonstrate an understanding of interdisciplinary teaching and learning.
- Integrate technology in innovative ways in daily instruction to enhance learning.
- Engage with students in meaningful activities beyond the classroom that extend student learning experiences (coaching, organizing field trips, sponsorship of clubs, events, overseas travel and/or community service projects, etc.).
- Strive for continuous self-improvement as a life-long learner.
- Model the Core Values in your interactions with all members of the school community.
- Lead and engage with students in meaningful activities beyond the learning spaces, which extend learning experiences for students (supervision, overnight Classroom Without Walls trips, sports coaching, field trips, sponsorship of clubs, events, TRi Time, community service projects, etc.)
- Connect with and be available to parents and students during and outside of school hours (in person and via email communication)
Role-Specific Responsibilities
PLC coaches act as champions for their team by focusing on the growth of individual members as well as the collective. They do this in three ways: teaching, coaching, and leading.
- By teaching, they hone their own craft, serve as a model, and experience the same challenges as those they are coaching and leading.
- By coaching, they facilitate feedback, learning, and professional growth for individual team members.
- By leading, they cultivate the health of their team and guide their team’s collective focus on enhancing student learning and well-being.
Teach
- Understands what constitutes social studies and leverages the overarching themes/concepts drawn from the discipline to design social studies curriculum
- Integrates knowledge across social studies and other disciplines (e.g., science, English/language arts, math, physical education/health) into interdisciplinary units
- Understands and develops students’ disciplinary literacy across social studies content areas (history, geography, economics, civics) and draws inspiration from the social sciences (psychology, sociology, anthropology)
- Investigates and explores research-based practices, current literature, and problems/issues of current interest and importance in social studies education
Coach
- Use the SAS Guidebook to Teaching to coach on high quality culturally-responsive instructional practices in the learning space
- Observe instruction, analyze student work, and provide regular direct actionable feedback to coachee(s)
- Focus on individual and collective growth in both hard skills (e.g., pedagogy) and soft skills (e.g., trust, collaboration) and invest in development of own skill set related to teaching, coaching, and leading
- Coordinate team professional learning based on needs emerging from coaching experiences, data and current research
- Facilitate the goal setting, learning, monitoring and reflection process with the team. Support coachees and PLCs to ensure their goals are focused on measurable student learning outcomes and/or school/division priorities
- Demonstrate a willingness and ability to build and sustain trusted professional relationships with teachers, leaders, and other coaches. This may involve demonstrating a willingness to be a learner, to be vulnerable, and to establish a conducive working rapport with educators that enables them to grow and learn in their teaching practice.
- Collaborate with other PLC coaches and participate in PLC coach professional learning related to: working with adult learners, giving feedback, providing coaching, and regularly giving input into the PLC coach model
Lead
- PLC Support and Leadership
- Lead and/or support PLCs with engaging in the 5 question PLC inquiry cycle and ensuring roles and responsibilities within a PLC are distributed effectively and there are norms for collaboration.
- Support PLC teams with collecting, organizing, and analyzing common assessment data. Review data across the department and focus on evidence of student learning and not-learning.
- Support PLC teams with taking action based on student learning data.
- Collaborate with school leaders on how to best meet team needs and implement school priorities focusing on culturally responsive practices to plan, teach, and assess, as well as social-emotional learning
- Instructional Leadership
- Provide strong curricular and instructional leadership in the department.
- Coordinate effective facilitation of department meetings and professional learning
- Lead department members in fulfilling expectations and best practices in standards-based assessment, grading and reporting.
- Lead the department and division in our journey towards a more personalized learning environment for students and collaborative work experiences with flexible learning environments.
- Provide support and/or participate in subject-area reviews and/or coordinate participation of colleagues and lead implementation of the review.
- Monitor and support subject-area instructional program alignment across all divisions (PS-12). Work with the divisional Principal Leadership team and the Office of Learning to ensure consistency and strong planning, instructional, and assessment practice.
- Contribute to shaping the academic direction of the division by participating and providing regular input at divisional leadership team meetings.
- (MS and HS) Provide support as needed to the division and/or Department Coordinators with the annual review of courses and information included in the Program Planning Guide and other division handbooks.
- Program Leadership
- Collaborate with Department Coordinators and/or divisional Principal/Deputy Principals on aligning talent, resources and the curricular and instructional program of the department.
- Participate in the hiring process for open positions within the department and provide hiring input to divisional principals.
- Participate and lead in professional development and new faculty onboarding for designated days during new faculty week each year.
- Work collaboratively with Department Coordinators and/or team leaders on other needs of the department or grade level as needed.
Position Requirements & Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s Degree in relevant field
- Master’s Degree in relevant field preferred
- Teaching license or a degree in education
- At least two years of full time teaching experience preferred
- Standards-based curriculum experience preferred
- Excellent verbal and written English language skills
- Confident technology skills for teaching and administrative tasks
Working Requirements:
- Sponsoring and/or coaching after school activities or sports are part of the responsibility of the professional educator. Therefore, faculty shall be available to coach and/or sponsor an athletic team or other extra curricular activity. Each faculty member is expected to do a minimum of one category 1 activity or sport per year.
- Mandatory attendance of weekly faculty meetings beyond the school day, new hire orientation and educator professional learning days.
- Chaperone and participate in a minimum of four evening and/or weekend school activities each year, as assigned (including Back-to-School Night, conferences, and more).
- SAS faculty members are expected to commit to chaperoning learning experiences including those requiring overseas and/or overnight excursions, including but not limited to High School Interim Semester and curricular trips.
