Early Elementary Teacher, Alpha - $120,000/year USD

About the role

Alpha is hiring Lead Guides to coach students through app-based core learning, diagnose literacy gaps, and run short structured-literacy sessions. The hardest part of the job is not teaching—it’s helping six-year-olds work through frustration without giving them the answer, knowing which students are faking fluency, and closing gaps the same day you spot them. You’ll decide who needs you, what will move them, and hold the daily goal without lowering it. Parents see weekly data and will ask you to name the gap. This is a full-time, on-site role at an Alpha campus, five days a week.

Responsibilities

• Coach students through app-based core learning: spot who is stuck, ask the question that unblocks them, and hold the daily goal.
• Run short structured-literacy sessions with two to four students.
• Diagnose phonics or decoding gaps from running records and fluency probes; teach a sequence you designed; check for transfer.
• Lead morning launch, life-skills workshops, and check-chart activities that keep six-year-olds moving.
• Drive students to their weekly app goals with school currency, leaderboards, and gamification.
• Stay with your students through lunch, recess, and closing; meet frustration and refusal with a plan for that child.

What You Won’t Be Doing

• Writing lesson plans for a full class every night—your planning is narrow and diagnostic.
• Running a pull-out caseload from a quiet intervention room; reading groups happen inside the day and are about a tenth of your week.
• Delivering a published curriculum or scripted program with fidelity to someone else’s sequence.
• Writing IEPs, 504 plans, chasing testing paperwork, or sitting on curriculum committees.
• Slipping away to a prep block while someone else covers your students—you are with them launch to closing.

Requirements

• Willing to work on-site at a campus listed below, with relocation support.
• At least 3 years working directly with children ages 4–9: teaching, coaching, tutoring, camps, youth programs, children’s theater, or similar settings where kids showed up because of you.
• At least 2 years of that experience teaching reading in grades K–3 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 similar; or a master’s in reading or literacy.
• Bachelor’s degree in any subject; a teaching certificate is not required.
• Comfortable spending about 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 US without visa sponsorship.

Nice-to-have

• You held a six-year-old’s attention with nothing but your energy and an engaging activity.
• You kept tired children coming back to an after-school reading program.
• Parents asked for you by name.
• Experience with reading platforms (Amira, Lexia, i-Ready) or diagnostic assessments (DRA, DIBELS, AIMSweb).
• You can name a child whose decoding you fixed and how.

About Alpha

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

$120,000 USD/year, paid weekly.

Schedule

Full-time, W2 employee position; year-long role; on-site at an Alpha campus, five days a week.

Locations

CA – Beverly Hills, La Jolla (San Diego), Malibu, Palo Alto, Piedmont, San Francisco, Santa Monica, South Bay (Los Angeles); CT – Greenwich; IL – Chicago; MA – Boston; NY – New York City; WA – Seattle.