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

Alpha students complete their full academic workload in just two hours each day. This is not an exaggeration—it's the foundation of why this position exists. Adaptive technology manages the academic instruction. What it cannot do is persuade a seven-year-old that her abilities exceed her own expectations—that is the essence of this job.

About the Role

In this position, you will serve as a mentor, devoting your time to cultivating confidence, concentration, perseverance, and a willingness to tackle challenging tasks in young children who are still mastering basic skills like tying their shoes. You will oversee a single K-3 cohort band—either Kindergarten-1st grade or 2nd-3rd grade.

Half of your day consists of dynamic, hour-long workshops focused on life skills: public speaking, exchanging feedback, and sustaining attention. The remaining half involves coaching—both individually and in small groups—utilizing real-time learning data to ensure every child progresses toward an ambitious weekly target. Students should emerge from your workshops more skilled than when they entered, and from your coaching sessions believing their potential exceeds their prior assumptions.

A teaching credential or formal education background is not required. Some of our most effective team members in this role have backgrounds in youth athletics, children's theater, camp coordination, and after-school programming. We seek someone whom children respect and wish to impress, and who can maintain high standards while never diminishing a child's sense of self-worth.

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

Responsibilities

• Facilitate hour-long life-skills workshops where K-3 students practice communication, concentration, and feedback actively and on their feet—not seated, and not through passive lectures.
• Provide coaching to students individually and in small groups, leveraging Coachbot (Alpha's real-time learning-analytics platform) to identify precisely which students are falling behind and intervene before a weekly target becomes unattainable.
• Evaluate life-skill proficiency through Test2Pass, Alpha's demonstrate-to-pass standard, and continue coaching until a student can genuinely perform the skill—participation alone is not sufficient.
• Adapt your methods to the developmental stage before you: songs, physical movement, and storytelling for the youngest learners; independence, self-monitoring, and accountability for 2nd and 3rd graders.
• Establish sufficient trust with each child so they will attempt challenging tasks in your presence and persist when initial efforts do not succeed.
• Take ownership of your cohort's performance metrics. You will review your students' progress on a dashboard weekly, and this data will be visible to the entire team.

What You Won’t Be Doing

• Delivering academic instruction from the front of a classroom. Adaptive software provides the academic content.
• Creating curriculum materials from the ground up. You will customize and refine established playbooks, not design them from scratch.
• Overseeing a quiet computer lab. If students are working independently while you remain stationary, something is amiss.
• Reducing standards when a student encounters difficulty. You guide the student toward the objective—never adjust the objective toward the student.
• Evaluating assignments, distributing homework, or managing routine parent communications.
• Operating remotely or on a part-time basis.

Key Responsibilities

Develop a cohort of K-3 students who are enthusiastic about attending school, consistently achieve ambitious learning objectives week after week, and complete elementary school equipped with the life skills—confidence, focus, communication, resilience—that will continue to benefit them for decades to come.

Requirements

• Willing and able to work on-site, five days a week, at one of the Alpha campuses listed in this posting.
• Bachelor's degree in any field. A teaching certificate is not required.
• At least 3 years working directly with children ages 4-9—teaching, coaching, tutoring, camps, youth programs, children's theater, or a similar setting where kids showed up because of you.
• A track record of getting young children to reach a goal they didn't think they could reach, with specific examples you can walk us through.
• Experience leading structured activities for groups of young children and keeping 10-15 or more students engaged, focused, and participating.
• The ability to explain ideas clearly to young learners and redirect a group in real time when attention, behavior, or motivation slips.
• A track record of acting on feedback by changing your approach and improving the outcome.
• Comfortable being measured. You'll be accountable to weekly cohort data, and you'll use that data to decide where to spend your time.
• Willing to let AI handle the academic instruction while you focus on coaching, motivation, and life skills.
• The ability to be genuinely warm and completely immovable on expectations, at the same time.
• Legal authorization to work in the United States without visa sponsorship.

Nice-to-have Requirements

• Experience in youth sports, children's theater, camp leadership, Montessori, progressive education, or high-engagement after-school programs.
• A personal history of chasing something ambitious—in academics, athletics, the arts, or your career—and finding out what it takes.
• Storytelling or performance chops that hold a room of six-year-olds without you raising your voice.
• Specific examples of turning a reluctant or shy child into a confident, participating one.

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/year. The payment period is weekly.

Benefits

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

Schedule

This is a full-time, in-person position, five days per week, at a physical campus. All roles are year-long positions.