2024 - 2025 Kipp Durham Middle Social Worker

Job Description
CRUCIAL COMPETENCIES
Our one “re-founding” Social Worker will blow the following four crucial competencies* out of the water:
Driving for Results:
Our Social Worker will have a strong desire to help support students and teachers achieve outstanding student learning results and the task-oriented actions required for success. Our Social Worker 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 Social Worker will motivate others—students, staff colleagues, and families—and influence their thinking and behavior to obtain outstanding student learning results. Our Social Worker 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 Social Worker will be LASER FOCUSED on planning, organizing, and delivering high quality, differentiated support to the students in their care 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 Social Worker 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 staff will see themselves as not just a classroom/office staff, but a SCHOOLWIDE colleague oriented around solutions and being proactive in their engagements.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES
Preparing and Delivering Instruction
Provide direct services to our school community including:
Crisis intervention and behavior management to expedite students’ return to classrooms for learning and to build students’ ability to meet the school’s high expectations
Individual and group counseling (school-based and mandated)
Identify and train others to identify students and family members who may benefit from regular one-on-one counseling or group counseling
Develop and implement curriculum for social and emotional development/intervention with students
Refer, monitor, and evaluate individuals and families to external resources and services
Administer records, documentation, and other compliance activities
Serve as a Case Manager for our school community
Strengthen and support parent and family involvement
Plan and develop school-based interventions with educator colleagues
Engage and partner with community agencies and resources in and around the City of Durham
Help students and their families with learning, behavior, and/or attendance concerns while strengthening home, school, and community partnerships
Evaluate students in terms of personal and family history and socio-economic and cultural differences
Evaluate the configuration of factors within the home, community, and school as related to a student’s current social and academic adjustment
Set clear, high expectations, and hold students accountable for performance—all of which requires taking personal responsibility and doing everything required to reach challenging goals
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
Do all the operational things that support great instruction, like keeping records and completing tasks for data tracking systems
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, weekly newsletters from the classroom, 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 workspace that exudes love, builds a sense of belonging, and celebrates learning, which includes displaying 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 skills
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