School Network Staff Associate Director – Humanities 7-12 (History), Greenfield
Job Description
Start Date: Immediate
Team: Greenfield
Location: Brooklyn, NY or Providence, RI
About Achievement First:
Achievement First, a non-profit 501(c)3 charter school management organization, operates over 30 public charter schools in Brooklyn, Connecticut and Rhode Island. The mission of Achievement First is to deliver on the promise of equal educational opportunity for all children, regardless of race or economic status. Achievement First currently educates more than 12,600 students in historically underserved neighborhoods, with over 90% of our students identifying as Black and Latino. With its college-preparatory focus, the Achievement First approach is attaining breakthrough academic gains throughout the network. Beyond our students and schools, Achievement First is an engaged and prominent partner in the larger conversation about how to improve public education and student achievement in our country.
About Greenfield
In 2015, Achievement First launched an innovative school model that we call Greenfield. Greenfield is ground-up redesign of the middle and high school with the goal of dramatically increasing college persistence. In fall 2019 we will open our fifth Greenfield Campus. Achievement First’s Greenfield schools provide rigorous, high-quality instruction within a nurturing school community focused on developing self-motivated learners, problem-solvers and leaders. Greenfield is currently focused on grades 5-7 and growing to 8th grade in 20-21 and HS in the 21-22 school year. Our students benefit from:
- Self-directed work powered by a Personalized Learning Platform.
- Rigorous and rewarding core academic classes.
- Twice daily enrichments of scholar choice.
- Hands-on, experiential learning that deepens and extends what students learn in the classroom through two-week long expeditions three times a year.
- Social emotional learning and small-group mentoring to develop social-emotional skills and goal setting skills.
- Student curated dream teams that consist of teachers, family members and other significant influencers in a scholar’s life. This team works to help scholars achieve scholar goals.
- Intervention built into the fabric of the school day.
- An awesomely powerful community where school, home and the broader community link arms in support of scholar development and achievement.
At Greenfield, we strive to ensure all scholars:
- Are Academically Prepared: Our students will ALL achieve at the highest levels – they’ll be competitive with the best students in the US and abroad.
- Are Academically Independent: Students can become the agents of their success through ownership and personalization.
- Possess Social Emotional Strength: Habits of success can and should be taught. Students need to experience the joy and excellence that comes from enrichment outside of traditional academics.
- Personal Why: A deeply personal drive to achieve grounded in personal interests and motivation.
The Greenfield Literacy & Humanities Program
Greenfield’s Literacy and Humanities program operates from a long term goal of both facilitating an authentic love for reading and adequately preparing students to be successful in high school AP Literature and AP History courses. With this goal in mind, our middle school students actively work toward mastering common core standards, strengthening their ability to critically evaluate literature and increase their world knowledge by exploring a wide range of diverse and engaging content including topics about various cultures, beliefs and origins. Our program is grounded in several core components:
- Core Instruction: Student critically analyze a variety texts and novels including source documents to build their schema, authentically practice literacy strategies and respond to texts in both oral and written forms.
- Collaborative Discussion: Students engage in robust debates utilizing their texts and world knowledge to both strengthen their claims and arguments and learn from their peers.
- Self-Directed Learning: Students expand their world knowledge and deepen their context around a topic through engaging with online modules. Once students have completed their required modules, they have an opportunity to go deeper and learn more about a topic of their choice.
For more information about Achievement First please visit our website at www.achievementfirst.org.
Position Summary
The Associate Director of Humanities will serve as a member on the broader ELA team and co-own achievement results. In collaboration with his/her colleagues, they are responsible for realizing the Greenfield ELA/History vision through strong design, high quality school support and strong partnership with all stakeholders. The Associate Director of Humanities will spend the bulk of their time designing assessments, building project-based learning tasks for our history curriculum, enriching our self-directed learning program, and coaching deans and teachers toward executing exemplar ELA/History instruction. The Associate Director of Humanities (History) will report to the ELA Team Lead.
Responsibilities will include but are not limited to:
- Execution Support: ~ 20% of the role is focused on driving strong execution results in partnership with schools. This robust execution support includes:
- Professional Development: Plan, lead and execute both leader and teacher facing professional development for our History and Self Directed Learning program to drive student engagement and achievement.
- Ongoing Coaching and Support: Collaborate with our regional superintendent and the ELA Lead to provide exemplar resources and direct coaching as needed in order to meet program execution goals.
- Build and Maintain Relationships & Diverse and Inclusive Networks: Collaborate with Achievement First’s broader network support team to maximize network-wide best practices including serving as the liaison for the history program to streamline teacher support, training and logistics. Foster a collaborative workspace where a diversity of views, backgrounds and perspectives are valued. Fully leverage the diversity of our network, families and community partners.
