FirstLine Schools: SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHER

Creating and inspiring great, open admissions public schools in New Orleans

About FirstLine Schools

In 1998, FirstLine Schools started the first charter school in New Orleans. FirstLine now operates several (P)K-8th grade

schools. Our mission is to create and inspire great, open admissions public schools in New

Orleans. We do this by:

• Ensuring college and career readiness for all students, as demonstrated by achievement, aspiration, love of
• learning, and confidence
• Providing a rich variety of education experiences to nurture our students’ character, health, and active
• citizenship
• Developing the skillfulness of our team members
• Building a sustainable organization that facilitates our long-term success
• Our faculty is a diverse and talented group dedicated to our students’ success and to their own growth as teachers.
• Our schools are led by leaders who hold themselves accountable for student achievement and teacher development.

FirstLine’s Vision Of Teaching Excellence:

We develop teachers at FirstLine by focusing on excellence in teaching. To do so, we coach teachers and center

professional development on our Vision of Excellence in Teaching rubric. The components include:

• On Task (Maintaining high expectations and maximizing instructional time)
• Essential Content (Planning effectively)
• Cognitive Engagement (Maintaining High Academic Expectations and Building Thinking Skills)
• Demonstration of Learning (Leading Instruction, Checking for Understanding, Responding to Student
• Misunderstanding)
• Community of Learners (Establishing Expectations and Responding to Student Behaviors)

Position Summary:

FirstLine Schools is currently seeking talented, passionate Special Education Teachers. At FirstLine Schools, we know

that it is the effectiveness of our teachers that matters the most when it comes to impacting the success of our

students. To ensure that we are an organization of excellent teachers, we expect our teachers to demonstrate

effectiveness through our Vision of Teaching Excellence. Teachers will be responsible for implementing the teaching

curriculum, ensuring the success of our students, and working with a team of teachers within the school and

network community.

SPED teachers are critical to helping our students who have IEPs meet their learning goals. SPED teachers regularly collaborate with a variety of student support staff members, leaders, and teachers/staff members to make sure that students' needs are being met in and out of the classroom. Our SPED teachers must be certified or working towards certification and work to ensure that our students have the necessary skills to prepare them for life, college, and beyond.

Position Responsibilities:

• Designs lessons that lead to standards mastery and are aligned to grade level expectations/learning connectors for students with disabilities and end-of-year assessments
• Provides feedback to scholars by asking pertinent, scaffolded follow-up questions that affirm correctly understood content, clarify misunderstood content or extend scholars’ thinking
• Establishes effective classroom routines and manages students effectively without disruptions (redirects inappropriate behavior)
• Inspires and invests students in achieving their goals and in believing that goals are achieved through effort and not innate abilities
• Prepares scholars to solve complex problems with no obvious answer
• Seeks out and constructively responds to feedback from and engages in problem-solving with others
• Provides IEP minutes
• Ensures compliant IEP documentation for all students on caseload by facilitating IEP development, FBA/BIPs development and implementation, transition planning, and maintaining other supporting documentation related to service delivery (logs, progress reports, Extended School Year, etc)

• Requirements

  Education & Experience:
  
  
  Desired Qualities & Characteristics:
  
  
  Physical Requirements:
  Must be able to perform all required job functions with reasonable accommodations, if necessary.
  
  
  
  SPED TEACHER reports to: SPED Coordinator
• • 2 or more years of lead teaching (as the teacher of record)
  • Demonstrated success working with students in an urban, open admissions school
  • A BA or BS
  • A strong background in and command of content area
  • Louisiana Teacher Certification (SPED) Completed or in progress (or be eligible to hold for our out-of-state applicants) in the specific disability/grade levels served - FirstLine will cover certification costs if you are not already certified
• • Believe in every student’s ability to achieve in a rigorous college or career prep curriculum
  • Achieve results based on agreed-upon expectations
  • Take personal responsibility
  • Highly detail-oriented
  • Collaborate effectively with a range of stakeholders
  • Share a commitment to creating great schools in New Orleans
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills
  • Model the FirstLine values of Service, Learning, Collaboration and Results