Middle Grades Teacher

Exploris: K-8 Learning Community Exploris Middle Campus
- Raleigh, North Carolina Open in Google Maps

This job is also posted in North Carolina School Jobs

Starting Date: Immediately

The Exploris School is looking for an innovative teacher to join the middle grades (6-8). Middle grades teachers at Exploris are part of a four person, grade-level team and work together to co-teach students. Typically, two teachers take the lead for mathematics and two teachers take the lead for English-Language Arts. Additional content (including science and social studies) is designed and delivered by the four person team through interdisciplinary project work.

Exploris prides itself on the passion, compassion, talent, and expertise of the people who work here. Parents choose to send their children to Exploris because they know their children will be taught by individuals who go above and beyond for the sake of student learning and who value developing strong relationships with their students.

Teachers work closely with their colleagues, developing curriculum and helping shape the culture of the school in accordance with the school’s mission and its implementation of challenging, project-based learning.

In addition to being instructional experts, Exploris teachers must be compassionate, have the ability to develop meaningful connections with students, have strong classroom management skills, and are confident in their ability to create a psychologically safe classroom culture in which individuals are respected and valued for what they bring to the group.

• Appreciation for the life and mind of the middle school scholar
• Appreciation for a project-based approach to curriculum design — commitment to develop curriculum that is relevant, engaging, and in-depth
• Personal qualities that exemplify the school’s emphasis on character development and service to the community
• Teaching experience (ideally in grades 6-8) consistent with Exploris’s progressive, constructivist, exploratory and project-based educational philosophy
• Strong subject area background; highly qualified or ready to get highly qualified in North Carolina
• Reader, writer, critical thinker and attentive to current events that lead to opportunities to create learning units that guide students to make sense of the world in meaningful ways
• Skillful at using a variety of assessment methods and data to pinpoint students’ strengths and weaknesses and skillful at applying instructional practices to address diverse learning needs
• Strong interpersonal skills, commitment to teamwork, and readiness to reflect and grow
• Values a collaborative approach to working with a diverse population of children and adults
• Sense of humor and a high level of energy, enthusiasm, flexibility, and spontaneity

Interdisciplinary Project Work: Exploris teachers value student achievement, engagement, and understanding. We teach through a global education approach that utilizes interdisciplinary projects based on themes. This means that we work to teach skills and concepts named in state/national standards through the context of compelling real-world investigations. Students may learn about ratios by investigating the way gear-ratios work on a bike, about energy concepts by investigating the history of renewable energy sources in North Carolina, or about decomposition and soil nutrient data analysis through the context of organic gardening and compost piles.

As an Exploris teacher, you’ll work…