Early Elementary Teacher, Alpha - $100,000/year USD

Full-time, on-site position at an Alpha campus with a 40-hour work week across five days. Relocation assistance available.

About the Role

You recognize a miscue the moment you hear it and can pinpoint the underlying gap: the vowel pattern a student never mastered, the consonant blend they consistently guess at. At Alpha, you’ll apply this skill daily in a fundamentally different educational model. Students complete their full academic core in approximately two hours each morning using AI-adaptive applications—no traditional instruction, printed curriculum, or unified pacing. The remainder of the day focuses on life-skills instruction.

As a Guide (not a traditional teacher), you ensure students engage with their work, stay motivated, and overcome obstacles the technology can’t address. You remain with the same group of students from morning opening through dismissal, covering core academics, workshops, lunch, recess, and progress-tracking sessions. This sustained contact allows you to identify gaps no standardized assessment would reveal—like a student masking reading difficulties by memorizing text rather than decoding it.

When you spot a deficit, you intervene immediately—no referral process, committee approval, or waitlist. You gather 2–4 students for a 15-minute targeted workshop (e.g., phoneme-grapheme correspondence, blending practice, decodable passages), verify skill transfer, and return them to independent work. Your preparation is focused and assessment-driven: identifying who needs support tomorrow and determining the intervention that will produce measurable progress. Families receive weekly performance data, so you’ll need to explain any gaps without compromising standards.

Alpha is expanding nationwide, and advancement is performance-based. Competent Guides may transition into hiring/training new staff, developing frameworks for other campuses, or coaching entire teams, where diagnostic literacy judgment becomes the primary function.

Responsibilities

• Deliver brief structured-literacy interventions with 2–4 students: identify phonics/decoding deficits through running records and fluency assessments, design targeted instructional sequences, and confirm skill transfer.
• Support students through app-based core instruction: troubleshoot stalls, ask problem-solving questions, and maintain daily performance expectations.
• Facilitate morning opening routines, life-skills instruction, and progress-tracking activities to sustain engagement for six-year-olds.
• Motivate students toward weekly application goals using school currency systems, competitive leaderboards, and age-appropriate gamification.
• Remain with your students throughout lunch, recess, and dismissal, using individualized strategies to address resistance and frustration.
• Ensure every K–3 student reaches daily learning targets and eliminates reading deficits preventing independent progress.

What You Won’t Be Doing

• Developing full-class lesson plans each evening (preparation is targeted and diagnostic).
• Managing a pull-out intervention caseload in a separate space (reading groups occur within the regular schedule).
• Implementing a commercial program with strict adherence to an external scope and sequence.
• Drafting IEPs/504 plans, managing assessment documentation, or participating in curriculum committees.
• Transferring students to other staff during planning periods (you remain with them from opening to dismissal).

Requirements

• Willing to work on-site at one of the listed campuses (relocation support available).
• At least 3 years of direct experience with children ages 4–9 (teaching, coaching, tutoring, camps, youth programs, children’s theater, etc.).
• At least 2 years of K–3 reading instruction experience within the last 5 years.
• Completed structured-literacy training (LETRS, IMSE, Orton-Gillingham, Wilson Reading System, Fundations, UFLI, CERI, Neuhaus, SIPPS, Really Great Reading) or a master’s in reading/literacy.
• Bachelor’s degree in any subject (teaching certificate not required).
• Comfortable spending ~90% of your day guiding students through app-based learning, workshops, and campus routines, and 10% on reading sessions.
• Willing to work with all K–3 students, not only struggling readers.
• Legally authorized to work in the U.S. without visa sponsorship.

Nice-to-Have Qualifications

• Ability to maintain engagement with a room of six-year-olds using only your presence and well-designed activities.
• Experience with exhausted children returning to your after-school or summer program.
• Familiarity with reading platforms (Amira, Lexia, i-Ready) or diagnostic assessments (DRA, DIBELS, AIMSweb).
• Can describe a specific child whose decoding skills you repaired and explain your methodology.
• Experience in non-traditional school models (charter, micro-school, Montessori, hybrid).

About Alpha

Alpha reimagines the school day around faster learning, stronger mentorship, and more time for students to build real-world skills. The team includes Guides (teachers), operators, admissions experts, school/curriculum leaders, and remote staff. Alpha offers six-figure roles for those ready to help build a radically better school experience, with a culture designed for builders—fast-moving, ambitious, and student-focused.

Pay

$100,000/year salary, paid weekly.

Benefits

• Health, dental, and vision coverage from day one.

Schedule

• 40-hour work week across five days, on-site at a single Alpha campus.

Active openings: Phoenix (AZ), Oklahoma City/Tulsa (OK), Dallas/Fort Worth/Plano/The Woodlands (TX), Park City (UT). If interested in a different Alpha location, submit your application and indicate your preferred campus.