POSITION OVERVIEW: Lead Teacher, Grades PK-5 (Full Time) - Reiche Community School, 25-26 SY
Located in the West End, Howard C. Reiche Community School provides a challenging curriculum for its diverse student population, in which over 22 nations are represented and 29 languages are spoken. Reiche is the first teacher-led and teacher-governed school in the state of Maine. Instead of a traditional principal, Lead Teachers, four committees, and a Leadership Team collaborate with parents to ensure our vision and values are reflected in our school community.
The time allocation for this role is split between serving as a Lead Teacher in the building and as a classroom teacher (classroom assignment TBD based on candidate experience and needs in the building). This position also receives a Teacher Leader stipend for extended school-day and work-year responsibilities.
KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES:
+ Vision - Develops, advocates, and enacts a shared mission, vision, and core values of high-quality education that promotes the attainment of our achievement, equity and whole student goals for each student and is grounded in the Reiche teacher led model.
+ Diversity, Equity and Belonging Champion - Demonstrates commitment to the PPS vision of equity by internalizing the district’s Diversity, Equity and Belonging priorities and policies.
- Shows courage in leading for equity of educational opportunity and culturally and linguistically responsive practices.
- Models cultural humility and the ability to recognize, respond to, and redress inequities.
+ Culture and Community Builder - Build and cultivate healthy, positive and respectful relationships across the school community; include families and community members to positively impact school goals
- Models ongoing self-awareness, self-reflection, and a mindset of continuous learning and development.
- Promotes a positive and safe learning environment which embraces mutual respect and empowers all members of the learning community.
+ Distributed Leadership and Collaboration - Builds and distributes leadership across the school community by building a diverse, high performing team, growing teacher leadership and shared ownership over the vision for teaching and learning, and delegating responsibilities effectively in order to prioritize instructional leadership.
- Collaborates effectively with other lead teachers as a team.
- Leads with interpersonal and communication skills, social-emotional insight, and understanding of all students’ and staff members’ backgrounds and cultures.
+ Instructional Leader - Develop, articulate, communicate, and employ a shared vision of instructional excellence (based on PPS’ instructional vision) to guide and define decisions and strategic planning.
- Ensure that curriculum, instruction, and assessments are aligned to outcomes that produce high quality grade-level learning, interdisciplinary and critical thinking, and social-emotional learning.
- Build school-based instructional leadership teams and implement professional development and leadership coaching to enhance instructional skills and implementation of best practices.
+ Data-Driven and Goal-Based Instructional Strategist - Ensure that academic decision-making and school-wide improvement goals are driven by the analysis of comprehensive, relevant, accurate, and available data.
- Manage with a goals-based approach, setting ambitious and measurable school- and classroom-level goals that will result in meaningful growth for students that can change the trajectory of their lives.
- Create and maintain a school-wide culture of ongoing accountability checks to gauge progress towards data-driven goals.
- Develop disciplined data gathering, monitoring, analysis and reporting routines to ensure the accessibility and timely integration of data into efforts to drive school improvement and student achievement.
- Track academic outcomes by student sub-groups, with a focus on closing opportunity gaps (i.e., academic, school culture and climate).
+ Talent Manager - Cultivate and engage candidates, and serve as an enthusiastic and effective school ambassador to promote school and attract effective and diverse staff.
- Select, hire, and retain high percentages of strong staff and make tough and timely decisions about exiting poor performers; employ a strategy of differentiated retention to prioritize retention of high-performing staff; ensure alignment with district hiring resources, tools, and guidance.
- Serve as a regular presence in classrooms to monitor and improve instructional effectiveness; share actionable, honest, and ongoing feedback with teachers designed to improve their instructional performance, embodying a coaching mindset.
- Accurately evaluate teacher performance against PPS teacher evaluation tool; communicate feedback that yields actionable change in teacher performance; create and monitor the effectiveness of systems for teacher improvement at the school level, ensuring that evaluations systems are instructive as well as evaluative.
+ Operations Expert - Manages school operations and resources to promote each student’s academic success and emotional and physical well-being and safety.
- Facilitates effectively the transitions in leadership and systems to support the teacher led model.
EDUCATION, TRAINING, AND EXPERIENCE:
- Masters degree from an accredited college or university in education or a closely related field preferred.
- Five years of successful experience working with diverse elementary school students required.
- Other combinations of applicable education, training, and experience which provide the knowledge, abilities, and skills necessary to perform effectively in the position may be considered.
CERTIFICATE AND LICENSE REQUIREMENTS:
- [Required] Maine State fingerprint (CHRC) authorization (more info)
- [Required] Maine State teaching certificate with one of the following endorsements (more info):
- 020 General Elementary (K-6)
- 029 General Elementary (PK-3)
- 020 General Elementary (K-8)
- [Preferred] Maine State 045 Assistant Building Administrator certificate (more info)
SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS: Attendance at evening and weekend student activities, Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) meetings or other community events and functions, as required.
EMPLOYMENT DETAILS:
- School-year position
- Full time, 1.0 FTE
- Permanent
- Not eligible for overtime
ABOUT REICHE: Howard C. Reiche Community School, nestled in the urban West End neighborhood of Portland, is ranked the most wonderfully diverse of all elementary schools in Maine, celebrating 16 different home languages and students from 21 different birth countries. Over half our students are multilingual learners, and about a quarter of our students are welcome newcomers, recently arrived in America. Over 83% of our students qualify for free/ reduced lunch and 105 of our students are currently without a fixed residence. We value and nurture our relationships with our amazing, involved families and strive for an inclusive and equitable experience for all. Our dedicated support staff and talented teachers use their impressive skills to provide a quality education for all of our students. Our highly collaborative culture is joyful in the face of our important, challenging work. We have many partners in the West End Arts Community, including the Portland Symphony, Shoestring Theatre, the Portland Museum of Art, and more. We offer Chorus, Band and Strings for older students as well as extra-curricular sports and art classes for all ages. We are sustained by a unique Teacher-Led model that empowers our community of educators with distributed leadership and shared decision making. Every educator is on a committee that makes our school a better place. Get to know us and learn why our motto is: Come Experience the World At Reiche School!
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Portland Public Schools is committed to maintaining a work and learning environment free from discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, pregnancy, gender, sexual orientation, marital/civil union status, ancestry, place of birth, age, citizenship status, veteran status, political affiliation or disability, as defined and required by state and federal laws.
