Virtual Arkansas ELA Teacher

Position Type:
Teacher

Job Title:

Virtual Arkansas ELA Teacher

Reports to:

Virtual Arkansas Principal

Location:

Arch Ford Educational Service Cooperative;
Telework from home office

Contract Length: 190, beginning the  school year

Science of Reading level required:
Awareness

Arkansas Teacher's License: ELA license for 7-12 (052 - English; 166 - Eng Lang Arts; or 4031 - English Reg) with a Master’s Degree in English or Master’s degree in another subject with 18 graduate hours in English (to be approved by the partnering university)

Virtual Arkansas’s (VA) mission is to equip, engage, and empower students through unique digital opportunities. As Arkansas’s fully accredited state virtual program, we partner with local schools to provide course opportunities that might not otherwise be available with local resources. Virtual Arkansas is not an online school or a diploma-granting institution, but serves as a resource for supplementing the education of local students.

Virtual Arkansas’s program is implemented through a partnership between the Arkansas Department of Education and the Arkansas Education Service Cooperatives. Virtual Arkansas offers a variety of instructional services, and teachers may be assigned to different services based on organizational needs. These assigned areas include:
Content + Teacher Supplemental, Dedicated/Emergency Use, Division of Youth Services, Alternative Learning Environment, and/or the Learn Anywhere Academy. Additionally, teachers are not able to make course requests but are instead assigned within their licensure area by organizational need. Virtual Arkansas maintains a comprehensive catalog of courses that were created to fully align to the Arkansas Curriculum Standards or other learning outcomes defined by credit-granting entities, such as Advanced Placement or Institutions of Higher Education offering concurrent course offerings in partnership with Virtual Arkansas.

Because of the unique nature of our organization, Virtual Arkansas online teachers also serve as subject matter experts who engage in ongoing curriculum and assessment design tasks aimed at assuring the quality of Virtual Arkansas online courses and the alignment of content, assessments, and instructional practice.

Expectations for Virtual Arkansas Teachers:
Adopted in 2023, the Virtual Arkansas Online teacher is evaluated using a unique evaluation instrument, A Crosswalk of the NSQ Teaching Standards and the Danielson Framework. This crosswalk instrument was designed to better articulate the responsibilities of online instructors and to be used by evaluators for providing better support to teachers assigned in a variety of learning environments, including online, hybrid, and blended.

While the majority of the standards and their components presented in the Crosswalk reflect traditional teacher responsibilities related to instruction, grading, communication, and professional practice, Standard H specifies expectations that are specific to online teachers and describes their unique responsibilities related to curriculum development and the curation of research-based instructional materials, tools, and strategies found to be effective in an online learning environment.

Standard H:
The online teacher curates and creates instructional materials, tools, strategies, and resources to engage all learners and to ensure achievement of academic goals.

• H1 The online teacher designs learning experiences that use technology to efficiently engage learners.
• H2 The online teacher uses a formative approach to lesson design.
• H3 The online teacher incorporates diverse media into online learning modules.
• H4 The online teacher is able to incorporate subject-specific and developmentally-appropriate digital learning resources into online learning modules.
• H5 The online teacher continuously reviews and aligns all course content with applicable course objectives and standards.
• H6 The online teacher creates, selects, and organizes appropriate assignments and assessments to align…