Humanities Teacher

Grade Level: 9

Full Time Start Date: August 6, 2018

A NEW, INCLUSIVE VISION FOR COMMERCE: WHO WE ARE

In the fall of 2017, the High School of Commerce (“Commerce”) entered into a year-long redesign process - bold, substantive and inclusive in nature – all to operationalize the community’s articulated desire for a more personalized Commerce experience that fostered college and career success. This redesign process – fundamentally student-centered, with existing educators and students serving as the lead drivers of the work – engaged in an extensive, nationwide discovery of the emerging and established approaches to realizing impressive results for students. This discovery lead the redesign team to put together a plan to launch a redesigned High School of Commerce, starting with a 9th Grade Pathways Program for 2018-19 and growing in each successive year.

A VALUES-ALIGNED TEAM: WHO YOU ARE

Commerce is now seeking values-aligned individuals to serve as the teachers of the 9^th Grade Pathways Program, with stipended training and professional development to begin as early as spring of 2018. The essential responsibilities for these teaching roles will be guided by the following two values:

1. AGENCY: We believe that each and every Commerce student should be empowered to pursue their fullest academic and personal potential. We believe a students’ agency to become their best academic and non-academic selves should be organized around rigorous personalized pathways - a four-year arc that prioritizes career interest exploration in a student’s 9^th/10^th grade years and application/deepening of individual career interest in their 11^th/12^th grade years. With student-driven personalized pathways, a student will own the setting and the attaining of their short-, mid- and long-term academic, college, career and life goals.

2. RELATIONSHIP: We believe that each and every Commerce student thrives in a positive, welcoming learning environment that emphasizes intentional and proactive relationship-building. Supported through an explicit and universal culture of restorative justice -  prioritizing growth and atonement over punishment and separation –  a student will recognize the value of and play a leading role in developing interdependent relationships, with all members of the Commerce community working collaboratively in pursuit of this vision.

Therefore, all candidates interested in pathways team roles in the redesigned Commerce should be prepared to articulate how they have lived these values of agency and relationship in realizing the following:

• Transformational Change with Your Students:
  • A demonstrated record of catapulting students to new and tangible academic/non-academic heights, so that all of your students see themselves as empowered, goal-oriented learners.

• Transformational Change with Your Mindset and Practices:
  • A demonstrated record of growing your professional mindset and practices in a deliberate and adaptable manner, so that you see yourself as an empowered, goal-oriented professional.

• Transformational Change with Your Peers:
  • A demonstrated record of sharing leadership and responsibility with peers in the pursuit of a common goal, with you seeing yourself as an empowered, goal-oriented collaborator.

CAPACITY-BUILDING, RESULTS-ORIENTED ROLES: WHAT YOU WILL DO

Prior teaching experience in either pathways programs or personalized learning schools is not a prerequisite for serving on the pathways team. Instead, we are looking for educators who believe in the values of agency and relationship, and who are committed to the three types of transformational change noted above.  Commerce is prepared – considering the centrality of these positions to the success of the school’s redesign – to invest substantially in the capacity of pathways teachers to receive the training, coaching, and resources/infrastructure necessary to thrive.

To that end, upon selection, pathways teachers should be prepared to spend the last three months of the 2017-18 school year engaged in training and professional development in the core elements of the redesign plan (restorative justice, interdisciplinary teaching, technology learning platform, holistic advising, etc.) which will be implemented in the 2018-19 school year.  We anticipate there to be approximately 20 hours of professional development before June 30^th – with some homework resulting from professional development - for which teachers will be compensated.

The teaching experience within the 9^th Grade Pathways Program at Commerce is likely to include the following:

• Organizing within cohorts of teachers in 9^th grade “Houses.”
• Teaching block classes in a fully inclusive setting.
• Interdisciplinary planning and team-teaching.
• Engaging in structured interdisciplinary projects that focus on pathways content.
• Teaching an “X Block,” or intervention class, with a smaller group of students.
• Participating in morning circle, with all 9^th grade faculty and administration, for fifteen minutes every morning.
• Reflecting in collaboration time including 1) a daily block for teachers within a House to meet, and 2) a weekly block for teachers to meet with similar department teachers in the other Houses.
• Utilizing a learning platform (i.e. Summit) that maps all academic and non-academic student progress, including habits of mind.
• Serving as dedicated academic/non-academic advisor to the same cohort of students (12-15) throughout their four-year Commerce experience.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university
• Appropriate content/program area educator license (English or history) and grade level (8-12) licensure from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education 

Benefits

SEZP offers a competitive salary commensurate with qualifications and experience; salaries for new teachers start at $49,000. Teachers in SEZP qualify for benefits (personal/sick days, health insurance, etc.) offered to other teachers in the Springfield Public Schools.

Positions will be filled on a rolling basis; applicants are encouraged to apply immediately. Please contact sezp@springfieldempowerment.org with any questions.