Position Description
Starting each day at 7:55 AM, the ideal Williamsburg Charter High School teacher will provide our students with rigorous classroom instruction for 5 periods each day. Until the day ends at 3:10 PM, they enjoy one period for lunch, two prep periods, as well as attend weekly department planning meetings and weekly professional development. Our teachers also provide advisory leadership.
Teacher as Advisor
Research has shown that students feel more comfortable, accounted for, and accountable when their teachers understand their background, challenges, and successes. Creating an advisory period that acts as a ‘home base’ for each student, our teacher advisors provide this support to 12-18 students for the duration of each student's high school career. This allows the teacher to become a part of the developmental process of their students and allows each family to have a primary contact within the school at all times. Advisors are responsible for:
- Taking complete ownership of the academic, behavioral, and overall success of the group
- Ensuring advisees are in attendance, punctual, excelling in all their classes, and seeking support when it is needed.
- Being the academic expert on each advisee
- Acting as the liaise between the student and the school teams
- Teaching the advisory curriculum that has been created for their advisees’ grade
- Accompanying advisees on educational field trips as determined by the School Leader
- Contacting their advisee’s families a minimum of seven times a year and responding within 24 hours to all communications from their advisee’s families
- Developing and overseeing Individual Student Support Plan plans twice a year for each of their advisees
- Facilitating discipline-related required meetings on behalf of their advisees
- Performing any other advisor-related duties as requested
Ensuring Student Learning Through Data-driven Instruction:
- Prepare rigorous, student-centered lesson plans that will engage and motivate students to learn
- Plan standards-based units of study with clear, intended outcomes and goals in mind
- Provide meaningful feedback on student work to determine student progress and to make suggestions for improvement
- Proactively and relentlessly seek new ways to promote student learning
- Create thoughtful, standards-based assessments
- Work closely with school leaders and colleagues, using data to drive instruction and by extension, consistently raising student achievement and intervening with improvement plans and support for struggling students
- Have fun and pass the love of learning onto students!
- Design opportunities for students to use the world around them as a classroom through field trips and or/inviting guests into the classroom as appropriate
- Hold students to high behavioral and academic expectations and support students to succeed
- Model professional and collegial behavior for students
- Engage in the process of collaborative evaluation with school leaders
- Ensure that students are well-prepared for all New York State exams and WCHS interim assessments
Personal Commitment to On-Going Learning
- Participate in focus groups, evaluations, and committees as requested to assist with the constant improvement of the school as a whole
- Participate and support WCHS open-door classroom policy, allowing parents and teachers, and other stakeholders to informally observe your work and actively seeking to observe the work of your colleagues for professional development
Positively Contributing to Student and Teacher Culture
- Arrive on time, or early, to ensure that the classroom is clean, supplies are prepared and the instructor is ready to receive students; and leave no earlier than 3:10 PM.
- Hold necessary interventions, office hours, attend school meetings, and ensure that students that need extra help are able to receive it.
- Proactively involve the student’s family in their learning through regular communications including (but not limited to): weekly informal communication via emails, notes, telephone calls, and meetings
- Realize that although student achievement is central to our work, Williamsburg Charter High School graduates are not just academically well-prepared, but also good citizens of their community. The cornerstone of our ideology is based on providing students with life skills and a sense of responsibility to their community in addition to an excellent education
- Share expertise and curriculum with colleagues
- Respond to all school-related communications within 24 hours, including but not limited to voicemails and emails, from Williamsburg Charter High School faculty and staff (including supervisors and other teachers)
- Participate in all assemblies, meetings, school-sponsored events, and professional development activities offered during or after work hours, e.g., Parent Advisory meetings, Back-to-School Night, field trips, student events, and performances, etc.)
- Adhere to the WCHS Student Handbook, Employee Handbook, Personnel Policies, and Instructional Manual
Skills/Qualifications:
- Experience working in an urban school setting
- An ability to communicate and collaborate effectively with colleagues and co-teachers
- Bachelor’s degree in education or a related field and NYS certification
- 2+ years of lead classroom teacher experience (excludes student teaching and serving as a teaching assistant)
- Experience with planning and/or teaching high school curriculum aligned with Common Core standards and driven by data
