Position: Senior Director of Educator Content Development
 

Reports To: Executive Program Director, Content Strategy

Status: Full time, exempt

Location: Brookline, MA or remote

Start date: Immediate

Who You Are

You are an exceptional leader, writer, and editor with 10+ years of experience developing curriculum for middle/high school Social Studies and ELA courses. You are a scholar and learner at heart, who is passionate about our mission and excited to work with the wide range of issues, histories, and current events that comprise our editorial portfolio. You are excited to leverage Facing History’s unique pedagogy and use our student-centered approach to help adolescents practice ethical reflection and become civically engaged. 

You are a creative, strategic thinker and thought partner who can motivate and provide leadership to an experienced team of writers as they work to bring Facing History’s editorial vision to life. Your knowledge of and curiosity about current events, the educational landscape (particularly SEL, equity, and civics) and the on-the-ground needs of educators and students, will allow you to develop and oversee a multi-year, digital-first product roadmap that supports our growth in the Social Studies and ELA markets.  

What You Will Do

You will provide intellectual leadership for and supervise a team of highly skilled and experienced editorial directors, writers, and production staff. You will strengthen our vision and plan for an exciting suite of supplemental curricula for middle and high school humanities courses. In partnership with the writing team, and as part of a cross-functional team developing our whole school model, you will map and align content across grade bands that will enable schools to offer Facing History to every student in grades 7-12.

In addition to strategic work, you will spend most of your time providing hands-on editorial direction and support to our content development team, and will review and sign-off on all educator content. You will also oversee our current events portfolio, which provides “just-in-time” content in response to mission-critical issues. Through regular content audits and market analysis reviews, you will also develop and oversee an editorial schedule to adapt Facing History’s existing educational resources to reflect current scholarship and new internal style guidelines.   

You will be a key member of the senior Program team and responsible for co-creating products with our Online Learning and Program Staff Development teams, that align our curricula with professional learning. You will coordinate vision, budget, planning, and management across functional areas to ensure content development is aligned across the Program, Marketing, and Technology departments. 

You will cultivate a culture of innovation and experimentation while ensuring that the real-world needs of educators and students are incorporated into product development cycles. You will be called upon by Facing History and Ourselves’ executive leadership to present or write sections for presentations, grants, and reports that explain our work and its place in the field.

Who We Are
Facing History and Ourselves plays a critical role internationally in advancing civic engagement and promoting ethical decision-making by developing resources for middle and high school educators, while supporting their growth through online and face-to-face professional development and coaching. The Educator Content Development team is a small but mighty staff with a large reach. Innovative and entrepreneurial, we constantly look for better ways to serve our teachers, our schools, and their students. We work closely with Program Associates in our regional offices and partner with teachers from across our network to develop materials for the classroom that inspire students to make essential connections between the choices people and governments made in history or literature and the choices we face today.

Essential Skills/Qualities

• Excellent writer and editor with specific experience researching and writing for social studies or US history courses or supplements

• 10+ years of experience developing digital educational products from ideation to publication

• Experience supervising and leading cross-departmental teams and enjoys working in a highly collaborative, cross-functional setting, with the ability to manage input from a variety of stakeholders and sources.

• Keen interest in ed tech trends and commitment to continuous learning and improvement

• Excellent interpersonal skills that allow you to learn from and leverage the experiences of your colleagues and the educators we aim to serve

• Strong ability to effectively communicate decisions and issues to senior managers, staff, and cross-functional teams

• Flexible problem solver who can work on long-term projects and also respond to unanticipated opportunities

• Creative, dynamic, and inquisitive person who is invested in Facing History’s mission and commitment to intellectual rigor

• Knowledge of U.S. educational landscape is a must; Teaching experience preferred, especially providing social studies instruction at middle school and/or high school level in the U.S. public school system