Literacy Specialist, Alpha - $100,000/year USD

About Alpha

Alpha is reimagining the school day around faster learning, stronger mentorship, and more time for students to build real-world skills. Guides work with the same students from morning launch to closing: core learning, workshops, lunch, recess, and check-chart time.

Role

Alpha Reading Specialists diagnose and close reading gaps through short structured-literacy workshops. They coach students through app-based core learning, lead morning launch and life-skills workshops, and stay with their students throughout the full day. The role involves running short workshops with two to four students — diagnosing phonics or decoding gaps from running records and fluency probes, teaching a sequence designed for that specific error pattern, and checking that it transferred.

What You Will Be Doing

• Running short structured-literacy workshops with two to four students — diagnosing a phonics or decoding gap from running records and fluency probes, teaching a sequence you designed for it, and checking that it transferred
• Coaching students through app-based core learning: seeing who has stalled, asking the question that unsticks them, holding the daily goal
• 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 pitched at their age
• Staying with your students through lunch, recess, and closing, meeting refusal and frustration with a plan built for that particular child

What You Won't Be Doing

• Nightly full-class lesson planning — your planning is narrow and diagnostic
• Running a pull-out caseload from a quiet intervention room — reading groups are roughly a tenth of your week and happen inside the day
• Delivering a published program with fidelity to someone else's scope and sequence
• Writing IEPs and 504 plans, chasing testing paperwork, or sitting on curriculum committees
• Handing your students off while you take a prep block — you are with them launch to closing

Literacy Specialist Key Responsibilities

• Get every K-3 student to their daily learning goals, and close the reading gaps that keep them from getting there on their own

Basic Requirements

• Willing to work on-site at one of the campuses 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
• 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 can keep a room of six-year-olds engaged with nothing but your energy and a good activity
• Tired children kept coming back to your after-school or summer program
• Experience with reading platforms (Amira, Lexia, i-Ready) or diagnostic assessments (DRA, DIBELS, AIMSweb)
• You can name a specific child whose decoding you fixed, and say how you did it
• You have worked in a non-traditional school model: charter, micro-school, Montessori, or hybrid

Pay & Benefits

• $100,000/year salaried, paid weekly
• Day-one health, dental, and vision benefits
• Relocation support available

Schedule

• 40 hours/week, five days a week, on-site at one Alpha campus

Current Openings

• AZ - Phoenix and Scottsdale
• OK - Oklahoma City and Tulsa
• TX - Dallas, Fort Worth (Keller), Plano, and The Woodlands
• UT - Park City (Salt Lake City)

Interested in a different Alpha campus? Apply anyway, name your preferred location, and we will route you to the right opening.