2nd Grade Teacher, Alpha - $120,000/year USD

AI can teach a six-year-old to decode letters and words. It cannot make her want to. Closing that gap is your role.

At Alpha, students in grades K–3 complete academic instruction through AI-driven applications in two hours each day. As a Guide, you lead one cohort band—either K-1 (Kindergarten and 1st grade) or 2-3 (2nd and 3rd grade)—and adjust your approach, tempo, and activities to fit that group. You will not lecture. You will not distribute worksheets. Half your time is spent facilitating one-hour life-skills workshops focused on public speaking, focus, and feedback. A structured playbook is provided, but effective Guides customize it for their students and design new content when needed. The remaining half, you meet with students individually or in small groups, analyze Coachbot data, and coach every child toward completing 100% of their weekly app targets. Warmth creates trust; trust earns you permission to demand more. Demanding more demonstrates your belief in their ability.

A successful quarter means every student completes their weekly app targets, passes the Test2Pass for each life-skills workshop, and at least 90% report that they love you. Fall short on any one metric and the quarter is incomplete. In your first year, you will master the playbook; once you demonstrate the ability to maintain standards, you become eligible for Lead Guide, where you mentor new hires while continuing to run your own cohort.

If you prefer traditional teaching, expect a fully scripted curriculum, or view warmth and rigor as incompatible, this role is not a fit. If you have thrived as an early-elementary teacher who loved circle time, a camp counselor for young children, a youth sports coach, or a performer in children's theater, the final step before an offer is a shadow day coaching live Alpha students. Apply today.

What You Will Be Doing

• Facilitating one-hour life-skills workshops for K-3 cohorts on topics including public speaking, focus, and feedback, customizing the playbook to meet your cohort's needs rather than delivering it verbatim.
• Conducting daily individual and small-group coaching sessions that ensure every student stays on track to meet weekly app targets, leveraging Coachbot data, Alpha's incentive structures (school currency, leaderboards), and the personal rapport you establish with each child.
• Delivering the Test2Pass, Alpha's mastery-based evaluation, for each life skill, and providing additional coaching to students until they achieve mastery.
• Engaging kindergarteners with songs, storytelling, physical activity, and playfulness while maintaining measurable expectations for second and third graders.
• Serving as the warm presence children are excited to see each morning AND the consistent adult who will not allow them to settle for less than their potential.

What You Won’t Be Doing

• Teaching academic content at the whiteboard. Academic instruction is delivered through the apps, not by you.
• Developing curriculum independently. Alpha supplies the playbook; you animate it.
• Passively monitoring students on devices. Motivation in this role is intentional, individualized, and continuous.
• Reducing a weekly target to help a child succeed. When a student falls behind, the solution is supporting the student, not adjusting the goal.
• Assessing homework, preparing for standardized tests, or managing parent outreach. Campus Leads handle parent communication, and the other tasks do not exist here.

2nd Grade Teacher Key Responsibilities

Guarantee that every student in your K-3 cohort meets their weekly learning targets, achieves mastery in each life skill, and finishes the year reporting that they loved you.

Basic Requirements

• Available to work on-site at an Alpha campus in La Jolla (San Diego), Lake Forest (Orange County), Palo Alto, Piedmont, San Francisco, Santa Monica, or South Bay (LA), CA; Greenwich, CT; Boca Raton, Miami Beach, or Palm Beach Gardens, FL; Chicago, IL; or Boston, MA (relocation assistance available).
• Bachelor's degree in any discipline.
• Minimum of 3 years of direct work with children ages 4 to 9 (early-elementary teaching, coaching, tutoring, camp counseling, or youth program leadership).
• A concrete example you can share of motivating a young child toward a challenging goal: the goal itself, your actions, and the result.
• Comfortable allowing AI to deliver academic content while you concentrate on motivation and life-skills development.
• Prepared to maintain rigorous standards with students even when met with resistance.
• Authorized to work in the US without requiring visa sponsorship.

Nice-to-have Requirements

• Background in youth sports coaching, children's theater, camp leadership, Montessori or progressive early education, or after-school programs where you held direct accountability for motivating young children toward measurable outcomes.
• History of personal high achievement (academic, athletic, or professional) that makes holding others t…