Youth Development Specialist, Alpha - $120,000/year USD

• $120,000 annual W2 salary with weekly pay; comprehensive health, dental, and vision benefits effective day one
• On-site role at an Alpha K-8 campus located in Beverly Hills, CA; La Jolla (San Diego), CA; Palo Alto, CA; Piedmont, CA; South Bay (LA), CA; Greenwich, CT; Boca Raton, FL; Fort Lauderdale, FL; Miami Beach, FL; Palm Beach Gardens, FL; Chicago, IL; Raleigh, NC; Portland, OR (relocation assistance available)
  
  

This is not a teaching position. Your role is to motivate.

The kindest thing you can do for a student who reaches 99% of their target is to tell them it's not finished. If that philosophy makes you uneasy, this isn't the right fit. If it energizes you because maintaining high standards demonstrates your belief in a student's potential, continue reading.

At Alpha, academic learning happens through AI-driven applications. No traditional lectures. No conventional textbooks. Approximately 60% of your time is spent facilitating one-hour life-skills workshops covering public speaking, concentration, and constructive feedback exchange. Roughly 30% of your time involves individual or small-group sessions where you review student progress via Coachbot analytics and guide each learner toward their weekly app objectives. The remaining 10% is dedicated to data analysis that informs the following week's coaching strategy. You will not follow rigid scripts; workshops serve as frameworks, and top performers in this role modify them and create new content when needs arise.

Success in a semester means at least 90% of your cohort students achieve their weekly app targets, demonstrate quantifiable life-skill improvement on Test2Pass, and provide ratings of 4/5 or higher for their experience with you. Falling short on any of these three metrics means the role's expectations are not met. As you demonstrate your ability to maintain these standards, advancement opportunities emerge to Lead Guide — mentoring newer Guides while continuing to manage a cohort — and eventually to Campus Lead, overseeing an entire school and managing parent engagement.

If you prefer traditional teaching methods, expect ready-made curricula, or view compassion and rigorous expectations as incompatible, this position is not for you. If your background includes athletic coaching, camp counseling, tutoring where you refused to accept a student's surrender, or performing in front of middle schoolers, the final stage before receiving an offer is spending a full day on campus coaching actual Alpha students. If that prospect excites you most, submit your application today.

What You Will Be Doing

• Facilitating one-hour life-skills workshops for K-8 cohorts addressing public speaking, concentration, feedback exchange, and other foundational competencies, modifying existing frameworks and creating new sessions when you identify missing elements
• Conducting daily individual and small-group motivation sessions that drive every student toward their weekly app targets, leveraging Coachbot analytics, Alpha's reward structures (school currency, leaderboards), and your personal connection with each child to overcome reluctance
• Delivering the Test2Pass (Alpha's mastery-based evaluation) for each life skill, and providing coaching to students who fall short until they achieve passing standards
• Adjusting your coaching approach across a broad age spectrum, from kindergarteners requiring high energy and physical activity to 8th graders needing direct conversation and personal accountability
• Analyzing weekly cohort performance metrics in Coachbot, pinpointing students falling behind, and modifying your coaching tactics for the upcoming week based on what the data reveals
  
  

What You Won’t Be Doing

• Delivering whiteboard instruction; academic content is embedded in the apps, not delivered by you
• Creating an entire curriculum starting from nothing; you begin with an established playbook and customize it with your unique energy and narrative approach
• Passively monitoring students on computers; motivation in this role is hands-on, individualized, and persistent
• Working through bureaucratic approval processes to secure resources for students in need; if a child requires additional coaching time, you decide and implement the same day
• Evaluating homework, conducting standardized test preparation, or handling parent correspondence; Campus Leads manage parent-facing responsibilities, and the other tasks do not exist in this model
  
  

Youth Development Specialist Key Responsibilities

Ensure every student in your K-8 cohort achieves their weekly learning objectives, masters each life skill, and finishes the year expressing genuine appreciation for your guidance.

Basic Requirements

• Willing to work on-site at an Alpha campus in Beverly Hills, CA; La Jolla (San Diego), CA; Palo Alto, CA; Piedmont, CA; South Bay (LA), CA; Greenwich, CT; Boca Raton, FL; Fort Lauderdale, FL; Miami Beach, FL; Palm Beach Gardens, FL; Chicago, IL; Raleigh, NC; Portland, OR (relocation assistance available)
• Bachelor's degree in any discipline
• Minimum 3 years of direct experience working with K-8 students (classroom instruction, coaching, tutoring, camp leadership, or youth program management)
• A concrete example you can articulate of motivating a K-8 student toward a challenging goal: the objective, your actions, and the result
• Comfort with AI managing instructional delivery while you concentrate on motivation and life-skills development
• Legal authorization to work in the US without requiring visa sponsorship
  
  

Nice-to-have Requirements

• Background in youth sports coaching, debate, camp leadership, theater, or after-school programming where you held direct responsibility for motivating children toward defined objectives
• Personal record of notable achievement (academic, athletic, or professional), demonstrating that maintaining high standards for others reflects your consistent approach rather than an adopted stance
• Narrative ability and commanding presence sufficient to engage a room of 12-year-olds for an hour without needing to elevate your voice
• Demonstrated success converting disengaged or resistant students into motivated 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 $60 USD/hour, which equates to $120,000 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-5607-US-MiamiBea-YouthDevelopme