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High School Science Teacher

Employer
Downtown College Prep
Location
San Jose, CA, United States
Salary
Competitive

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Job Category
Teaching, Science Teacher
Grade Level
High School

Job Details

About the Organization:

The first charter high school in Silicon Valley, Downtown College Prep was founded in San Jose in 2000 with the belief that all students, regardless of background and prior academic achievement, can and should be prepared for college success. Through our singular commitment to college success, we ensure our largely low-income Latino students and families are fully supported in the pursuit of a college degree.

We have graduated more than 900 alumni and currently serve over 1700 students in grades 5-12 on four campuses. In 2015, 2016, and 2017 over 95% of our students matriculated to college and over 70% of our classes from 2011-2014 are persisting in college. We are deeply committed to supporting, measuring and reporting college completion for our graduates, and serving as a replicable national model of college readiness and persistence.

Our Vision:

Ensure that more first-generation students have the vision, confidence, and academic skills to succeed in college and beyond, realizing their fullest potential and harnessing their power to become leaders in their field and community.

Summary:

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.

Physical Demands:
  • The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is continuously required to speak and listen for extended periods. The employee is also required to sit or stand for long periods, and to regularly to walk; use hands or fingers to handle, or feel objects, tools, or controls; reach with hands and arms; and stoop, kneel, crouch or crawl. The employee must regularly lift and move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required for this job include close vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and the ability to adjust focus. The employee is further required to have the physical, mental, and emotional stamina to fully perform the duties and responsibilities of the position, and the mental acuity to collect, evaluate, and interpret data; to reason; to define problems; to establish facts; to draw valid conclusions; and to make effective judgments and decisions.

Work Environment:

The work environment characteristics are representative of those in a normal office, building, classroom/school setting which one might encounter while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

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

FLSA: Exempt

This position description intends to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this position. It is not intended to include all duties and responsibilities. The order in which duties and responsibilities are listed is not significant. Also, this job description reflects management's assignment of essential functions; and nothing in this herein restricts management's right to assign or reassign duties and responsibilities to this job at any time.

Company

About the Organization

DCP's success with first-generation college students is at the forefront of a national movement for college access and educational equity.

The first charter high school in Silicon Valley, Downtown College Prep (DCP) was founded in San Jose in 2000 with the belief that all students, regardless of background and prior academic achievement, can and should be prepared for college success.

Through our singular commitment to college success, we ensure our largely low-income Latino students and families are fully supported in the pursuit of a college degree.

Our vision is to ensure that more first-generation students have the vision, confidence, and academic skills to succeed in college and beyond, realizing their fullest potential and harnessing their power to become leaders in their field and community.

Company info
Website
Telephone
408-271-8120
Location
1400 Parkmoor Ave.
SAN JOSE
CA
95126
US

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