Instructional Specialist - Elementary Humanities (ELA)

Instructional Specialist: Elementary Humanities (ELA)
Bronx, NY
 

Seton Education Partners seeks a mission-driven, results-oriented individual to be the Instructional Specialist, Elementary Humanities of the Brilla Schools Network. We are looking for a resourceful, organized and highly efficient team member who will provide outstanding support to both elementary school instructional staff and the Academics Team.

Background

Co-founded in 2009 by KIPP pioneer Scott W. Hamilton and Teach for America alumna Stephanie Saroki de García, Seton Education Partners is a response to the dramatic decline of urban Catholic schools in America, which have served the economically disadvantaged so well for decades.

In 2013, amidst the shuttering of 60+ urban Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of New York, Seton launched Brilla College Prep Public Charter School in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx. Brilla, which means “shine” in Spanish, has achieved academic results that parallel the nation’s most acclaimed high-poverty schools. Alongside Brilla, Seton launched El Camino, an optional, privately funded after-school Catholic faith formation program. In only 6 years, 119 children have been baptized through their participation in El Camino.

Seton is working to take these remarkable achievements to scale by managing a network of schools and programs that ensure that thousands of underserved children whose Catholic schools close—and other local children—have access to an academically excellent, character-building, and, for those who choose it, faith-nurturing education. This network is a national model for how other cities facing the shuttering of Catholic schools can continue to serve children and families with limited educational options. For more information on Seton Education Partners, please visit www.SetonPartners.org.

About the Brilla Schools Network
The First Brilla charter school opened its doors in 2013, with 200 kindergarten and first graders, and currently serves over 1500 children in grades K-8 across five campuses in the North & South Bronx. The Brilla network plans to expand to eight schools (four elementary and four middle) across the Bronx over the next four years. Roughly three-fourths of Brilla scholars are Latino, and one fourth are African American. Over 90% qualify for the federal meals program. About one in three students are English Language Learners, and one in five has special needs. Brilla schools seek to educate students to lead lives of excellence, virtue and purpose. We do this by leveraging the best instructional practices of model charter schools—implementing a longer school day and year, using technology-based blended learning to deliver individualized instruction, intensively supporting and coaching teachers—and combining this with a robust character education program, centered around our core virtues of courage, justice, wisdom and self-control.

About El Camino
El Camino, which means “The Way” in Spanish, is an optional, privately funded Catholic after-school faith formation program for underserved children and families. El Camino helps children, their families and their catechists to know, love and serve Christ and His Church; develop the habits, dispositions and beliefs that are indispensable to human flourishing and happiness; and live as disciples in this world and saints in the next. El Camino honors the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.

El Camino currently serves more than 400 kindergarten through seventh-grade children for 90 minutes a day, Monday through Thursday. Children receive homework help from experienced teachers, a nutritious snack, and 30 minutes each of catechism and physical fitness. Additionally, children and families have opportunities for shared and personal prayer and character formation. This video provides a snapshot of El Camino. El Camino will grow to serve children through 8th grade, growing a grade level at a time each year.

About the Position

Dually reporting to the Senior Director of Instruction, the primary responsibility of the full-time Instructional Specialist, Elementary Humanities is to guide the vision and implementation of Brilla’s centralized, classically-inspired curriculum and to ensure high quality instruction through frequent observation and collaboration with campus based leaders. As a member of the central network team, the Instructional Specialist informs the refinement of a curricular program, in support of the organization’s mission and classical teaching philosophy.

In addition to supporting elementary schools, the Instructional Specialist also collaborates with the Schools Team to ensure aligned curricular and instructional practices across all schools within the Network, resulting in high academic outcomes over time. 

Primary Responsibilities

Curriculum Leadership

• Manage the quality and execution of Brilla Charter Schools’ elementary school ELA curricula with a strong emphasis on classical content and pedagogy
• Support and coach, as needed, school-based leaders to improve the quality of curriculum, instruction, and assessment
• Collaborate with the Student Services Team to ensure differentiated instructional practices are used to improve the academic outcomes of students receiving targeted services

Instructional Leadership

• Develop and facilitate professional development related to deepening teacher and leader content & pedagogical knowledge within and across schools with a focus on ELA
• Design, schedule, and facilitate regular school leader meetings and development including, but not limited to- content meetings, student data analysis, school observations and debriefs
• Progress monitoring of Schools’ growth towards Network Targets to inform individual and Network development, systems, and structures 

Assessment Management

• Collaboratively plan and execute walkthroughs to collect quantitative data on leader and teacher practices and its impact on student learning
• Manage and evaluate key components of ongoing assessment including, but not limited to the NWEA MAP Growth Assessment
• Analyze, report and interpret student performance data proactively in order to identify areas for curricular or instructional change, working closely with faculty and in partnership with leadership teams

Qualifications and Desired Characteristics

Candidates for the position must possess the following personal characteristics:

• You have unquestioned integrity and commitment to Seton’s mission and values
• You take personal responsibility
• You have a strong belief that all children can achieve both moral and academic excellence
• You have a relentless drive for excellence
• You have an unwavering determination to be better today than you were yesterday

• Strong knowledge and appreciation of the Liberal Arts and a classical approach to learning*
• 2+ years of successful experience coaching and supporting instructional leaders in a school or organizational setting to meet school-wide goals
• Successful teaching experience, as evidence by exceptional student outcomes 
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with keen attention to detail

Diversity & Inclusivity

We are building an organization in which talented educators from all walks of life and past work experiences can join our team and make significant contributions. We are particularly committed to attracting and developing people who share the life experiences or backgrounds of the students we will serve.

*At Brilla, education in the classical tradition is understood to require the education of the whole person - mind, body and spirit - in the service of human flourishing. Cognitive development and character formation are interdependent: People flourish by living out the virtues. A time proven way of learning how to live out the virtues is to learn about, contemplate and discuss how these virtues have been expressed in literature and history and represented in time-tested works. 

Secondarily, a classical education is pedagogically consistent with modern cognitive science. Many current pedagogies are not fully consistent with what we know today about brain development. In contrast, classical pedagogy  (referred to as the Trivium) perfectly corresponds to how the brain develops. It emphasizes patterns, routines, and facts that young brains crave (Grammar stage); it leverages the brain’s orientation to asking “why” in the middle years (Logic stage); and it focuses on communication and persuasion in the high school years (Rhetoric stage).

Seton Education Partners provides equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees.

​The base salary range for this position is $100,000 to $125,000 per year, along with a comprehensive benefits package that includes medical, financial, and other benefits. New hires will typically start at the lower end of this range, depending on their relevant experience, job-related knowledge, skills, and internal equity considerations. Compensation is determined based on our salary scales.