Middle School Self-Contained Special Education Teacher | 2026-27 School Year

About the role

FirstLine Schools is currently seeking talented, passionate Special Education Teachers to teach in self-contained setting for students with cognitive needs. The position is for the 2026-27 school year.

Position Responsibilities

• Designs individualized lessons that lead to LA Connector standards mastery and are aligned to expectations/learning connectors for students with disabilities and end-of-year assessment
• Provides feedback to scholars by asking pertinent, scaffolded follow-up questions that affirm correctly understood content, clarify misunderstood content or extend scholars’ thinking
• Responds to student data and makes adjustments to lessons as needed
• Implements assistive technology and other individualized student supports throughout the school day
• Establishes effective classroom routines and manages students effectively using a variety of strategies to meet the unique needs of students in the Discovery Plus program
• Inspires and invests students in achieving their goals and in believing that goals are achieved through effort and not innate abilities
• Sets out and constructively responds to feedback from and engages in problem-solving with others
• Ensures compliant IEP documentation for all students on caseload by facilitating IEP development, FBA/BIP development and implementation, transition planning, and maintaining other supporting documentation related to service delivery (logs, progress reports, Extended School Year, etc)
• Oversees a team of paraprofessionals and manages schedules to best meet the needs of students
• Collaborates closely with related service providers to implement push-in and pull-out services for students
• Attends weekly professional development with other self-contained teachers
• Joins SELF’s Low-Incidence one-year Cohort
• Other duties as assigned

Requirements

• 2 or more years of lead teaching (as the teacher of record) for students with cognitive needs
• Demonstrated success working with students in an urban, open admissions school
• A BA or BS
• A strong background in and command of content area
• Louisiana Teacher Certification (SPED) Completed or in progress (or be eligible to hold for our out-of-state applicants) in the specific disability/grade levels served, as necessary
• Experience using UNIQUE curriculum preferred

Qualifications

• Believes deeply in the mission and values of FirstLine Schools and Discovery Plus Program
• Believes in every student’s ability to achieve in a rigorous college or career prep curriculum
• Achieves results based on agreed-upon expectations
• Takes personal responsibility
• Highly detail-oriented
• Open to learning and evolving with AI as a tool at work
• Collaborates effectively with a range of stakeholders
• Shares a commitment to creating great schools in New Orleans
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to embed and model the FirstLine Commitments: We Keep Learning, We Work Together, We Are Helpful, We Are the Safekeepers of our Community, We Share Joy, We Show Results!