Teacher Classroom Teacher
Job Description
Position Summary
At Harlem Link, we align our practice and use our relationships to help students achieve world-class scholarship and build good character. Our four pillars are Engaging Academics, Effective Management, Positive Community and Developmental Awareness, and we form our classroom communities with emotionally responsive practices in place. Teachers at Harlem Link are outcome-oriented, hardworking and receptive to feedback, putting in the time necessary to ensure scholars meet the school’s high expectation for learning. To accomplish all this, it’s necessary for teachers to work in highly collaborative teams and have a great deal of professional responsibility within the school’s curriculum and lesson planning framework.
Teacher Outcomes and Responsibilities
Curriculum and Instruction
Key Outcome: Students experience an engaging, rigorous and developmentally appropriate instructional program throughout the year, building independence and lifelong habits of learning, thinking and doing.
Key responsibilities:
- Plan units of study and lessons by following the Harlem Link curriculum framework
- Use assessment data to write, revise and implement learning objectives that are challenging and measurable
- Teach reading and writing through balanced literacy and a workshop model
- Teach math through a TERC Investigations based workshop model, including small group instruction and stations, and Cognitively Guided Instruction to foster fluent and conceptual math thinkers
- Teach standards-based Understanding by Design social studies units of study
- Model and instill a love of learning
Special Education (if applicable)
Key Outcome: Students with special needs are able to access the general education curriculum and have their IEP goals met.
- Work with grade team colleagues to implement modifications and accommodations for students with IEPs
- Monitor IEP goals for students, and prepare appropriate paper work for annual reviews
- Possess a strong philosophical belief that all children belong and stop at nothing to ensure a successful, integrated education
Assessment
Key Outcome: Teachers know how students are progressing at all times, and use knowledge of student growth areas to address whole groups, small groups and individual students every day.
Key responsibilities:
- Conduct frequent checks of understanding throughout every lesson
- Assess students at the end of every lesson with teacher made formative assessments such as exit slips, conference notes, observation notes or quizzes
- Administer and review end of unit performance based assessments in reading, writing and math to track student achievement of standards
- Administer regular assessments to inform instruction, including Fountas & Pinnell Reading Inventory and, in the upper grades, state test Quizzes
- Use a wide array of data points to make instructional choices and create specific data action plans to increase student achievement, including dynamic student group for small group instruction
- Write detailed report cards tri-annually to communicate student progress to families
Management
Key Outcome: Classrooms are safe, positive communities where students develop the social and emotional skills to succeed in academic settings and in life.
Key responsibilities:
- Use Responsive Classroom strategies and Teacher Language to build a safe, orderly, inclusive and positive classroom community
- Begin each day with a structured Morning Meeting to convey a sense of important, belonging and fun to each student
- Ensure a safe physical and emotional environment for students through Interactive Modeling, logical consequences and consistent routines
- Take responsibility for order and productivity by taking a positive and firm problem-solving approach
Collaboration with Families
Key Outcomes: Each family experiences how the school comes to know and honor them as participants and values their efforts and contributions. Parents and guardians are aware of student progress and are welcome in the community.
Key responsibilities:
- Build a rapport with families
- Begin the year with purposeful, positive contact with each family to learn about their hopes and dreams and to establish a productive relationship
- Communicate with families through a daily double-entry log/progress report, phone calls and meetings as necessary
- Participate in parent association meetings during the year
- With other staff, coordinate at least one special event to encourage family involvement and dialogue about students
- Meet with families three times a year (report card conferences)
- Involve families through classroom student work celebrations and volunteer opportunities
Leadership and Staff Collaboration
Key Outcome: Our entire staff participates in building norms that create a powerful and positive learning environment, and we exemplify them together.
Key responsibilities:
- Beginning and end of day:
o Arrive in time to be prepared for picking up students at 8:15 am and begin the instructional day
o Assist with dismissal on a daily basis until approximately 3:40 pm
- Participate actively in the school’s established professional development structures, including sharing best practices with colleagues
- Prepare for weekly grade team planning meetings and participate in shared planning
- Use some preparation periods and other available times to meet with:
o Principal and assistant principal to monitor student progress, teaching, and professional goals
o AIS teachers and social workers for student updates
o Instructional consultants or coaches based on individual or classroom needs
