School Network Staff Director of 5-8 Math Innovation, Greenfield
Job Description
Start Date: Immediate Start Available
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 excel on our four College Success Factors:
- Academical Preparation: Our students will ALL achieve at the highest levels – they’ll be competitive with the best students in the US and abroad and fully prepared for the rigors of college coursework.
- Academical Independence: Students can become the agents of their success through ownership and personalization.
- 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 held and individually developed personal drive to achieve grounded in personal interests and motivation.
For more information about Achievement First’s mission, approach, schools and team, please visit our website at www.achievementfirst.org.
The Greenfield Math Program
Greenfield’s Math program aims for students to master Common Core math standards, develop confidence in themselves as mathematicians, and find joy in persevering through challenging tasks to discover mathematical insights and problem-solving strategies.
Our program is grounded in several core components
- Core Instruction: Students grapple with mathematical concepts to provide a strong foundation and procedural fluency with grade level standards.
- Problem Solving: Students apply their learnings from core instruction to complex, multi-step, authentic real world tasks that push them to hone their problem solving skills and mathematical practices.
- Cumulative Review: Students engage in robust review of complex problems from previous units to both retain and extend learning.
- Small Group Instruction: Students receive personalized, differentiated support (both remediation and extension) to master grade level expectations and to ensure students reach their fullest mathematical potential.
- Support Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness: We also strive to ensure our curriculum, tools, resources and student experiences are relevant, affirm student identity and foster a diverse array of perspectives.
Position Summary
The Director of Math is responsible for realizing the Greenfield Math vision through team leadership, partnership with schools and strong design. The Director of Math Innovation will split their time between coaching deans and teachers to execute high quality math instruction and leading a team of designers to both create and revise curriculum and tools to drive instruction. The Director of Math co-owns achievement results with our design and execution team. The Director of Math Innovation will also play a critical role in setting the vision for the Math program in 7th and 8th grades (Greenfield will expand to these grade levels in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years). The Director of Math will report to the Greenfield Team Lead.
Responsibilities will include but are not limited to:
- Overall: Lead Vision and Direction Setting: Set the vision and direction of the Math team and manage 2-3 designers who make up the team.
- Execution Support: ~ 50% of the role is focused on driving strong execution results in partnership with schools and the Greenfield Regional Superintendent. This robust execution support includes:
- Lead School Leader Math Cohort: Lead a cohort of math focused school leaders through weekly coaching, observations and professional development to drive student engagement and achievement.
- Lead / Partner with Schools to Drive Excellence: Collaborate with our regional superintendent to set math support strategy and make data driven, short-term and long-term program decisions.
- Build and Maintain Relationships & Diverse and Inclusive Networks: Collaborate with Achievement First’s broader network support team to maximize network-wide best practices. 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.
- Program Design: ~ 50% of the role is focused on leading and supporting our math design team to build a robust program and curriculum. Program design responsibilities include:
- Build and Lead a Thriving Design Team: Lead an innovative Math design team, coach designers and provide feedback on curriculum and assessments to ensure all team products and experiences meet our quality bar and are delivered to schools on time.
- Design Robust Curriculum, Tools and Resources: Design and oversee the revision of existing curriculum and creation of new curricular materials based on feedback from Greenfield school staff and anecdotal and achievement data from Greenfield students.
- Ensure Alignment: Ensure curriculum is tightly aligned to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), RICAS, SBAC and New York State’s test and that our program builds a deep conceptual understanding that allows students to grapple with complex math tasks which results in standards mastery and (fluency) with mathematical practice.
- 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 Greenfield 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 to observe, prototype, or work with small groups of students/teachers to learn about the strengths and weaknesses in our model.
- Drive Strategy, Evaluation and Iteration: Observe execution of the model to inform ongoing strategy iterations and support the nascent development of our high school program.
Skills and Characteristics and Beliefs
- Passion: You are passionate about Math content and pedagogy, and you are eager to share this passion with both students, teachers and school leaders.
- Innovative Leader: You view our program as a work in progress and thrive in an innovative environment where we prioritize constant learning and development.
- Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness: You believe our program, curriculum, and scholar experience must foreground role models, experiences, and assets of people of color with a particular emphasis on African Americans and Latinos who represent the majority of our scholars.
- 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.
- Leadership: You have strong skills in people management and leading multiple stakeholders with a variety of perspectives towards a shared outcome: 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.
- Keen Content Eye: You have a deep content knowledge of math. You are a strong critical thinker. You are able to synthesize large amounts of information and work independently to create products that are well-aligned to the program model and vision.
- High Rigor Bar: You have a deep expertise and content knowledge and have a strong internal compass for rigorous curriculum that is user-friendly for both teachers and students.
- Project Management: You have strong project management skills (including project planning and execution).
- Organization: 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: You embrace change, are a team player, are flexible and adaptive, and strive for continuous development and creative solutions.
Educational Background and Work Experience
- Bachelor’s degree from a competitive college or university, master’s degree preferred
- A minimum of 7-10 years of relevant work experience as an educator or in a related field working directly with schools, preferably as a school leader, program designer, or design consultant
- Experience with secondary Math strongly preferred.
- Proven record of success
- Training and coaching school level administrators, teachers, and support staff
- Implementing and/or designing Math curriculum
- School leadership at the dean or principal 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.
