Early Elementary Teacher, Alpha - $100,000/year USD

Crossover; Mesa (AZ); On-site; USD 90,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Health insurance from day one

Dental & Vision coverage from day one

Job summary

Alpha is launching campuses nationwide, and we are seeking on-site guides to deliver targeted literacy interventions for small groups of early elementary students. You will identify decoding gaps, design brief instructional sequences, and monitor progress with daily performance targets.

The role emphasizes hands-on intervention rather than full-class lesson planning, with relocation support and a path toward leadership roles based on performance.

Qualifications

• At least 3 years of direct experience with children ages 4-9 in teaching, coaching, tutoring, camps, youth programs or similar settings.

Responsibilities

• Delivering brief structured-literacy interventions with two to four students — identifying phonics or decoding deficits through running records and fluency assessments, designing targeted instructional sequences, and confirming skill transfer.
• Supporting students through app-based core instruction: identifying when students have stalled, asking questions that facilitate problem-solving, maintaining daily performance expectations.
• Facilitating morning opening routines, life-skills instruction, and progress-tracking activities that sustain engagement for six-year-olds.
• Motivating students toward their weekly application goals using school currency systems, competitive leaderboards, and age-appropriate gamification.
• Remaining with your students throughout lunch, recess, and dismissal, responding to resistance and frustration with individualized strategies designed for each child.

Job description

• $100,000/year salary paid weekly, including health, dental, and vision coverage from day one
• 40-hour work week across five days, on-site at a single Alpha campus, relocation assistance available

• $100,000/year salary paid weekly, including health, dental, and vision coverage from day one
• 40-hour work week across five days, on-site at a single Alpha campus, relocation assistance available

You recognize a miscue the moment you hear it and can pinpoint the underlying gap: the vowel pattern she never mastered, the consonant blend he consistently guesses at. You will apply that skill here daily. What proves more challenging is what comes immediately after. When a six-year-old sits before you, on the edge of tears, the correct response is almost never simply providing the answer.

Alpha operates fundamentally differently from the schools where you received your training. Students complete their full academic core in approximately two hours each morning, progressing independently through AI-adaptive applications — no traditional instruction, no printed curriculum, no unified pacing calendar. The remainder of each day focuses on life-skills instruction. The adults in this environment are designated Guides rather than teachers, and this is not merely terminology: you will not be delivering curriculum. Your role is ensuring your students engage with their work, remain motivated to complete it, and overcome obstacles when the technology cannot support them.

You remain with the same group of students from morning opening through dismissal: core academics, workshops, lunch, recess, progress-tracking sessions. This sustained contact reveals insights no standardized assessment will capture. Within two weeks, you will identify which student is masking reading difficulties – moving through text fluently because she has memorized it from earlier in the week, not because she possesses genuine decoding ability.

Once you identify the deficit, no barriers prevent immediate intervention. No referral process, no committee approval, no waitlist. You gather two to four students and deliver a fifteen-minute targeted workshop addressing that precise error pattern — phoneme-grapheme correspondence, blending practice, decodable passages, whatever the situation demands — verify the skill has transferred, and return them to independent work.

You will not be drafting lesson plans for two dozen students late into the evening. Your preparation is focused and assessment-driven: identifying who requires support tomorrow, and determining what intervention will produce measurable progress. And you maintain the daily target without quietly compromising it, because families receive weekly performance data and will expect you to explain any gaps.

Alpha is launching campuses nationwide, and the constraint is individuals who can execute this model effectively. Those who demonstrate competence participate in hiring and training incoming Guides and develop the frameworks other campuses implement. Some transition into lead positions coaching entire teams, where the diagnostic judgment behind literacy instruction becomes the primary function. That advancement is performance-based, not automatic.

Your resume alone will not determine your fit. If what makes you effective in this work has never translated well to paper, that is precisely the insight we value.

We recruit from all regions, so job platforms may list this position in neighboring cities without current campuses. Active openings:

• AZ - Phoenix
• OK - Oklahoma City and Tulsa
• TX - Dallas, Fort Worth (Keller), Plano, and The Woodlands
• UT - Park City (Salt Lake City)

What You Will Be Doing

• Delivering brief structured-literacy interventions with two to four students — identifying phonics or decoding deficits through running records and fluency assessments, designing targeted instructional sequences, and confirming skill transfer
• Supporting students through app-based core instruction: identifying when students have stalled, asking questions that facilitate problem-solving, maintaining daily performance expectations
• Facilitating morning opening routines, life-skills instruction, and progress-tracking activities that sustain engagement for six-year-olds
• Motivating students toward their weekly application goals using school currency systems, competitive leaderboards, and age-appropriate gamification
• Remaining with your students throughout lunch, recess, and dismissal, responding to resistance and frustration with individualized strategies designed for each child

What You Won’t Be Doing

• Developing full-class lesson plans each evening. Your preparation is targeted and diagnostic in nature
• Managing a pull-out intervention caseload from a separate space. Reading groups represent approximately ten percent of your week and occur within the regular schedule, not parallel to it
• Implementing a commercial program with strict adherence to an external scope and sequence
• Drafting IEPs and 504 plans, managing assessment documentation, or participating in curriculum committees
• Transferring your students to other staff during planning periods. You remain with them from opening to dismissal

Early Elementary Teacher Key Responsibilities

Ensure every K-3 student reaches their daily learning targets, and eliminate the reading deficits that prevent them from progressing independently.

Basic Requirements

• Willing to work on-site at one of the campuses listed above, with relocation support
• At least 3 years of direct experience with children ages 4-9: teaching, coaching, tutoring, camps, youth programs, children's theater, or similar settings where kids showed up because of you
• At least 2 years of that experience teaching reading in grades K-3, within the last 5 years
• Completed structured-literacy training: LETRS, IMSE, Orton-Gillingham, Wilson Reading System, Fundations, UFLI, CERI, Neuhaus, SIPPS, Really Great Reading, or similar; or a master's in reading or literacy
• Bachelor's degree in any subject. A teaching certificate is not required
• Comfortable spending about 90% of your day guiding students through app-based learning, workshops, and campus routines, and 10% on reading sessions
• Willing to work with all K-3 students, not only struggling readers
• Legally authorized to work in the US without visa sponsorship

Nice-to-have Requirements

• You can maintain engagement with a room of six-year-olds using only your presence and a well-designed activity
• Exhausted children consistently returned to your after-school or summer program
• Experience with reading platforms (Amira, Lexia, i-Ready) or diagnostic assessments (DRA, DIBELS, AIMSweb)
• You can describe a specific child whose decoding skills you repaired, and explain your methodology
• You have worked in a non-traditional school model: charter, micro-school, Montessori, or hybrid

About Alpha

Join the team building school around student growth

Alpha reimagines the school day around faster learning, stronger mentorship, and more time for students to build real-world skills.

Roles with real student impact:

Alpha hires teachers (guides), operators, admissions experts, school & curriculum leaders, and remote team members.

Education work that pays like it matters:

Alpha offers six-figure roles for people ready to help build a radically better school experience.

A culture built for builders:

Alpha is fast-moving, ambitious, and student focused. It’s for people who want to improve the system, not maintain it.

Alpha is where you can do the most meaningful work of your career.

There is so much to cover for this exciting role, and space here is limited.

Working with us

This is a full-time, W2 employee position with immediate access to benefits (https://support.crossover.com/article/7581-w2-benefits-u-s-paychex-paid-only). All roles are year-long positions. The compensation level for this role is $100,000 USD/year. The payment period is weekly. Consult www.crossover.com/help-and-faqs for more details on this topic.