Teacher Learner-Centered, Middle Grades Educator
Job Description
Job Type: Full-time, Exempt
Location: Denver, Colorado
Salary Range and Benefits: $70,000 – $85,000
Unlimited PTO Policy, Medical, Dental, Vision Insurance, STD, LTD, Life Insurance, Wellness Stipend, 401k participation with up to 6% match, annual professional development opportunities
Application Deadline: March 18, 2024
We believe that traditional hiring practices have historically and systemically marginalized entire groups of people — including people of color, people from working class backgrounds, women and people in the LGBTQIA+ community to name a few. We believe that we are better as an organization when we work to deconstruct the barriers intrinsic in that system so that our team has authentic representation from diverse communities, backgrounds and beliefs. Hence, we strongly encourage people with these identities or who are members of other marginalized communities to apply for roles within our team.
Overview
This is not an ordinary “teacher” role, and this is not an ordinary school. Embark Education is a micro-school embedded in a small business in North Denver that supports learners to courageously inquire, engage, and discover a sense of self. Our vision is for all community members (adults too) to learn courageously. Embark is built on three design pillars: Embedded, Integrated, and Learner-Centered.
Our mission, vision, and design pillars come to life at Embark through our learning hub–Pinwheel Coffee–with the greater Denver area as our classroom. Our curriculum is integrated into the shop operations and grounded in our competencies. Learning is rigorous and relevant to the work in the shop and the world around us. Learners at Embark never ask, “Why am I learning this?”
For example, when Pinwheel lost one of its coffee roasters, learners were challenged to find a new partner whose values aligned with the business and their own. They engaged in an extensive process to evaluate a series of potential roasters putting their inquiry, evaluation, and communication skills into action. This very real shop need created the opportunity for educators, including the Pinwheel team, to intentionally teach and give feedback on the Embark competencies while knowing key content–math, writing, and research–were also addressed.
This is not a traditional teacher’s role, and using the title “Educator” is only relevant if you go to the Latin root “Educo,” meaning to draw out from what is already inside. The role of the adults at Embark is to cultivate an environment and create the conditions where deep learning and exploration can occur.
Position Description
This learner-centered middle school educator position for 2024/25 will build on our first five years of learning in developing a middle school for middle schoolers. You will be joining a small, dedicated team of innovative educators who work collaboratively together and with our shop staff to design meaningful learning experiences for our learners with high intentionality. You should be willing to work in a collaborative interdisciplinary way and transcend traditional content areas. You should be passionate about learners, families, and educational change. You hold relationships at the center while embodying an entrepreneurial spirit of a founding educator. This position is a unique opportunity for an innovative educator to grow and thrive.
As the ideal candidate, you bring experience or willingness to embrace the following:
- Equity, anti-bias, and anti-racism: Work with the team and learners to understand and act to address the impacts of racism and systems of oppression in our community and society.
- Learner-centered: Hold a mindset of starting first with learners and their needs to inform curriculum and instruction decisions, as well as school systems and structures. Universally, our learners and community ranked being aware and connecting with learners as their top priority.
- Integrated: Join an interdisciplinary (all core content areas), cross-grade level (6-8) team. Working in a deeply collaborative way with two other educators and shop staff to design and implement learning experiences.
- Competency-based design and feedback: Use our competencies as the foundation of learner learning experiences. Competencies, not content, are what we teach and assess.
- Embedded: Design and facilitate learning experiences directly connected to the shop’s work or use the shop as a lens to develop a greater understanding of the world.
- Content: Possess a strong background in a content area AND the curiosity and desire to push beyond it. We recognize that you likely have a background in traditional content areas such as Math, Science, English, or Social Studies. These are critical, and we value someone with a deep understanding of one or more of them so they can nimbly use them as the vehicle for meaningful learning rather than the destination.
- Revolutionary: Be ready to share your learning and journey with the broader educational community at a local and national level. Embark exists to be more than a cool school in the back of a coffee shop. Educators challenge the status quo and advocate fiercely for a shift in the paradigm toward learner-centeredness. We do this through our daily decisions in teaching and through sharing our work.
Minimum Qualifications
- 3+ years leading a classroom
- Bachelor’s degree
