POSITION DESCRIPTION: Founding Teacher
Position: Teacher, Full-Time, Streetlight Schools, Jeppestown
Works with: Melanie Smuts, Founder, CEO & School Leader, Jeppestown
Location: Jeppestown, Johannesburg
BACKGROUND
Streetlight Schools is a low-cost, innovative primary school opening in January 2016. Our unique approach focuses on enquiry, collaboration, exploration, relevance and the use of technology to teach and learn to address the achievement shortfall in primary education in South Africa.
ABOUT OUR 2016 FLAGSHIP SCHOOL
• We are launching our first Streetlight Primary School during the 2016 school year in Jeppestown, Johannesburg.
• We’ll have a team consisting of one School Leader, two qualified teachers and two teaching assistants, and an administrator. The team also includes the CEO who oversees overall growth of the organisation and a Curriculum Designer.
• The school will run 9 hours a day, 5 days a week. We will have complete academic responsibility over the students.
• Students, in addition to instructional classes, will engage in peer-to-peer learning, technology-based learning and project-enabled learning.
WHY STREETLIGHT SCHOOLS?
South Africa remains one of the worst countries in the world to be a child entering school. Only 1 out of 100 Grade 1 students will finish university, with only 20% of the country’s children performing at grade level. Primary school is crucial to later success in life: in some school systems, by age 7, children who score in the top 20% on tests of numeracy and literacy are already twice as likely to complete a university degree as children in the bottom 20%.
Meanwhile, there has never been a more exciting time to re-imagine education— technology can personalise learning cost-effectively and new strategies have emerged that drastically improve the potential for schools, even in underserved communities, to be places of great learning. What if we had a school that could create beautiful and imaginative, high-quality primary schools even in low-income communities?
WE’RE LOOKING FOR TEACHERS WHO:
1. Must have a PGCE or Bachelors in Education qualification preferably in Foundation-phase learning.
2. Understand what great learning looks like and are passionate about innovative education, and want to implement it through their teaching. Teachers with strong core capabilities in foundation-phase learning and a keen talent for early learning and instruction.
3. Have a desire to work in low-income communities in an urbanising environment and must be fluent either in isiZulu, isiSotho or isiXhosa.
4. Love working with children and enjoy thinking about how to engage their learning and development as individuals and strive to be boldly creative, innovative and resourceful in their approach.
5. Are open to feedback and sharing lessons and approaches among the team to achieve better learning collaboratively.
MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES INCLUDE:
• Being responsible for a Grade R or Grade 1 class.
• Maintaining an academic standard that is equivaent to the top-performing quintile of South African schools as well as supporting the evaluation of students’ performance on our non-cognitive metrics, including creativity, conscientiousness, love of learning and wellness.
• Leading, and founding a strong culture that combines love of learning and rigour: where students feel that they are cared for, stay motivated, curious and flourishing.
• Being responsible for behavioural management and parental engagement. Promote and evaluate students’ performance on our non-cognitive metrics, including creativity, conscientiousness, love of learning and wellness.
• Promoting self-driven and mastery-based learning throughout in all lessons. Working with the School Leader and other teachers to found a school culture based on a love of learning and rigour.
COMPENSATION
R18, 000 p/m
INTERESTED? Please send Melanie Smuts your C.V. or LinkedIn profile and a thoughtful introduction that includes how you fit the five areas under who we’re looking for at melanie@streetlightschools.org
Streetlight Schools 