Private Middle School Educator

We’re looking for a warm, confident educator to work one-on-one with a rising eighth-grade student who needs a different kind of school experience. He is social, energetic, capable, and intensely engaged when something captures his interest. After years of struggling in traditional classroom environments, he needs an educator who can help him rebuild foundational skills while also rebuilding his confidence in himself as a learner.

This is not a role for someone looking to recreate a conventional school day ’ll have the freedom to slow down where foundations need repair, move quickly when something clicks, incorporate movement and real-world learning, and build instruction around the student in front of you. The larger goal is clear: help him close meaningful academic gaps and develop the confidence, stamina, and independence he’ll need to successfully transition into high school.

You’ll be working with a rising eighth-grade student who is highly social, energetic, and motivated by the things he genuinely cares about. Right now, those interests include his scooter, dirt bike, baseball, and jiu-jitsu. When he is interested, he can become completely absorbed. He responds well to clear purpose, real-world application, movement, and teachers with whom he has a genuine connection.

He has documented learning disabilities in math and language arts, with reading being an especially challenging and avoided part of school. Attention and executive-function needs can also make traditional classroom environments difficult for him. He tends to be at his best earlier in the day and needs an educator who can provide age-respectful remediation without making learning feel remedial.

The goal is not simply to “get through” eighth grade. It is to identify where foundations have broken down, close those gaps thoughtfully, help him experience real academic success again, and prepare him to eventually thrive in a more traditional, peer-based high-school environment.

• Assess current skill levels in reading, writing, and math, using existing educational records alongside appropriate formal and informal assessment
• Provide targeted, individualized instruction that closes foundational gaps while keeping materials, conversations, and expectations appropriate for an eighth-grade student
• Build literacy skills through explicit, systematic instruction in areas such as decoding, fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, and written expression
• Strengthen mathematical foundations and build toward middle-school proficiency and pre-algebra readiness
• Support executive-function development, including attention, task initiation, organization, planning, academic stamina, and increasing independence
• Design engaging lessons that connect academics to real interests and applications, using movement, hands‑on learning, projects, discussion, and community-based experiences when useful
• Adjust instruction in real time based on engagement and progress. You know when to push, when to change the approach, and when a student needs a reset before returning to the work
• Plan lessons, adapt curriculum and materials, document progress, and communicate regularly with the family and Thrive’s educational management team

• You have meaningful experience supporting students with learning disabilities and know how to identify foundational gaps and teach directly to them
• You are warm and relational, but you are also a confident teacher. You establish clear expectations, hold students accountable, and know how to do so without turning learning into a power struggle
• You understand that disengagement is information. When a student is avoiding work or losing focus, your instinct is to figure out what needs to change rather than simply demand more compliance
• You are comfortable teaching both literacy and math at the middle-school level, including remediating skills that may sit several grade levels below the student’s chronological grade
• You bring initiative and professional judgment. You come prepared with ideas, make thoughtful instructional decisions, and do not need a parent to tell you what or how to teach
• You…