2nd Grade Teacher, Alpha - $100,000/year USD

Alpha students complete their full academic curriculum in two hours each day. This is not an exaggeration — it's the foundation of why this position exists. Academic instruction is delivered through adaptive software. What that technology cannot provide is the human work of persuading a seven-year-old that she is capable of far more than she believes — and that is your job.

About the role

You will serve as a guide, dedicating your time to developing confidence, concentration, resilience, and the courage to tackle difficult challenges in children who are still mastering basic tasks like tying their shoes. You will oversee one K-3 cohort band: either Kindergarten-1st grade or 2nd-3rd. Half of your day consists of energetic, hour-long workshops focused on life skills — public speaking, feedback exchange, attention control. The remaining half is spent coaching students individually and in small groups, leveraging real-time learning data to ensure every child progresses toward a challenging weekly target. Your workshops should produce measurably more capable students, and your coaching sessions should leave children believing they can accomplish more than they previously imagined.

A teaching certificate or formal education background is not required. Some of our most effective people in this position have backgrounds in youth sports, children's theater, camp leadership, and after-school programming. We seek someone whom children naturally listen to and want to impress, and who can maintain rigorous standards while never diminishing a child's sense of self-worth.

This is a full-time, on-site position, five days per week, at an Alpha campus. Current openings are in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, OK; Nashville, TN; Austin and Plano, TX; and Park City (Salt Lake City area), UT.

Responsibilities

• Facilitate hour-long life-skills workshops where K-3 students actively practice communication, attention, and feedback through speaking and movement — not seated listening or passive lecture consumption.
• Provide individual and small-group coaching, utilizing Coachbot (Alpha's real-time learning-analytics platform) to identify precisely which students are falling behind and intervene before their weekly target becomes unreachable.
• Evaluate life-skill competency through Test2Pass, Alpha's demonstrate-to-pass standard, and continue coaching until a student can truly perform the skill — mere participation does not constitute success.
• Adapt your methods to match the age group: songs, physical activity, and narrative for the youngest students; autonomy, self-monitoring, and responsibility for 2nd and 3rd graders.
• Establish sufficient trust with each child so they will take on difficult challenges in your presence and persist when initial attempts fail.
• Take ownership of your cohort's performance metrics. Weekly progress data for your students will be visible on a dashboard to you and the entire team.
• Develop a cohort of K-3 students who are eager to attend school, consistently achieve ambitious learning targets week after week, and complete elementary education equipped with the life skills — confidence, focus, communication, resilience — that will continue to benefit them two decades into the future.

What You Won’t Be Doing

• Delivering academic instruction from the front of a classroom. Adaptive software provides all academic content.
• Creating curriculum from the ground up. You will adapt and refine established frameworks, not design them from scratch.
• Monitoring a quiet computer lab. If students are engaged in independent work and you are inactive, the model is not functioning correctly.
• Reducing expectations when a student faces difficulty. You guide the student toward the standard — the standard never moves toward the student.
• Grading assignments, distributing homework, or managing routine parent communications.
• Working from home or on a part-time basis.

Requirements

• Willing and able to work on-site, five days per week, at one of the Alpha campuses identified in this posting.
• Bachelor's degree in any discipline. A teaching certificate is not necessary.
• A minimum of 3 years of direct experience working with children ages 4-9 — in teaching, coaching, tutoring, camps, youth programs, children's theater, or comparable environments where children participated because of your presence.
• Demonstrated success helping young children achieve goals they initially believed were beyond their reach, with concrete examples you can discuss in detail.
• Experience leading organized activities for groups of young children and maintaining engagement, focus, and participation among 10-15 or more students.
• The capacity to communicate concepts clearly to young learners and adjust group dynamics in real time when attention, behavior, or motivation begins to decline.
• A proven ability to incorporate feedback by modifying your methods and producing better results.
• Comfortable with performance measurement. You will be held accountable to weekly cohort metrics, and you will use those metrics to prioritize your efforts.
• Willing to allow AI to manage academic instruction while you concentrate on coaching, motivation, and life skills development.
• The capacity to be authentically warm and firmly unwavering on standards, simultaneously.
• Legal authorization to work in the United States without requiring visa sponsorship.

Nice-to-have Requirements

• Background in youth sports, children's theater, camp leadership, Montessori education, progressive education models, or high-engagement after-school programs.
• A personal track record of pursuing something ambitious — academically, athletically, artistically, or professionally — and discovering what that pursuit requires.
• Storytelling or performance skills that captivate a room of six-year-olds without needing to raise your voice.
• Concrete examples of transforming a hesitant or reserved child into a confident, active participant.

About Alpha

Join the team building school around student growth. Alpha reimagines the school day around faster learning, stronger mentorship, and more time for students to build real-world skills. Roles with real student impact: Alpha hires teachers (guides), operators, admissions experts, school & curriculum leaders, and remote team members. Education work that pays like it matters: Alpha offers six-figure roles for people ready to help build a radically better school experience. A culture built for builders: Alpha is fast-moving, ambitious, and student focused. It’s for people who want to improve the system, not maintain it. Alpha is where you can do the most meaningful work of your career.

Pay

The compensation level for this role is $100,000 USD per year, paid weekly.

Benefits

This is a full-time, W2 employee position with immediate access to benefits.