About BELIEVE Schools, Inc

BELIEVE Schools, Inc is a independent, public school network that currently has a single site – BELIEVE Circle City (BCC) an early college and career-focused high school that uses real-world experiences, societal norms and expectations to foster the academic achievement, autonomy, and agency needed to be a contributing member of our evolving society. BELIEVE Schools focuses on identity and leadership development, and explicitly develops our scholars and staff emotionally, socially, and culturally. BELIEVE Schools provides a rigorous curriculum filled with purpose-building experiences in service of creating dynamics for our scholars to flourish in their future pursuits.

Principal Resident Program Overview

The Principal Resident Program at BELIEVE Schools, Inc is designed to equip emerging leaders with the necessary skills to launch a site within the BELIEVE Network. The Resident will complete a 8 month-1 year long residency at an existing site to learn processes, programs, and procedures of BELIEVE Schools, Inc. They will collaborate with the COO to ensure their facility is ready for launch.

Key Responsibilities

Model and support implementation of the school’s vision and goals

• Supports the development of the School Leader’s school-wide vision and takes an active role in investing and mobilizing teachers to achieve the collective goals of the school; owns the implementation of select school priorities in support of the school-wide vision
• With guidance from the School Leader, leads the planning and goal-setting for the grades/departments that s/he coaches and ensures alignment with school-wide vision and goals

Contribute to school-wide planning and prioritizes time to accomplish goals

• Provides input into the strategic planning of the school, and identifies areas of ownership for self and direct reports
• Effectively plan to meet goals through prioritization and excellent time management and coach others to do the same

Develop emerging leaders with School Leader’s guidance

• Supports the School Leader in identifying and developing emerging teacher leaders (Content Team Leaders and/or Grade Level Chairs) through goal setting, coaching and providing feedback

Model strong staff and student culture and manage school-wide character development and behavior management systems

• Supports teachers in understanding process and roles in student support and intervention and develops systems and structures to ensure that limited time is spent on reactive student discipline
• Manage parts of the daily school operations (e.g. arrival/dismissal, lunch/recess, school trips, extra-curricular school activities, school events, facility maintenance)
• Acts as the first Leadership Team contact on student intervention and parent engagement hierarchy; determines next steps for issues that rise above the teacher/grade level/department chair

Collaborate with ED and/or School Principal to hire diverse, highly-effective teachers and school staff

Content (Standards, Curriculum, and Assessment):

• Develops deep mastery over the academic standards in the subjects/grades for which he/she coaches, and strong understanding of academic standards for all subjects/grades. Understands the implications of standards on what a student should know and be able to do, connect teachers with relevant resources to improve their content knowledge, and therefore what a teacher needs to know and be able to do to facilitate student mastery
• Studies curriculum and assessment content and further develops understanding of how assessments map to content mastery, and what is required of students and teachers to accomplish mastery on the assessments
• Teaches teachers how to assess for both student mastery and growth towards college readiness and insists that assessments are used to inform teacher instruction

Research-based Instructional Practices (Methods and Time):

• Helps develop teacher’s knowledge of best practices in instructional methods and teaches teachers how to match particular strategies to gaps in student mastery

Develop teachers to provide rigorous and high quality instruction and support School Leader in planning and implementing enabling systems of BELIEVE Schools, Inc.

Data Analysis (Data-driven Instruction and Progress Monitoring):

• Lead data-driven instruction. Help teachers determine how data aligns to end-of-year goals (what is being assessed and how it maps to standards); break-out data to analyze how different student groups are performing; determine what data is saying about areas of student mastery and growth; and identify specific instructional actions and adjustments to fill students’ knowledge and skill gaps and a timeline to do so

Teacher Instructional Development (Instructional Coaching, Content Teams, and Workshops):

• Provide high-quality instructional coaching with frequent and scheduled teacher observations, actionable and bite-sized feedback, and accountability for adjustment in practice
• Coach emerging leaders on their instructional coaching practice
• May lead or coach others who lead department/content/grade-level meetings that focus on planning for and norming on instruction and culture, practicing instructional strategies, and progress monitoring the department/content/grade level
• Recommend to the School Leader what school-wide professional development will be the highest leverage in improving student results; lead engaging, actionable, adult-learning workshops; and hold staff accountable for implementation of the workshop practices

Prioritize Assistant Principal’s own success and sustainability by engaging lifelines and renewing to get stronger

Support student recruitment, enrollment, and retention activities as needed.

Qualifications

• Minimum of a Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university (required)
• Master’s Degree (preferred)
• At least 2 years of teaching experience (required)
• At least 1 year of school-level leadership experience (required)
• Strong record of helping students achieve academic success and holistic growth (required)