OVERVIEW
Epic Edventures STEEM Academy is a private online collegiate academy targeting homeschoolers grades 9-14 with an interest in medicine or one STEM professions and entrepreneurship. It is heavily influenced by the Teacher Cooperative School governance model, also known as a Teacher-Powered School. (Hint: a great source of talking points for your interview.)
With is model, a school is run democratically and cooperatively by the teachers who share administration tasks, budgeting, curriculum development and engage in peer review processes. It is essentially the “professional partnership” organizational form–much like those that doctors, attorneys, and architects have created–applied to education.
As one of the founding teachers of our new school, this represents an exciting and lucrative opportunity for the teacherpreneur–with partner/stakeholder potential–who desires autonomy and the ability to make a real impact on education!
Our virtual classrooms are limited to a minimum of 8 students and a maximum of 10 students each. Since our format of teaching is heavily based on gameschooling and role playing using the Classcraft game-based learning platform, students in each classroom will be divided into two teams of 4 or 5 students which are balanced for certain distinct avatar skills and abilities. These teams can be assigned to virtual breakout rooms during collaborative projects.
Each teacher will have a maximum of 8 classes. Each class meets twice a week for 90 minutes for a total of 3 hours per week: either Monday and Wednesday or Tuesday and Thursday. Fridays are reserved for parent-teacher meetings, after school clubs, optional live or virtual field trips, virtual STEEM speakers, and our interdisciplinary Professional Learning Community (PLC).
OUR VIRTUAL WEEKLY PLC
It's important to take a moment to expound on our PLC, since this will be one of the many things about our academy that differentiates us. The purpose of our PLC is to serve as a group of educators who meet weekly, share their expertise, and work collaboratively to improve both our own teaching skills and our students’ academic performance. Of equal importance, our PLC will collaborate on how to best meet the social and emotional needs of students, and how to contribute to creating and maintaining a thriving school culture.
Our PLC will be used to:
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Review data
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Plan collaboratively
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Support colleagues
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Reflect and share teaching practices
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Grow professionally
No one person will do all the work. There will be a responsibility list that shifts each meeting so that we change the lead of the PLC each meeting, thus developing and fostering individual leadership. We will identify the strength(s) of each team member and provide time for each member to build and develop the team in that area.
Research shows that teachers improve their teaching when instructional feedback is provided in ways that prompt thinking instead of triggering emotional responses, and when careful attention is given to follow-up action and support to improve teaching practices (Dylam William, 2014). Therefore, our PLC will implement a peer assistance and review (PAR) system.
Our PLC will clearly define its success by collectively determining benchmarks of growth (i.e. what is 25% of success in comparison to 50% success?) and celebrate growth and success.
AVAILABLE OPPORTUNITIES
We are looking for Instructors/Facilitators/Gamemasters for the following content areas:
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Social Science
DESIRED EXPERIENCE
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3+ years of classroom instruction
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1+ years of virtual or hybrid classroom instruction
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Teaching and enforcing Good Digital Citizenship
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A teacher certificate (traditional or alternative) preferred but not required.
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A bachelor's degree with a major, or the equivalent of a major, in the subject area.
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Master's Degree, PhD or MD in content area preferred but not required.
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Have completed a AP Course Audit in their content area
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Experience with gamification or gameschooling using such platforms as Quizlet Plus, Quizizz, Kahoot, Blooket, Gimkit, EdPuzzle, Pear Deck, and ClassPoint.
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Writing proficiency with experience in blogging, writing articles, and/or vlogging.
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Art, Design and Creative Technologies: experience creating lesson plans that are experiential heavy, i.e simulations, games and activities, using ChatGPT, CK-12 Foundation, Unreal Engine, Unity, Blender, SketchUp, Adobe Creative Cloud, Autodesk Maya, etc
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Astronomy and Space Science: experience creating lesson plans that are experiential heavy, i.e simulations, games and activities, using ChatGPT, CK-12 Foundation, Science Buddies, PBS LearningMedia (interactives), etc
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Business & Entrepreneurship Teachers: experience creating lesson plans that are experiential heavy, i.e simulations, games and activities, using ChatGPT, Marketplace Business Simulations, Knowledge Matters, Startup Wars, LavaMind, Sim Companies, Stukent, MobLab, or Hubro Education, Fortnite Creative: Sustainable Development Goals Lesson Plans (Unreal Engine), etc.
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Computer Science / Computer Science Engineering: experience creating lesson plans that are experiential heavy, i.e simulations, games and activities, using ChatGPT, Code.org and Google Resources (Code with Google, e CS First, Applied CS Skills, Tech Dev Guide, etc.), Brilliant, Tinkercad, CodeAcademy, Pencil Code, Alice, Barobo's RoboBlocky, CodeHS, Replit, etc.
