2024 - 2025 Kipp Durham Middle Ec Assistant Teacher

Job Description
CRUCIAL COMPETENCIES
Our one “re-founding” EC Assistant Teacher will blow the following four crucial competencies* out of the water:
Driving for Results:
Our EC Assistant Teacher will have a strong desire to achieve outstanding student learning results and the task-oriented actions required for success. Our EC Assistant Teacher will set high goals for themselves and their students, making persistent, well-planned efforts to achieve these goals despite barriers and resistance;
holding others accountable for doing their part to achieve results;
and putting in all the extra effort necessary to ensure success.
Influencing for Results:
Our EC Assistant Teacher will motivate others—students, staff colleagues, and families—and influence their thinking and behavior to obtain outstanding student learning results. Our EC Assistant Teacher will understand that they cannot accomplish change alone, but instead must influence the work of others. They will use a variety of influencing moves—inspiring students, nurturing ridiculously joyful AND rigorous classroom and schoolwide cultures, grasping and responding to unspoken student needs and motivations, and simultaneously supporting and prodding colleagues to collaborate on the path to schoolwide success—as the situation requires. The relationships they will form are for the purpose of influencing others to enhance student learning, not just for the purpose of personal bonding.
Problem-Solving:
Our EC Assistant Teacher will be LASER FOCUSED on planning, organizing, and delivering high quality, differentiated instruction, AND they will continually analyze data to determine student learning needs and next steps for intervention blocks during the day, on select weekend academies, and during summers (while running summer academies during select weeks and participating in summer teacher professional development sessions during other select weeks).
Personal Effectiveness:
Our EC Assistant Teacher will exhibit flexibility and optimism when faced with stressful, uncomfortable, and unfamiliar situations;
maintain confidence in themselves and a willingness to keep improving despite the many challenges of their role;
actively embrace the constant changes needed to ensure student learning in high-challenge situations;
and hold and maintain astrong belief in the human potential for learning and improvement, despite significant societal pressures to settle for less. Our teachers will see themselves as not just a classroom teacher, but a SCHOOLWIDE teacher oriented around solutions and being proactive in their engagements.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES
Preparing and Delivering Instruction
Provide exceptional education students (individually or in groups) with physical help and emotional support so they can benefit from our instructional program
Establish as fully as possible a supportive and sympathetic relationship with students without fostering or encouraging intense emotional involvement
Guide and help students with curriculum tasks set up by classroom teachers
Works with students (individually or in small groups) to reinforce materials initially introduced by classroom teachers
Assist with behavior management and other disciplinary procedures in a manner consistent with policies and expectations of colleague teachers and the school
Keep supervising teachers informed of any issue with specific students
Communicate with colleagues about student issues or special information as appropriate
Communicate with, contact, and respond to families as directed by colleague teachers
Assist students in such physical tasks as putting on and taking off of outerwear, moving from room to room, and using the bathroom
Perform simple errands and tasks for students, such as sharpening pencils, carrying lunch trays, and the like, as needed given student conditions
Perform classroom health procedures, when necessary, under the supervision of the school nurse
Serve as a resource person, if and when requested, to the student evaluation team conferring about students to whom assigned
Embrace and incorporate the gift of feedback from wherever it comes—colleagues, principal, assistant principal, regional coaches, students, wherever—in the spirit of Pursuing Excellence, one of KIPP NC core values
Building Positive Classroom and Schoolwide Cultures
Develop positive relationships with students, families, teachers, and staff through regular positive phone calls to families, routine curbside check-ins with families at arrival and dismissal, and attendance at all school events, including Back-to-School Night, family conferences, report card conferences, and all other school celebrations
Leverage those relationships to induce behaviors and instructional habits from students that are significantly different from those previously exhibited;
pinpoint and tap the needs, wants, and underlying motivations of students
Participate fully in the daily routines of a school that form the foundation of culture, like arrival/dismissal, advisory/circle time, lunch, hallway transitions, and the 1,000 other moments that make up a day
Embody, nurture, and build KIPP NC’s core values (Pursuing Excellence, Building Knowledge, Fighting Injustice, Sparking Joy, and Rising Together) and the school’s student and staff cultures
Assume personal responsibility for student achievement, all the students in the school, and the success of staff colleagues
Create and maintain a joyful classroom space that exudes love, builds a sense of belonging, and celebrates learning, which includes displaying current student work and grade level/content- appropriate and identity-affirming decorations
Exemplifying a Growth Mindset
Collaborate with leaders and coaches to identify areas of strength and areas of growth for professional development throughout the year, some of which will be leader-led, and some of which will happen in the quiet after-school moments in classrooms with colleagues in the routine preparation for the next day
Attend practice clinics to hone and sharpen pedagogical skills and lesson delivery
Participate in Teacher Work Days, Regional Data Days, and Professional Development meetings after school;
satiate their hunger tolearn and grow as a professional
Taking Care of Yourself
Use the many benefits the organization offers employees (health benefits, generous school holidays, etc.) to relieve stress after the workday is done or over school breaks and holidays, as the job of turning a school around is tough—teachers will experience stress and emotional challenges associated with all the essential duties enumerated above, and self-care will be a priority