Paraprofessional

Company Description

Foundation Prep is a literacy-focused elementary school.  With a founding kindergarten and first grade integrated class, we opened in August of 2015.  We are seeking passionate educators for the position of Paraprofessionals for the 2016-17 school year.

Working at Foundation Prep is an ideal position for an educator with passion for the craft of instruction and the desire to collaborate and grow as part of a dynamic team. In addition to summer, weekly, and interim professional development and team planning meetings, paras will receive consistent high-impact coaching and feedback from Foundation Prep's Leadership.  Foundation Prep is committed to recruiting, developing and retaining a team of excellent educators!  

Job Description

• Create a positive, achievement-oriented, and structured learning environment that excites and invests students in learning. We will support you in implementing systems that allow students to achieve both academic and life success.  You, along with every adult in our school, is responsible for the success of each and all of our students, even those not in your homeroom.

• Motivate students to realize high academic achievements. We are a literacy-focused school, dedicating over 200 minutes daily to literacy. For us, literacy is more than just reading and writing, but also listening and speaking. Our Prepsters engage in content through that lens. They learn through experience and talking, listening, writing and reading about the content they are being taught. It will be your responsibility to implement small group interventions in collaboration with lead and co-teachers that challenge Prepsters and allow for many different types of learning.

• Build classroom community by investing Prepsters in academic success and the development of the Foundation Prep FIRST values (Focus, Integrity, Respect, Self-discipline, and Teamwork). You will be asked to help foster a classroom culture of learning that is aligned with the Foundation Prep Way. We are preparing each Prepster, not just for academic, but also life success. Emotional literacy is as important to us as academic literacy. We believe, just as students learn differently, they also react differently to any given situation. We don’t believe that punitive classroom cultures allow students to learn the skills they need to think critically as individuals. We instead believe that we must teach our Prepsters that each action has a consequence, good and bad, and that it is not the mistakes we make that define our character, but how we respond to those mistakes that defines who we are as a person. We are excited to talk with you more about our Restorative Practices and how we teach Prepsters to have high-expectations for themselves and each other, while showing forgiveness.

• Utilize data from daily, weekly, and interim assessments to drive instruction and interventions. All our instruction occurs in small, targeted groups. In order to continue to be able to reach each of our Prepsters at their constantly growing academic levels, data is analyzed and lessons and groups are reconfigure to suit the needs of our students. You will be asked to think critically and thoughtfully about student growth and how to continue to drive for academic excellence.

• Participate enthusiastically in structured and informal learning and development opportunities.  We believe that we are all life-long learners. We will support you with both formal training through professional development and coaching, and informally with the lessons you will learn from your colleagues teaching together in the classroom, as well as working together in team planning and data analysis meetings.

Qualifications

Education

• AA Degree or Bachelor’s Degree, OR at least 48 semester units of college course work from an accredited college/university (must include 9 hours of coursework in Reading/Writing and 6 hours in Math), OR proof of passing score on ParaPro exam.

Certifications

• Must pass criminal background check
• Must complete CPR/First Aide certification and Child Abuse training within 30 days of employment

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Personal Characteristics

• Possession of patience, flexibility and the ability to work well as a collaborative team member.
• Physical ability to bend over, squat, stand and sit for periods of time, and move with some speed.
• Reliable transportation to work.
• Prior experience working with children in an educational or other structured setting.
• Spanish speaking a plus!

Additional Information

At Foundation Preparatory, we place a tremendous value on the importance of exceptional educators. Excellent educators drive student success.  At Foundation Preparatory, we value and place a tremendous amount of emphasis on recruiting excellent people and professionally developing them into exceptional educators!