Immediate opening for an experienced ELA general ed teacher who is passionate about project-based learning to join our innovative school

Cajal Academy is looking for a passionate and experienced high school English Language Arts teacher to develop and deliver standards-aligned, project-based learning curriculum to bright and gifted students through advanced high school levels while providing leadership and curriculum direction to our ELA teachers working with younger age groups.

This is a truly unique opportunity to join an innovative and tight-knit team of passionate educators and expert clinicians who are modernizing education through new teaching and social-emotional approaches that have proven transformative for kids. You will work closely with educators across different academic subjects to develop highly integrated, multi-disciplinary project-based learning curriculum, within a startup environment that is committed to both academic excellence and personal growth for complex learners who are typically hard to reach in other school environments.

About Our School

Cajal Academy is a small, innovative non-profit school dedicated to developing and disseminating new educational approaches that match to the science of child development. We empower kids to discover their gifts through small, discussion-based classes of just 1-6 kids, project-based learning, close teacher-student relationships and new differentiation and social-emotional approaches that help students understand and overcome the challenges that hold them back. For our teachers, this is an opportunity to learn effective new strategies to further your craft, within an extremely close-knit and supportive team that is passionate about moving education forward, and to collaborate with teachers and expert licensed therapists across disciplines to create bespoke, standards-aligned project-based learning curriculum that challenge our kids to solve real world problems.

All our students are selected for their very high analytical reasoning and/or creative thinking skills, which are paired with a range of special education needs. These are supported through a multi-disciplinary approach provided by expert licensed therapists including an internationally recognized neuropsychologist, using ground-breaking approaches developed by our team that reduce their disabilities (not just accommodate). This includes techniques that accelerate learning by getting kids up and moving instead of pressuring them to sit still and listen. We are the only school in Connecticut or Westchester, NY offering academic programs and therapies tailored to the needs of this cohort of kids, and have brought transformative results for many of them that allegedly "can't be done."

Cajal Academy was granted Candidacy status by NEASC in June, 2023 and is working towards full accreditation. Cajal Academy is growing towards a K-12 school of 50 students; enrollment is currently just 11 kids, spanning grades 2 through 12. Cajal Academy is not a behavior management program and does not admit students who display physical aggression toward others. Our social-emotional curriculum fosters a focus on fostering community, openness about one’s challenges and celebrating peers’ growth and development.

Responsibilities of the Position

Teachers at Cajal Academy have much greater opportunity, tools and support to meet students where they are than is the case in traditional school environments. Our teachers are involved in all aspects of our students’ development, from screening admissions candidates to multi-disciplinary team meetings with our clinical team to develop targeted differentiation strategies for a given child.

Our ELA teachers collaborate with their colleagues from other academic disciplines to develop project-based learning units that require students to master standards-aligned curriculum in order to solve real-world problems. These projects are selected and designed by our academic teachers working as a team, and then each teacher develops their own lesson plans implementing these units through standards-based instruction to students in ability- and age-based groupings.

Responsibilities of the position will include:

• Collaborating with other members of the team to develop new, standards-aligned project-based learning units integrating curriculum from across language arts, science, social studies, math and visual arts
• Developing standards-based lesson plans, differentiated for students in different grade levels and having different learning styles, strengths and challenges
• Delivering differentiated reading and writing instruction to small, ability-based classes
• Designing, implementing and analyzing assessments for each child’s current knowledge, strengths and weaknesses, and monitoring their progress
• Fostering a love of reading and writing, and supporting students who have academic anxieties and/or freeze-fight-flight reactions to academics through a trauma-informed approach to help them monitor and eventually reduce these reactions
• Implementing Cajal Academy protocols for growth mindset, social-emotional and physio development, and supporting children’s growth by prompting students to utilize personalized self-regulation strategies provided by our clinical team
• Participating in weekly team meetings with all academic and therapeutic staff, in which student needs and profiles are discussed in depth, and implementing the team’s evolving findings and recommendations in your classroom
• Identifying areas of evolving challenges for individual students and raising them to our therapeutic team and in our team meetings
• Keeping parents and team members informed through written and oral communications, and expanding teacher and parent understanding of each child’s development
• Drafting in-depth, narrative-style progress reports assessing students’ mastery of both curricular and growth mindset competencies, aligned to Cajal Academy inter-disciplinary competency-based grading standards
• Participating in our admissions process, including by providing reading and writing assessments to incoming candidates or other screening activities and speaking with parents at our information sessions

Potential advancement opportunities include opportunities to become our Director of Curriculum and/or positions in school administration.

Requirements

We are looking for an experienced ELA teacher who has a depth of knowledge within the language arts disciplines, including reading and writing instruction. Many of our students have reading, physio or other challenges interfering with their ability to access reading or to express themselves in writing, despite their very high intellectual abilities. On-the-job training will be provided in our unique pedagogical approaches, with daily access to our therapeutic staff to further refine your understanding and support your work. We do not use traditional special education approaches and thus a special education background is not required.

The successful candidate will have a strong grasp of a range of ELA instructional strategies, although candidates from non-traditional backgrounds with demonstrated high analytical reasoning skills and written expression will also be considered. The ideal candidate will also have experience developing standards-aligned curriculum and lesson plans and utilizing a range of instructional approaches and will be excited to do so through multi-disciplinary project-based learning. This must include knowledge and understanding of Connecticut's high school ELA standards. In addition to teaching, the ideal candidate will also provide leadership across our ELA team, including knowledge of reading and writing development strategies appropriate to developing a vertically-integrated ELA curriculum across our mixed-age community of kids.

All Cajal Academy team members must be flexible thinkers with very high analytical and organizational skills and strong attention to detail. All staff must be passionate about empowering bright and gifted kids who must work to overcome challenges including learning disabilities, social cognition challenges, self-regulation, motor coordination disorders and chronic medical conditions. All staff must be committed to a trauma-informed approach to education and to classroom management, and to collaborating with staff from other academic and therapeutic disciplines.

A master’s degree or higher level of education in a relevant field is required; teacher certification and/or credentials for special education are not required. Regardless of background, (s)he must be able to flexibly adapt educational strategies and/or develop new ones to respond to the needs of this cohort or of a particular child. Demonstrated, strong written expression skills are essential.

The successful candidate must also be a team player comfortable working independently and collaboratively in a fluid environment.

Schedule of Responsibilities

Cajal Academy's students are in session Monday-Friday, 9-3. All teaching staff are on site 8:30-4:30 each day, providing time before and after school to collaborate with one another and our clinical team on curriculum development and lesson planning, and to further refine understandings and approaches for reaching individual kids.

Cajal Academy has a traditional, ten-month academic school year (September to June), and a 4- week summer session in the month of July that is required for all academic teachers. This half- day program provides academic and therapeutic continuity for our students, additional training opportunities for staff and improves the program's accessibility to the community.

Job Type: Full-time

Pay: $71,526.00 - $79,171.00 per year

Benefits:

• Paid time off
• Professional development assistance

Grade school specialties:

• English

Physical setting:

• Private school

Schedule:

• Monday to Friday

Application Question(s):

• Do you have experience developing curriculum and/or lesson plans?
• What age groups have you previously worked with in an educational capacity?

Education:

• Master's (Required)

Ability to Relocate:

• Westport, CT 06880: Relocate before starting work (Required)

Work Location: In person