Job Description
An AI system can teach a six-year-old how to read. It cannot make her want to. That difference is where you come in.
At Alpha, students in grades K–2 complete their academic learning through AI-driven applications in two hours each day. No traditional lessons. No printed assignments. For half your day, you facilitate one-hour workshops focused on life skills: public speaking, sustained attention, and giving and receiving feedback. A structured playbook is provided, but the most effective guides tailor it to their group and create new exercises when gaps appear. The remaining half of your day is spent with students individually or in small clusters, analyzing Coachbot data, and coaching each child toward 100% completion of their weekly app targets. Building trust earns you permission to set high expectations. Setting high expectations demonstrates your belief in their capability.
A successful quarter means every student completes their weekly app goals, passes the Test2Pass for every life-skills workshop, and 90%+ report that they love you. Fall short on any one of these three metrics and you have not fulfilled the role. In your first year, you internalize the playbook; once you demonstrate the ability to maintain the standard, the opportunity opens to advance to Lead Guide, where you mentor newer team members while continuing to run your own cohort.
If you are drawn to traditional classroom teaching, prefer a fixed curriculum, or see warmth and rigor as opposing forces, this role is not the right fit. If you have been an early-elementary teacher who excelled during circle time, a camp counselor for young children, a youth sports coach, or a children's theater performer, the final stage before an offer is a shadow day coaching actual Alpha students. Apply today.
What You Will Be Doing
• Facilitating one-hour life-skills workshops for K-2 cohorts on public speaking, sustained attention, feedback, and other enduring skills, customizing the playbook to fit your group rather than delivering it verbatim.
• Conducting daily individual and small-group motivation sessions that ensure every student stays on track for weekly app goals, leveraging Coachbot analytics, Alpha's incentive structures (school currency, leaderboards), and the rapport you have established with each child.
• Delivering the Test2Pass, Alpha's mastery-based evaluation, for each life skill, and supporting students who do not achieve mastery until they do.
• Meeting kindergarteners at their developmental level with songs, narratives, physical activity, and playfulness while simultaneously holding first and second graders to concrete, quantifiable standards.
• Serving as the warm adult children are excited to see at drop-off AND the adult who will not allow them to settle for less than their best.
What You Won’t Be Doing
• Delivering instruction from the front of the room. Academic teaching happens through the apps, not through you.
• Creating curriculum materials from the ground up. Alpha supplies the playbook and you animate it.
• Passively watching kids work on computers. Motivation in this role is active, individualized, and persistent.
• Reducing a weekly target so a child can meet it. When a student falls behind, the solution is coaching the student, not adjusting the goal.
• Correcting homework, preparing students for standardized tests, or handling parent outreach. Campus Leads manage parent-facing responsibilities, and the other tasks do not exist here.
Kindergarten Teacher Key Responsibilities
Ensure every student in your K-2 cohort achieves their weekly learning goals, masters each life skill, and finishes the year reporting that they loved you.
Basic Requirements
• Willing 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, Miami Beach, or Palm Beach Gardens, FL; Chicago, IL; or Boston, MA (relocation support provided).
• Bachelor's degree in any subject.
• At least 3 years working directly with children ages 4 to 7 (early-elementary teaching, coaching, tutoring, camp counseling, or youth program leadership).
• A specific example you can describe of motivating a young child to a hard goal: the goal, what you did, and the outcome.
• Willingness to let AI handle the instructional content while you focus on motivation and life-skills coaching.
• Willingness to hold high standards with students even when they push back.
• Legally authorized to work in the US without visa sponsorship.
Nice-to-have Requirements
• Experience in youth athletics coaching, children's theater, camp leadership, Montessori/progressive early education, or after-school programs where you were directly responsible for motivating young kids toward specific goals.
• Personal history of high achievement (academic, athletic, or professional), such that holding others to a hard bar is a pattern, not a posture.
• Natural performer's presence with little kids: the ability to hold a room of kindergarteners through voice, silliness, and movement.
• Track record of turning shy or resistant little kids into confident, active participants.
About Alpha
Want to join a learning rebellion that’s transforming the traditional classroom?
Alpha School is on a mission to reshape education with a bold approach that harnesses AI to accelerate learning and unleash student potential.
They don’t play by the old rules.
Alpha is creating a new paradigm where students master core academics in just two hours a day, freeing up time for hands-on, passion-driven learning that truly prepares them for the real world.
Alpha School is rewriting the rules of education.
Sounds too good to be true? It’s not.
There is so much to cover for this exciting role, and space here is limited. Hit the Apply button if you found this interesting and want to learn more. We look forward to meeting you!
Working with us
This is a full-time (40 hours per week), long-term position. The position is immediately available and requires entering into an independent contractor agreement with Crossover as a Contractor of Record. The compensation level for this role is $60 USD/hour, which equates to $120,000 USD/year assuming 40 hours per week and 50 weeks per year. The payment period is weekly. Consult www.crossover.com/help-and-faqs for more details on this topic.
Crossover Job Code: LJ-5634-US-SantaMon-KindergartenTe.011