- High School Planning: ~20 % of the role is focused on leading and supporting the development of our high school History program::
- Support Vision Setting: Support in building the vision for the high school Greenfield History program by conducting research around best practices, curriculum content, student experience and skill development.
- Ensure Alignment and Inclusiveness: Ensure curriculum is tightly aligned to the skills and topics that will set up students to be successful on the AP US History exam. However, the curriculum must also provide balance in that it provides a diverse set of perspectives and counter narratives.
- Support Strategy, Evaluation and Iteration: Observe execution of the model to inform ongoing strategy iterations and support the development of our high school program.
- Curriculum Design: ~60 % of the role is focused on revising our existing History and Self Directed Learning curriculum to incorporate feedback and best practices, build student centered tasks and diversify the curriculum to include a variety of perspectives and identities. Program design responsibilities include:
- Design Robust Curriculum, Tools and Resources: Design and oversee the revision of existing History and Self Directed Learning curricular materials based on feedback from Greenfield school staff and anecdotal and achievement data from Greenfield students.
- Ensure Alignment and Inclusiveness: Ensure curriculum is tightly aligned to the skills and topics that will set up students to be successful on the AP US History exam. Ensure the curriculum must also provide balance in that it provides a diverse set of perspectives and counter-narratives.
- Support Codification and Scaling: Revise and help codify best practices to aid in scaling of the Greenfield model.
- Row with the Team: Report to and serve as a critical thought partner to ELA Team Lead; Ensure strong partnership with our operations team who publishes curriculum to schools; Travel to Greenfield team meetings and to visit our Greenfield schools as needed to observe, prototype, or work with small groups of students/teachers to learn about the strengths and weaknesses in our model.
- Student Centered Projects: Design end of unit projects that allow students to build their skills in oral presentations, research, use of multimedia, discourse, critical thinking and historical writing skills.
Skills and Characteristics and Beliefs
- Coaching and Professional Development: You have a strong sense of what it takes to leverage a curriculum to achieve rigorous outcomes and the ability to plan and lead professional development and coach execution towards those outcomes.
- Communication: You have strong skills in working across multiple stakeholders with a variety of perspectives, this includes both the ability to present information clearly and the equally important ability to listen carefully. You are adept at explaining a challenge and moving towards resolution.
- Design Heart: You love to design and plan challenging, hands-on, multi-modal curricula. You have experience in unit and lesson planning, with a focus on clear daily and unit outcomes.
- Project Management & Organization: You have strong project management skills (including project planning and execution) that allow you to successfully manage your time and drive toward key priorities. You have exceptional organizational skills and are able to execute tasks with an acute attention to detail.
- Entrepreneurial Drive and Innovative Spirit: You are an entrepreneurial and ambitious educator with a passion for innovation and an eagerness to strategically redesign schools.
- Dynamic: Innovation requires a commitment to continuous reflection, flexibility and improvement. You embrace change, are a team player, are flexible and adaptive, and strive for continuous development and creative solutions.
- Embody the values of servant leadership: Excerpt from The Center for Servant Leadership, “A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible”.
- Purpose Driven: We lead and operate with the deep belief that the purpose is greater than the process. This means we place “why” at the front of everything we do and we do whatever it takes to provide those we serve with the tools to not only “fish” for themselves but of a deep understanding of the impact of those tools.
- Excellence: Our students deserve the best. In order to provide them with opportunities they deserve, we must execute with precision, produce high quality materials, model professionalism and leadership for our organization as well as hold one another accountable so that we are our collective best selves.
- Cultural Awareness and Sensitivity: Our work must always be filtered through a lens of cultural awareness and sensitivity. We constantly ask ourselves how our work and interactions honor the background of those we serve. As a result, it a priority to reflect on our own experiences, attitudes and potential biases.
Educational Background and Work Experience
- Bachelor’s degree from a competitive college or university, master’s degree preferred
- A minimum of 5 years of relevant work experience as an educator or in a related field working directly with schools, preferably as a coach, school leader, program designer, or design consultant
- Experience with secondary History strongly preferred.
- Proven record of success
- Training and coaching school level administrators, teachers, and support staff
- Implementing and/or designing History curriculum
- School leadership at the dean or coaching level strongly preferred.
Special Work Requirements
Some evening and weekend work may be required. The position is based in Brooklyn, NY or Providence, RI. Moderate travel between Brooklyn, NY, New Haven, CT and Providence, RI will be necessary.
Compensation
Salary for this position is competitive and commensurate with experience. Additionally, Achievement First offers a comprehensive benefits package.
