Job: Teach SATs at Western HS with Yleana’s critical-thinking-focused strategies

The Yleana Leadership Foundation is a nonprofit that works with school districts, schools, and CBOs to decrease the opportunity gap by raising SAT scores.  Getting students in the thick middle of the academic bell curve into better colleges means getting better financial aid (starting life with less debt!) and making higher salaries (double or triple what they would have made at a less selective college!) - ultimately working to steadily erode the racial wealth gap.

What is the job?

• Western HS has asked us to find an SAT teacher to teach our strategies for the first period every day, in-person inside the building (or at least until BCPSS goes to some kind of hybrid/virtual model).

• We know every day can be a lot (commuting, etc!).  WE LIKELY WILL SPLIT THE JOB BETWEEN TWO TEAMS (find details under “There are two positions open”).

How are your SAT methods different from others’?

• We use critical thinking to help students break down the SAT as an instance of a standardized test, focusing on pattern recognition and the way the SAT wants you to start each problem. 

• We use a strengths-based approach - seeing the student through a lens of what she already knows, and building on that foundation: We’re not the Marines - we don’t break students down and build them back up again - mostly because it takes longer that way.  Most of the time, students walking into an SAT class already know most of the material they’ll need to succeed on the SAT.  We just help them figure out which formula solves which problem. 

• We focus on hearing the kernel of truth in a student’s utterance and using the 4 Es - experimentation, experience, and exploration to help students have epiphanies about what they’re learning.  

• We focus on growth vs. fixed mindset, grit/resilience, mindfulness, and do interventions and affirmations to help stop the effects of stereotype threat on the test.

• We use positive behavior modeling and teach through Socratic questioning (similar to a Harkness approach), so that the teacher is asking questions and prompting processes rather than lecturing at the front of the room.  

• It's a heady, exciting thing to teach this way, because you're really teaching the kids to be rock stars, and it honestly just feels amazing to be in that room with all those faces full of agency. :)  Read more about the 14 tenets of our instructional philosophy:bit.ly/Yleana-teaching-tenets

What time and how long?

• 8:15-9:15am daily at Western.  We’d ask you to be there a few minutes early and you likely would be out of the building by 9:30am.

• The opportunity would last all school year.  Western follows the BCPSS school calendar; you would be expected to also follow the BCPSS school calendar and stay with the program until the end of the school year on June 8 (or at the latest, June 15), 2022.

Is there a deadline to sign up? How do I sign up?

• We’re accepting applications on a rolling basis but have a hard final deadline of Sept 15, 2021. FIRST COME FIRST SERVED!

• Sign up here: 

https://forms.gle/9WketsTrMedMR2ha6

• You will need to take an SAT assessment; instructions will be emailed to you after you complete the signup form. Don't worry if you feel you didn't do "your absolute best" when you were taking the SAT in high school; you definitely "got smarter" in college and now taking it feels a lot easier than it did in high school!

There are two positions open:

• Lead teacher: Grad students/folks with significant classroom teaching experience strongly preferred for lead teacher. We can pay folks $43/hr and your university may be willing to offer Prac credit for this (UMBC is a definite yes for Prac 096 credit).

• Assistant teacher: Undergrad juniors/seniors and/or folks without classroom teaching experience.  We can pay folks $27/hr and your university may be willing to offer Prac credit for this (UMBC is a definite yes for Prac 096 credit).

• Nota Bene: We likely will double-staff the position and teachers will trade (one lead/assistant pair teaches M/W/every other F and one lead/assistant pair teaches T/Th/every other F).  This will help us account for teachers who are absent/have emergency situations come up, as well as making travel/transportation easier for students.

Do you provide teaching/training materials?

Yes.  We would ask you to teach our proprietary strategies, and would train you - we’d like to start as soon as possible.  Training is completely virtual and can be flexible according to your needs.

Do your methods work?

Folks may not have heard of Yleana or its results; check out what we've been able to do - 165 point AVERAGE increases with BCPSS kids! These numbers should establish the efficacy of the strategies you'd be teaching:

Call for Papers

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