Job Description
AI can train a six-year-old to read. It cannot make her want to. Filling that gap is your responsibility.
Alpha's K-2 students complete academic learning through AI-powered applications in two hours each day. No traditional lectures. No printed worksheets. Half your time is spent facilitating one-hour life-skills workshops—covering public speaking, focus, and how to give and receive feedback. A structured playbook is provided, but top performers in this role tailor it to their group and create new activities when gaps appear. The remaining half involves sitting with students individually or in small groups, analyzing Coachbot data, and coaching each child toward 100% completion of their weekly app targets. Warmth creates the foundation to challenge them. Challenge demonstrates your belief in their capability.
A successful quarter means every student completes their weekly app targets, passes the Test2Pass for every life-skills workshop, and 90%+ report they love you. Fall short on any of these three and you have not fulfilled the role. Year one is about mastering the playbook; once you demonstrate you can maintain the standard, the progression to Lead Guide opens—where you mentor new hires while continuing to lead your own cohort.
If you prefer conventional teaching, expect a fully scripted curriculum, or view warmth and rigor as opposing forces, this role is not for you. If you have been an early-elementary teacher who excelled at circle time, a camp counselor for young children, a youth sports coach, or a children's theater performer, the final step 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, focus, feedback, and other foundational skills, tailoring the playbook to your group rather than delivering it verbatim.
• Conducting daily 1:1 and small-group coaching sessions that ensure every student stays on track for weekly app targets, leveraging Coachbot analytics, Alpha's incentive structures (school currency, leaderboards), and the individual relationship you've established with each child.
• Delivering the Test2Pass, Alpha's mastery-based assessment, for each life skill, and continuing to coach students who do not pass until mastery is achieved.
• Engaging kindergarteners with songs, stories, movement, and playfulness while maintaining real, measurable expectations for first and second graders.
• 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.
What You Won’t Be Doing
• Delivering lectures at the whiteboard. Academic content is delivered through the apps, not by you.
• Building curriculum from the ground up. Alpha supplies the playbook and you animate it.
• Passively monitoring kids at screens. Motivation in this role is active, individualized, and continuous.
• Adjusting a weekly target downward so a child can reach it. When a student falls behind, the solution is the student, not the goal.
• Marking homework, running test prep for standardized exams, or handling parent communication. Campus Leads manage parent-facing responsibilities, and the rest does not exist here.
Early Childhood Educator Key Responsibilities
Guarantee that every student in your K-2 cohort completes their weekly learning targets, achieves mastery in each life skill, and finishes the year reporting 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 concrete example you can articulate of motivating a young child toward a challenging goal: the goal itself, your actions, and the result.
• Willingness to allow AI to manage the instructional delivery while you concentrate on motivation and life-skills coaching.
• Willingness to maintain high standards with students even when they resist.
• Legally authorized to work in the US without visa sponsorship.
Nice-to-have Requirements
• Background in youth sports coaching, children's theater, camp leadership, Montessori/progressive early education, or after-school programs where you held direct responsibility for motivating young children toward defined goals.
• Personal record of high achievement (academic, athletic, or professional), such that expecting excellence from others is habitual, not performative.
• Performer's instinct with young children: the capacity to command a room of kindergarteners using voice, humor, and physical energy.
• Proven ability to transform shy or reluctant young children into confident, engaged contributors.
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-Dallas-EarlyChildhood.005