Lead First Grade Teacher

Foundation Prep is a literacy-focused elementary school. With a founding kindergarten and first grade integrated class, we opened in August of 2015. We are seeking passionate educators for the position of Lead Teacher available immediately and for the 2017-18 school year.

Teaching at Foundation Prep is an ideal position for an educator with a passion for the craft of instruction and the desire to collaborate and grow as part of a dynamic team. In addition to summer, weekly, and interim professional development and team planning meetings, teachers will receive consistent high-impact coaching and feedback from Foundation Prep's Coaches. Foundation Prep is committed to recruiting, developing and retaining a team of excellent teachers!

Job Description

1. Create a positive, achievement-oriented, and structured learning environment that excites and invests students in learning. We will support you in implementing systems that allow students to achieve both academic and life success. Each teacher is responsible for lesson planning and teaching allowing you to use your skills and passion from the very beginning! You, along with every adult in our school, is responsible for the success of each and all of our students, even those not in your homeroom.
2. Motivate students to realize high academic achievements. We are a literacy-focused school, dedicating over 200 minutes daily to literacy. For us, literacy is more than just reading and writing, but also listening and speaking. Our Prepsters engage in content through that lens. They learn through experience and talking, listening, writing and reading about the content they are being taught. It will be your responsibility to design and implement unit and lesson plans in collaboration with grade-level or content-level teams that challenge Prepsters and allow for many different types of learning.
3. Build classroom community by investing Prepsters in academic success and the development of the Foundation Prep FIRST values (Focus, Integrity, Respect, Self-discipline, and Teamwork). You will be asked to create a classroom culture of learning that is aligned with the Foundation Prep Way. We are preparing each Prepster, not just for academic, but also life success. Emotional literacy is as important to us as academic literacy. We believe, just as students learn differently, they also react differently to any given situation. We don’t believe that punitive classroom cultures allow students to learn the skills they need to think critically as individuals. We instead believe that we must teach our Prepsters that each action has a consequence, good and bad, and that it is not the mistakes we make that define our character, but how we respond to those mistakes that defines who we are as a person. We are excited to talk with you more about our Restorative Practices and how we teach Prepsters to have high-expectations for themselves and each other, while showing forgiveness.
4. Utilize data from daily, weekly, and interim assessments to drive instruction and interventions. All our instruction occurs in small, targeted groups. In order to continue to be able to reach each of our Prepsters at their constantly growing academic levels, teachers analyze data and reconfigure lessons and groups to suit the needs of our students. You will be asked to think critically and thoughtfully about student growth and how to continue to drive for academic excellence.
   
5. Participate enthusiastically in structured and informal learning and development opportunities. As an experienced teacher, we know that you have accomplished a tremendous amount in crafting your skill. We are extremely excited for you to share all that you have learned about the art and science of teaching with your colleagues. In fact, we expect you to collaborate with your coach, grade-level chair, and school team to improve instructional, culture-building, and leadership skills. We also believe that we are all life-long learners. We will support you with both formal training through professional development and coaching, and informally with the lessons you will learn from your colleagues teaching together in the classroom, as well as working together in team planning and data analysis meetings.
6. Exemplify Foundation Prep’s core values in all interactions with students, families and colleagues. We believe in the power of relationships. We know our parents by first names, we know their phone numbers by heart, and we love our Prepsters. We are looking for someone who knows that “please” and “thank you” go a long way, that hugs can fix almost anything and that transparency is essential. As a part of the Foundation Prep family, you’ll be asked to build relationships, not just with your students, but their families, your colleagues and our many partners in this work.

Qualifications

Required

1. At least 3 years teaching experience.
2. Highly Certified Teaching Certification by the state of Louisiana or its equivalent.
3. An incredible work ethic and a passion for being part of a team-oriented, mission-driven, joyful school culture.
4. Ability to grow strong instructional and classroom management skills.

Highly Preferred

1. High level of personal organization and planning.
2. Experience in diverse classrooms.
3. Certification or progress toward certification in Special Education, English Language Learners, and/or Gifted and Talented.
4. Desire to have a long-term career in education.

Additional Information

At Foundation Preparatory, we place a tremendous value on the importance of exceptional teachers. Excellent teachers drive student success, thus classroom teachers are the number one predictor of student achievement. As such, at Foundation Preparatory, we value and place a tremendous amount of emphasis on recruiting excellent teachers and professionally developing them into exceptional teachers!