Early Childhood Specialist, Alpha - $100,000/year USD

• $100,000/year W2 salary with weekly pay; health, dental, and vision benefits begin day one
• On-site at an Alpha campus located in Phoenix, AZ; Oklahoma City, OK; Tulsa, OK; Nashville, TN; Austin, TX; Fort Worth, TX; Houston, TX; or Park City (Salt Lake City), UT (relocation assistance available)
  
  

You do not instruct. You inspire.

The most supportive action you can take for a six-year-old who reached 99% of their target is to insist it is not finished. If that expectation unsettles you, this role is not for you. If it energizes you because maintaining high standards is your way of demonstrating belief in a kindergartener's potential, continue reading.

At Alpha, students in grades K-3 complete academic learning through AI-powered applications over two hours each day. As a Guide, you lead a single cohort band — K-1 (Kindergarten–1st grade) or 2-3 (2nd–3rd grade) — and adjust your approach, tempo, and workshops to suit that band. No traditional lessons. No printed exercises. Half of your day is spent facilitating one-hour life-skills workshops covering public speaking, concentration, and peer feedback. These workshops serve as frameworks, not fixed scripts — top performers in this role customize them for their cohort and create new ones when gaps arise. The remaining half involves sitting with students individually or in small clusters, analyzing Coachbot data, and guiding each child to reach 100% of their weekly app targets. With four- to six-year-olds, energy and playfulness are not supplementary; they are the means by which you sustain attention long enough to teach anything. Warmth establishes trust and earns you the authority to challenge. Challenging them signals your confidence in their ability.

A successful quarter means every student completes their weekly app targets, passes the Test2Pass for every life-skills workshop, and 90% report they love you. Falling short on any of these three means the role is not being fulfilled. In your first year, you internalize the system; as you demonstrate the ability to uphold expectations, advancement to Lead Guide becomes possible, where you mentor new hires while continuing direct work with students.

If you prefer conventional classroom teaching, need a pre-made curriculum, or see warmth and rigor as incompatible, this is not the right fit. If you have thrived as an early-elementary teacher who excelled at circle time, a camp counselor for young children, a youth sports coach, a children's theater performer, or anyone capable of captivating a room of kindergarteners through voice, play, and energy, the final step before an offer is a shadow day on campus coaching actual Alpha students. If that prospect excites you most, apply now.

What You Will Be Doing

• Facilitating one-hour life-skills workshops for groups of 10-15 K-3 students covering public speaking, concentration, feedback, and other enduring competencies
• Conducting daily individual and small-group coaching sessions that maintain student progress toward weekly app targets, leveraging Coachbot analytics, Alpha's incentive structures (school currency, leaderboards), and the rapport you have established with each child
• Delivering the Test2Pass (Alpha's mastery-based evaluation) for each life skill, and supporting students who do not pass until mastery is achieved
• Engaging kindergarteners through songs, narratives, physical activity, and humor, while simultaneously holding second and third graders accountable to concrete, measurable expectations
• Serving as the warm adult children are excited to see at drop-off AND the adult who will not permit them to settle for less
  
  

What You Won’t Be Doing

• Delivering lectures from the board; academic content is delivered through the apps, not by you
• Creating curriculum from the ground up; Alpha supplies the system and you animate it
• Passively monitoring kids at screens; motivation in this role is active, individualized, and continuous
• Reducing a weekly target so a child can meet it; when a student falls behind, the solution is supporting the student, not adjusting the goal
• Evaluating homework, conducting standardized test preparation, or handling parent outreach; Campus Leads manage parent-facing responsibilities, and the rest do not exist in this model
  
  

Early Childhood Specialist Key Responsibilities

Ensure every student in your K-3 cohort meets their weekly learning targets, achieves mastery of each life skill, and finishes the year reporting they loved you.

Basic Requirements

• Willing to work on-site at an Alpha campus in Phoenix, AZ; Oklahoma City, OK; Tulsa, OK; Nashville, TN; Austin, TX; Fort Worth, TX; Houston, TX; or Park City (Salt Lake City), UT (relocation assistance provided)
• Bachelor's degree in any field
• At least 3 years of direct experience working with children ages 4 to 9 (early-elementary teaching, coaching, tutoring, camp counseling, or youth program leadership)
• A concrete example you can articulate of motivating a young child toward a challenging goal: the goal itself, your actions, and the result
• Able to participate in a paid training program at our Austin, TX campus
• Openness to allowing AI to manage instructional content while you concentrate on motivation and life-skills coaching
• Legally authorized to work in the US without visa sponsorship
  
  

Nice-to-have Requirements

• Background in youth sports coaching, children's theater, camp leadership, Montessori/progressive early education, or after-school programs where you held direct responsibility for motivating young children toward defined goals
• Personal record of high achievement (academic, athletic, or professional), demonstrating that holding others to rigorous standards is natural for you, not performative
• Natural performer's energy with young children — the capacity to command a room of kindergarteners through voice, playfulness, and physicality
• Demonstrated success in transforming shy or reluctant young children into confident, engaged participants
  
  

About Alpha

Want to join a learning rebellion that’s transforming the traditional classroom?

Alpha School is on a mission to reshape education with a bold approach that harnesses AI to accelerate learning and unleash student potential.

They don’t play by the old rules.

Alpha is creating a new paradigm where students master core academics in just two hours a day, freeing up time for hands-on, passion-driven learning that truly prepares them for the real world.

Alpha School is rewriting the rules of education.

Sounds too good to be true? It’s not.

There is so much to cover for this exciting role, and space here is limited. Hit the Apply button if you found this interesting and want to learn more. We look forward to meeting you!

Working with us

This is a full-time (40 hours per week), long-term position. The position is immediately available and requires entering into an independent contractor agreement with Crossover as a Contractor of Record. The compensation level for this role is $50 USD/hour, which equates to $100,000 USD/year assuming 40 hours per week and 50 weeks per year. The payment period is weekly. Consult www.crossover.com/help-and-faqs for more details on this topic.

Crossover Job Code: LJ-5149-US-Houston-EarlyChildhood.012