Lead Teacher

Job Details

• Salary $40,000–$60,000 (USD). Starting salary begins at $40,000; the top of the range is reserved for candidates bringing PA teaching certification, Floortime/DIR training, or several years of comparable experience.
• Team Faculty
• Reports to & Collaborates closely with Founder & Executive Director
• Start date August 2026
• Employment Type Full time
• Location On site
  · Bryn Mawr, PA (Philadelphia area)

Closing:
This role has no specific closing date. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.

Fáilte (fall-cha) is the Gaelic word for welcome and joy, and that's our promise. Fáilte Academy is a small nonprofit microschool in Bryn Mawr serving up to ten neurodivergent, twice-exceptional, and creative children in grades 1–6, many of whom haven't belonged in other schools or have experienced school trauma. Our work is grounded in Dr. Stanley Greenspan's Floortime model and blends Waldorf‑inspired philosophy with modern, evidence‑based literacy instruction.

We don't use grades, tests, or forced participation. Children are invited to learn and they do. Fáilte is recognized by the Vela Education Fund and featured in Main Line Parent.

We want you to know exactly what this job is before you apply, not after.

Many of our students carry real trauma from earlier school experiences, and many have a PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance / Persistent Drive for Autonomy) profile, where ordinary requests can trigger a fight, flight, or shutdown response. On a given day, that might look like a child removing their clothes because their body is overwhelmed, a child throwing something across the room because a demand felt like too much, or a child working hard to disrupt the whole group because they didn't get what they wanted.

There are days when the lesson plan doesn't happen at all, because staying calm and present while a child cannot is the most important work we do.

And then there are the other days: a child who hasn't trusted an adult in years choosing to sit next to you, a reader who couldn't sit still in September writing a full page by spring, a room full of kids working quietly on something they chose for themselves. Both kinds of days are real, and neither cancels the other out.

You don't do this alone. We are a tight‑knit, three‑adult team, and we co‑regulate and problem‑solve together, the same way we ask our students to. If the hard days sound like more than you want to take on, this isn't the right role, and that's a completely fine answer. If they sound like the work you got into this field to do, keep reading.

Fáilte Academy seeks a full‑time Lead Teacher to join a three‑adult teaching team— the founder, you, and an experienced assistant teacher— sharing a single mixed‑age classroom of up to ten students in grades 1–6. Our teaching team co‑plans and co‑teaches across literacy, math, history, science, handwork, art, music, movement, and outdoor time, with each teacher leading small‑group instruction at each child's pace.

The Lead Teacher builds authentic relationships with every student, partners closely with families, and reports directly to the founder. This is alternative education built around what is actually best for children, not what a system expects them to be.

• Special needs experience. You have meaningful, hands‑on experience with children with special needs—typically several years— in a classroom, clinical, therapeutic, camp, home, or similar setting, not just a brief or entry‑level introduction to it.
• Alternative education experience or mindset. You're genuinely comfortable with unconventional education— no grades, no tests, no forced participation— either because you've worked in a setting like this before, or because you've thought hard about why traditional schooling doesn't work for the kids you care about.
• Regulation ability. You know your own nervous system well enough to stay calm and grounded when a child cannot. You can be the steady adult in a moment that's escalating, without escalating yourself.
• You see a struggling child where others see a defiant one — you understand…