Skills Special Education Teacher

Bricolage Academy is searching for an Essential Skills Special Education Teacher. Bricolage is a New Orleans charter school that started in 2013 with a Kindergarten and will be growing one year, and one grade, at a time until we serve students in all grades, K - 12th.

At Bricolage Academy, we offer a self-contained individualized setting for students with significant low-incidence disabilities, in PreK-4th grade, that require academic and functional instruction in a self-contained setting, called Essential Skills Level 1.

The Essential Skills Special Education Teacher is responsible for providing individualized and LEAP Connect-aligned instruction based on Individualized Education Plans that is culturally relevant and contains SMART measures of success. The Essential Skills Level 1 setting utilizes the Attainment Curriculum, a skill-based, individualized curriculum that teachers academic and functional skills in an engaging and kinesthetic manner. The Essential Skills Level 1 Special Education Teacher’s role is to support students in accessing LEAP-connect aligned curriculum while providing supplemental instruction targeted toward their IEP goals and skill gaps.

Additionally, students will have co-curricular experiences – visual art, music, physical education, and innovation (a combination of design thinking technology, and engineering basics) with the support of paraprofessionals. These classes are designed to introduce students to the basic concepts and principles of different types of art, music, innovation, and physical education so that they can make better informed decisions about which type to specialize in in middle and high school.

Restorative Practices will be used alongside strategies from both Responsive Classroom for Middle School and the Institute of Social and Emotional Learning to proactively build a physically and emotionally safe, joyful, inclusive, and supportive school culture.

We attempt to undo racism by addressing the traditional power structure by creating space for dialogue across traditional lines of division. We offer trainings and workshops that focus on racial reconciliation for teachers, students and families, and employ culturally responsive instructional practices. We are committed to supplementing the dominant narrative approach to History/Social Studies with culturally responsive pedagogy that uses “cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them” (Geneva Gay’s definition of culturally responsive teaching).

This work is not ‘nice to have’; it is essential to advance equity.

Bricolage Academy is a school with a big goal: we aim to be the highest performing non-selective school in New Orleans. There are many people who contribute to making Bricolage special - parents, administration, students and community members - but teachers are at the center of it all. Bricolage teachers must demonstrate a deep commitment to our mission of advancing educational equity by creating innovators who change the world.

Our teachers embody our organizational values (integrity, empathy and innovation). They are always trying to get better, have a deep love for children and approach everything with a joie de vivre. Our teachers create the kind of classrooms that nobody ever wants to leave - where it’s fun to learn and you can almost see the discovery fireworks bouncing off the walls.

We’re looking for others who approach their work like we do – balancing seriousness and diligence with warmth and levity.

The objective of the Special Education Teacher/Case Manager is to develop and implement an effective educational program for students with exceptionalities as well as students suspected of having an exceptionality. The Special Education TCM will also inspire their students to use their tools to cope with their exceptionality in order to adapt and be productive in school and in their community.

Specifically, the Essential Skills Level 1 Special Education Teacher is responsible…