Job Abstract

Description:

The Academic Team is part of Democracy Prep’s Central Management Organization and works directly with school leaders to drive scholar growth and ensure that all schools achieve their end-of-year goals. The role of a Curriculum & Instruction Specialist is to support school leaders across multiple schools, observing classrooms, reviewing lesson plans and analyzing assessment data. Through these structures the specialist identifies key levers that drive excellent academic outcomes and partners with school leaders to enact those levers.

Curriculum & Instruction Specialists meet regularly as a team, to share best practices and increase their own pedagogical expertise. Each specialist is an expert in at least one content area and works to grow their knowledge across content areas to better support each of their partner schools. Specialists also work together to analyze trends across partner schools and discuss which strategies have been most effective at improving instruction for scholars. This work informs the overall DPPS Academic vision, goals and priorities.

Finally, specialists ensure that curricular work products – including lesson plans and exams – are high quality, timely and error-free. They will work to adapt, assess and ensure strong implementation of curriculum and assessments written by DPPS and other vendors.

Who You Are

• An educator with an unwavering commitment to the Democracy Prep mission of college success and authentic civic engagement for our scholars.
• A self-reflective and self-aware teammate who is dedicated to aligning their work to Democracy Prep's commitment to antiracism and who is eager to use these skills to contribute to a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• An academically focused teammate who is comfortable providing academic feedback and support across content areas, with at least one area of deep expertise
• An expert in NY State Regents Exams, particularly those exams required to receive a Regents diploma.
• A flexible problem solver who can lean in as needed to support the Democracy Prep at the Agassi Campus HS with instructional needs.
• An expert who is fluent with all parts of academic pedagogy, including standards, assessments, lesson design and execution
• Someone who quickly builds relationships and works collaboratively with different stakeholders, including school leaders, teachers and teammates
• A data nerd who is able to analyze data and identify levers to improve classroom instruction
• A team-oriented person who is honest, direct, and able to keep scholar learning at the forefront of your work
• An educator who prioritizes between and manage multiple workstreams
• A constant learner who wants to continually grow in their understanding of academic pedagogy, standards and instruction

What You’ll Do

Support Success of Regents Related Course in Schools

• Meet regularly with school leaders, coaches and teachers to identify and enact instructional priorities at each of your partner schools.
• Partner with school leaders to improve academic coaching by sharing best practices and expertise in curriculum and sharpening their lens on academic coaching.
• Ensure teachers are using Regents-aligned teaching practices throughout the school year.
• Support schools in growing and sustaining their Advanced Placement program.
• Conduct consistent, high-quality classroom observations, including vetting lesson plans, collecting concrete classroom data, and identifying strengths and key levers for observed teachers. Identify trends across classrooms and bring them to school leaders and the Academics team.
• Use data to identify areas that need support at each of your partner schools, as well as effective practices that should be shared and implemented across the network. Create and enact plans to address the areas that need remediation.
• Support schools in growing their academic and pedagogical expertise through a variety of means including professional development, lesson study groups, co-observations with school leaders, and directly supporting individual teachers.
• Identify and work to overcome stumbling blocks to high quality instruction in classrooms.

Partner with the Academics Team on Priorities, Initiatives and Goals

• Collaborate with the rest of the Academic team to enhance the entire team's knowledge of best practices in terms of instruction for each content area. Share expertise with the team at large about your content area expertise by leading professional development, assessing external materials, and sharing best practices from outside the network.
• Drive in partnership with the team and school-based staff to ensure all schools reach ambitious Key Performance Indicators and grow student achievement.
• Create and revise high quality, timely, and error free exams, units and lesson materials. Ensure that curricula are clear, well organized, and easily implementable by school partners.
• Analyze Regents exam performance trends across the network, city and state. Develop and execute plans to improve Regents exam performance across Democracy Prep, including reteaching lessons and tutoring plans in response to data.
• Partner with the Nevada Director of Academics and Talent Development and the DPACHS Leadership Team to support high school specific instructional needs at DPACHS.
• Perform other related duties as assigned, including participation in network-wide or department specific initiatives and/or projects.

Qualifications

• A graduate of a Bachelor’s degree program
• Four years of teaching a Regents course in NY State strongly preferred.

Compensation

Salary range is $80,000-$95,000 commensurate with your experience. Democracy Prep employees are provided with a benefits package that includes medical, vision, and dental insurance, 403B matching, and parental leave.

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Democracy Prep is an Equal Opportunity Employer and will not discriminate against an applicant or employee on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, national origin, or ancestry, sex, age, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, veteran or military status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, familial status, domestic violence victim status, or any other legally recognized protected basis under federal, state or local laws, regulations or ordinances. Our mission is to educate responsible citizen-scholars who will change the world. We strongly believe that by building a DREAM team that represents numerous perspectives, backgrounds, and expertise, we can achieve this goal together. This is a value we highly support and strongly encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply.