Jobs

Elementary Core Classroom Teacher

About Acera

We seek to hire an entrepreneurial, tech savvy, fearless teacher who can partner with specialist teacher(s) and create interdisciplinary, STEAM-rich hands-on learning approaches for high ability students. Bring your highly collaborative spirit and deep commitment to high-engagement learning and join our school community!

We envision a world in which schools engage students in meaningful learning, in which teachers are freed as entrepreneurs in their classrooms, and in which students can become the best version of themselves, given each students’ unique capacities, needs, and passions. The Acera School day program provides students with unbounded access to learning, offering high-capacity students opportunity according to their ability, not age. Acera’s enrichment programs (after school, summer, and vacation week camps) are open to the public, and our Education Innovation (EI) efforts are actively engaged in public school projects to support educational change. We also partner with organizations beyond our walls, creating programs rich in sciences, technology, engineering, creativity, and the arts. We operate both as a lab school and a microcosm of what is possible for other schools. We seek to grow students’ emotional intelligence and develop the next generation of innovators, leaders, and creative thinkers who can make a positive impact in the world.

Learn more about how we teach at www.aceraschool.org/how-we-teach.

Job Duties & Responsibilities

Acera seeks a dynamic, motivated, and dedicated professional to lead an elementary multi-age classroom.  We seek a professional who has a deep love of and respect for children, who wants the freedom to invent an exciting and creative classroom.  This experienced professional must feel confident designing learning with differentiated instruction strategies which allow for conceptual thinking and access to content which is years ahead of chronological student age, while meeting the fine motor, kinesthetic, sensory and social skill development needs of younger elementary students.   Most of our students operate 2 or more grade levels ahead of expectation in one or more academic area and all have qualified for admission to Acera as gifted students.  The ideal candidate will be creative, articulate, flexible, collaborative, and have exceptional executive functioning skills.  The expectations for this position are:

• Customize curriculum, leveraging essential questions as a springboard for inventing interdisciplinary, project based classroom learning.
• Create and adapt Individualized Learning Plans to drive learning approaches and focus for each student throughout the year
• Adapt classroom focus and strategies to differentiate for each student’s needs
• Be fearless about proactively including STEM rich learning, interweaving technology and leading edge scientific ideas, while leveraging curriculum collaborators who can extend and expand classroom dialogue and learning.  
• Collaborate and share ideas with other teachers; work as a community to utilize each person’s and to continuously improve as we constantly learn and adapt to teaching with social distancing constraints and within the remote learning setting.   
• Apply an eclectic blend of learning pedagogy, including teaching for understanding, multi age, thematic and interdisciplinary, experiential, STEM oriented, and fully leveraging technology with laptops in every classroom.  
• Use a “teacher as a facilitator” style.  This is not a traditional “in charge teacher who dispenses the knowledge” approach.  Our teachers serve as facilitators who enable student learning in a way customized for student abilities and interests. 
• Embrace parent partnership educational model; communicate openly, with honesty and compassion.  Share teaching philosophy and pedagogical beliefs; educate parents.   

Qualifications

• At least 3 years of teaching experience.
• Bachelor degree.
• Masters degree in education is a bonus but not required.
• Ideally a love of science, mathematics, and integration of technology as a contextual tool enabling learning.
• Experience in engaging learners with diverse profiles (including giftedness, ADHD, Asperger’s, anxiety) and through diverse learning methods (visual/spatial supports, executive functioning supports, hands-on manipulatives, games, simulations, debates, discussions, etc.).
• Deep capability to engage in differentiated instruction strategies in reading and writing; students in our elementary classroom read at grade level up through reading multiple years ahead of age expectations; this teacher needs to be able to create individualized learning plans for each students’ literacy and emotional/social needs which fit each student.  
• Exceptionally strong spoken and written communication and interpersonal skills. 

Term & Anticipated Start Date

Full-time, exempt, school year only. Start date as desired, by March 2023. 

Salary & Benefits

• Paid federal/state holidays plus school-year breaks.
• Health, dental and vision benefits available, SIMPLE IRA.

• Free after-school and summer programs for children of eligible employees.

Working Conditions

• Prolonged periods standing and walking throughout school, classroom, and campus, including climbing stairs.
• Must be able to assist students who have physical difficulties.
• Must be able to kneel, sit, stand, crawl, push, and pull to assist and teach children throughout the day.
• Must be able to traverse the space and adjust one’s tone and height, by bending or leaning, in order to teach each child.
• Prolonged periods sitting and working on computer to complete necessary planning, paperwork, etc

• Must be able to lift up to 15 pounds at times.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Acera is an Equal Opportunity Employer that does not discriminate on the basis of actual or perceived race, creed, color, religion, alienage or national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, disability or handicap, sex, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, genetic information, arrest record, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local laws. 

Conditions of Offer

You must provide documentation of a completed COVID vaccination series. 

All offers of employment are contingent upon CORI, SORI, and fingerprint-based background checks, as required by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Under the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), our company is required to verify the identity and work authorization of all newly hired employees. Therefore, if you accept this position, you will be required to complete a Form I-9 upon hire. Within 3 days of beginning employment, you will need to supply acceptable documentation days of beginning employment, you will need to supply acceptable documentation (as noted on the Form I-9) of your identity and work authorization.

Apply

Please submit the following to hiring@aceraschool.org:

• cover letter
• resume

• personal statement of educational philosophy that includes a description of your classroom management/discipline beliefs
• salary expectations