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Engineering Teachers: experience creating lesson plans that are experiential heavy, i.e labs, simulations, games and activities using sources such as ChatGPT, TERC (Technical Education Research Centers), Brilliant, GeoGebra, NASA, OnShape, SimScale, OnScale, LearnChemE, Tinkercad, Autodesk Instructables, TRYEngineering, TeachEngineering, Fortnite Creative: Science, Engineering, and Math Lessons (Unreal Engine), CK-12 Foundation, Science Buddies, etc
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Music and Creative Technologies: experience creating lesson plans that are experiential heavy, i.e labs, simulations, games and activities using sources such as ChatGPT; EarSketch; Fortnite Creative: Making Music in Fortnite Creative (Unreal Engine); Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) like Ableton Live, Pro Tools Basic, and Audacity; JackTrip (real-time online music collab); etc.
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STEM Teachers: experience creating lesson plans that are experiential heavy, i.e labs, simulations, games and activities using sources such as ChatGPT, TERC (Technical Education Research Centers), Brilliant, OER Commons, PhET, LabXchange, Labster, GeoGebra, IXL, NASA, Science Buddies, SciStarter, Zooniverse, iNaturalist, CitizenScience, CK-12 Foundation, PBS LearningMedia (interactives), Concord Consortium STEM Resource Finder, SimScale, OnScale, Ansys, TRYEngineering, and TeachEngineering, Fortnite Creative: Science, Engineering, and Math Lessons (Unreal Engine), etc
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Social Science: experience creating lesson plans that are experiential heavy, i.e labs, simulations, games and activities using sources such as ChatGPT, iCivics, Model Diplomacy Sims (CFR), Model-UN MyDiplomat Sims (UNA/USA), Fortnite Creative: Humanities, Arts, and Design Lessons (Unreal Engine), PBS LearningMedia (interactives), etc.
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Effective classroom management
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Strong interpersonal skills, especially conflict resolution
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Knowledgeable in SEL and PBIS pedagogy
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Knowledge and experience in differentiation, scaffolding, collaborative learning, and peer-to-peer teaching pedagogy
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Flipped Classroom management or hybrid thereof.
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Research and publication(s) in a peer-reviewed journal are preferred, but not required.
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Grant writing experience is preferred, but not required.
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Industry-related experience in medicine, health science, or a STEM field is preferred, but not required.
RESPONSIBILITIES
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Serve as the instructor, facilitator, project and experiential content curator for their subject matter. Note, our classroom experience is heavily hands-on, experiential learning based, extensively using content-related virtual labs, simulations, and games.
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Act as the Classcraft Gamemaster for their classroom, appropriately awarding and managing Experience Points (XPs) and Gold Points, etc. (Earn PD/CEUs while becoming a Classcraft Certified Educator Levels 1 & 2. )
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Contribute at least one blog every month (10 blogs per school year) about topics of interest within their area(s) of specialization (for SEO and social media marketing)
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Serve as content advisor and editor of their students' STEM related blogs (each student must write one per quarter during the semester)
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Contribute to our quarterly school newsletter
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Act as sponsor and advisor of at least one STEM club and oversee student-driven projects to ensure that at least 2 projects are long-term (quarter or semester long) and at least 4 are short-term. The goal is entry in a local, state, regional or national competition.
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Incorporate and reinforce good Digital Citizenship into their classrooms. (These can be incorporated into Classcraft "Quest".)
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Incorporate and reinforce the scientific method and critical thinking throughout their experiential content and activities.
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Incorporate and reinforce throughout their content the ethical principles in science and research: honesty, objectivity, integrity, carefulness, openness, transparency, accountability, intellectual property, responsible publication, responsible mentoring, respect for colleagues, social responsibility, non-discrimination, competence, legality, animal care, human subjects protection and informed consent.
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Attend weekly PLC meetings, actively contributing to ways to enhance and enrich cross-curriculum activities and projects.
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Continuing professional education (CPE) in teaching pedagogy (at least 30 hours per year)
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Continued peer networking in content area in ways that will benefit and enrich themselves and their students and help differentiate and distinguish our academy.
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Maintain at least one active membership on a state or national professional organization related to their content area and attend at least one annual conference for both PD and networking purposes.
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Act as a leader or chaperon on field trips, AND during a mandatory summer educational STEM tour paycation (through EF tours or a competitor).
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Participate in at least two annual fundraising activity--one club related and the other either scholarship or summer educational STEM tour related.