Middle School Math Teacher
DCP offers a chance to be a part of a committed, passionate professional team that prides itself on its ethic of collegial, collaborative work. Teachers are an integral part of whole-school development and accountability. It takes a particular kind of teacher to succeed in this environment, one who is constantly working to maintain the balance between unwaveringly high expectations and the personal, supportive connection that our students need with their teachers. DCP teachers have the skills and knowledge to reach students far below grade level and do the slow, painstaking work of building their core skills and content knowledge to the point where graduates go off to college confident and prepared to thrive.
DCP Core Pedagogical Beliefs:
- Students drive their learning
- Learning occurs most powerfully when students get what they are ready for
- Students want to learn most when the learning is connected to their lives, identities and cultural backgrounds, personal passions, and the real world
- Learning occurs through social interactions
- Culture is built through curriculum
- The relationship between the teacher and student is the foundation of the learning
If you said “YES!!” when you read our Vision and Core Pedagogical Beliefs, please read on.
Responsibilities of a DCP Teacher Include:
(Note: These responsibilities are for an experienced teacher. If you are entering in or early to the profession, committed to our vision, and interested in building mindsets and practices as an educator, we would look forward to working with you to grow into these responsibilities.)
Planning and Preparation
- Create backwards-mapped yearly, unit, and lesson plans that align with DCP’s Core Pedagogical Beliefs and State Standards (i.e. Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards).
- Develop learning experiences that display extensive knowledge of the important concepts in the discipline and how these relate both to one another and to other disciplines including an understanding of prerequisite relationships among topics and concepts and understands the link to necessary cognitive, emotional, and behavioral structures that ensure student understanding
- Integrate purposefully knowledge from several sources about groups of students’ varied approaches to learning, knowledge and skills, special needs, interests, multiple identities, histories and college-going mindsets
- Craft learning experiences that demonstrate an understanding of the mythologies and pathologies that may marginalize and disenfranchise the communities/families we serve
- Collaborate with teacher colleagues to align course expectations, outcomes, and daily lessons.
The Classroom Environment – Emotional & Behavioral Engagement
- Establish routines and procedures, develop practices, and integrate curricular activities that affirm student identities, values their knowledge and experience, and expresses enthusiasm for working with them.
- Patterns of interaction between teacher and student and teacher responses to behavior reflect a deep commitment to interrupting patterns of historical and social inequity and to a restorative approach to discipline.
- Creates a collaborative classroom culture that is a cognitively busy place, characterized by a shared belief in the importance and joy of learning. Students assume responsibility for high quality by initiating improvements, making revisions, adding detail, and/or assisting peers.
Instruction – Cognitive Engagement
- Forms a classroom where virtually all students are cognitively engaged in challenging content through well-designed learning tasks and activities that require complex thinking and provide appropriate scaffolding to support student independence and challenge to explain their thinking.
- Create assessments that are fully integrated into instruction, through extensive use of formative assessment, to inform instruction, individual and small-group conferences, and support the setting of meaningful learning outcomes and goals
- Seizes on opportunities to enhance learning, building on a spontaneous event or students’ interests, or successfully adjusts and differentiates instruction to address group or individual student misunderstanding.
Professional Responsibilities
- Articulate the impact their own practice and beliefs have on immediate student outcomes and the college completion journey.
- Works tirelessly to build relationships with colleagues that are characterized by mutual support and cooperation towards a shared vision of college success for all students
- Promotes a culture of professional inquiry that inspires continual improvement towards meeting our mission
- Meet with families as requested and/or needed.
- Be prepared and accountable for your role as a Teacher according to the School Site Safety Plan (during drills & actual emergency situations).
- Participate, if applicable, in all activities, meetings, and classes related to California Teacher Induction. Complete any necessary documentation on time and accurately.
Qualifications (Required):
- Unwavering commitment to DCP’s vision
- Minimum of a Bachelor’s Degree
- California or Out-of-State/Country teaching credential
- DOJ Fingerprint Clearance
- TB Clearance