Youth Development Coach, Alpha - $120,000​/year USD

• CT
  - Greenwich

The most difficult aspect of this position is not instruction. You will sit with a frustrated six-year-old, and the correct response will rarely be to provide the answer.

You remain with the same group of students throughout the entire day. Morning launch, app-based core learning, lunch, recess, life-skills workshops, closing. By Tuesday, you will identify which student is masking fluency gaps. When you locate that gap, you act immediately—no referral, no committee. You gather two to four students, deliver the fifteen-minute targeted sequence you designed for that specific gap, and observe as it closes.

Core instruction is delivered through the apps, so you will not be writing lesson plans for twenty-four children late into the night. Your role is to determine who needs direct support and what intervention will advance them, while maintaining the daily goal without compromise. ‘She’s doing fine’ is insufficient here; parents review weekly data and will expect you to identify the specific gap.

Alpha is expanding campuses nationwide. Those who demonstrate competency in this role go on to hire and train incoming staff, and establish the curriculum standards that guide other campuses. Some advance into lead coaching positions, where the pedagogical judgment behind literacy instruction becomes the primary responsibility.

Your resume alone will not determine the outcome. Prior to an offer, you will record a brief video storytelling for young children, then complete a full day on campus. If your strengths in this work have never translated well to paper, that is intentional.

This is a full-time, on-site position, five days per week, at an Alpha campus. Because we recruit nationally, job boards may list this opportunity in nearby cities where no campus currently exists.

• CA
  - Beverly Hills, La Jolla (San Diego), Malibu, Palo Alto, Piedmont, San Francisco, and Santa Monica
• CT
  - Greenwich
• MA
  - Boston
• NY
  - New York City
• WA
  - Seattle

• Guiding students through app-based core learning: identifying who is stuck, asking the question that moves them forward, maintaining the daily goal.
• Facilitating short structured-literacy sessions with two to four students. Identifying a phonics or decoding gap using running records and fluency probes, delivering a sequence you created, and verifying transfer.
• Conducting morning launch, life-skills workshops, and check-chart activities that keep six-year-olds engaged.
• Motivating students toward their weekly app goals using school currency, leaderboards, and gamification.
• Remaining with your students from lunch through recess and closing, responding to frustration and refusal with an individualized plan for that child.

• Creating nightly lesson plans for an entire class. Your planning is targeted and diagnostic.
• Managing a pull-out caseload from a separate intervention room. Reading groups comprise approximately a tenth of your week and occur within the regular day.
• Implementing a published curriculum or scripted program with strict fidelity to another’s sequence.
• Drafting IEPs, 504 plans, managing testing paperwork, or participating in curriculum committees.
• Taking prep blocks while another staff member supervises your students. You remain with them from launch to closing.

Ensure every K-3 student reaches their daily learning goals, and eliminate the reading gaps that prevent them from achieving those goals independently.

• Willing to work on-site at a campus listed above, with relocation support
• At least 3 years working directly with children ages 4-9: teaching, coaching, tutoring, camps, youth programs, children’s theater, or similar settings where kids showed up because of you
• At least 2 years of that experience teaching reading in grades K-3, within the last 5 years
• Completed structured-literacy training: LETRS, IMSE, Orton‑Gillingham, Wilson Reading System, Fundations, UFLI, CERI, Neuhaus, SIPPS, Really Great Reading, or similar; or a master's in reading or literacy
• Bachelor's degree in any subject. A teaching certificate is not required
• Comfortable spending about 90%…