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 and close reading gaps, and lead morning launch, life-skills workshops, and daily routines. The hardest part is not teaching—it’s knowing when to withhold the answer so students build resilience and true fluency. You’ll stay with the same students from launch to closing, pull short diagnostic sessions as gaps appear, and hold high daily goals while parents review weekly data. Those who excel can move into coaching, training, and curriculum leadership roles as Alpha expands nationally.
What You Will Be Doing
- Coaching students through app-based core learning: spotting who is stuck, asking the question that unblocks them, and holding the daily goal.
- Running short structured-literacy sessions with two to four students, diagnosing gaps from running records and fluency probes, teaching a sequence you designed, and checking for transfer.
- Leading morning launch, life-skills workshops, and check-chart activities that keep six-year-olds moving.
- Driving students to their weekly app goals with school currency, leaderboards, and gamification.
- Staying with your students through lunch, recess, and closing, meeting 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.
Key Responsibilities
- Get every K–3 student to their daily learning goals and close the reading gaps stopping them from getting there alone.
Basic Requirements
- Willing to work on-site at a campus in CA, CT, IL, MA, NY, or WA; relocation support provided.
- 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 Requirements
- 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 include 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: fast-moving, ambitious, and student-focused—where you can do the most meaningful work of your career.
Pay
$120,000 USD per year, paid weekly.