Special Education Teacher '24-25

Special Education Teacher Job Description

SY 2024-2025

The Vision of Southwest Baltimore Charter School (SBCS) is to produce thinkers ready to navigate our world.

The Mission of SBCS is to create extraordinary learning experiences that inspire the thoughtful, courageous, compassionate citizen in every child.

We are in search of dynamic and motivated MSDE-certified and SPED-certified teachers for the 2024-2025 school year. SBCS is an EL Education (EL) school (http://www.eleducation.org) where classrooms should be alive with discovery, inquiry, critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration. Teachers talk less, and students talk and think more.  Lessons have explicit purpose, guided by learning targets for which students take ownership and responsibility.  In all subject areas, teachers differentiate instruction and maintain high expectations in order to bring out the best in all students and cultivate a culture of high achievement.

 JOB RESPONSIBILITIES

Planning Effective Lessons

• Backmap 14 week-long, standards-based Learning Expeditions. 
• Plan and create high quality products with students to be shared at bi-annual 

         Celebration of Learning.

• Attend to “flow” by carefully crafting a beginning, middle, and end of lesson.
• Name clear learning targets.
• Scaffold instruction.
• Embed differentiation strategies within lessons.
• Continually strive to master multiple EL lesson formats, including Workshop   

          Model, Discovery-Based Lessons, Protocol-Based Lessons.

• Utilize other lesson formats as appropriate, including lecture, video, work 

          sessions, labs and games.

• Make decisions about which practices to use during lessons based on close 

         knowledge of individual students.

• Employ strategies to ignite student curiosity and track student understanding.
• Maximize opportunities for student voice, critical thinking and leadership.

Delivering Effective Lessons

• Engage students in productive work throughout the class time.
• Create purpose and build curiosity for students.
• Create a climate that makes classroom management smooth.
• Promote critical thinking by asking students to make connection, perceive 

patterns and relationships, understand diverse perspectives, supply evidence for 

inferences and conclusions, and generalize to the big ideas.

• Use protocols, models, and structures that promote equity and high expectations, 

        such as assessments for and of learning.

Differentiating Instruction

• Examine data regularly to determine what students need.
• Proactively plan to meet students’ varied needs based upon ongoing 

assessment.

• Utilize flexible groups of students and design respectful tasks that allow for 

different approaches to the same goals.

• Build a culture that honor diverse needs and holds all students accountable to 

the same long-term learning targets.

• Collaborate with special educator.
• Write IEP Progress Reports and attend IEP meetings.

Instructional Integration and Expansion

• Use all available opportunities to integrate all content areas into instruction, 

including reading, writing, math, the arts, and fitness/wellness.

• Utilize fieldwork experiences and different venues (e.g. the outdoor world) to 

inspire and engage all learners.

• Invite experts to collaborate on Expedition products and learning.

EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION DESIRED

• Special Education certification.
• Experience with EL Education.
• Two or more years teaching experience.
• Bachelor’s Degree required.

OTHER INFORMATION

• Position is a 10 month position.
• Salary as negotiated by BCPSS.

APPLICATION

Please send the following materials to Principal Nina Johnson at njohnson04@bcps.k12.md.us.

• A letter of introduction that provides an overview of who you are as an educator.
• Your resume.  
• Current contact information for three references.

PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF SBCS

Southwest Baltimore Charter School (SBCS) is a thriving EL Education School (http://www.eleducation.org) in the heart of Baltimore City. Open for 18 years, SBCS sits on Carroll Park and serves a diverse group of 425 students in Pre-K - 8. 

SBCS provides an engaging arts-infused curriculum with an emphasis on developing student thinking, creativity, and leadership. SBCS focuses on the whole child, recognizing the importance of character education.  We strive to meet the social-emotional needs of children while helping them achieve academic excellence. 

SBCS is a teacher-led school where staff committees and a school leadership structure foster the development and implementation of many decisions throughout the school. Collaboration, consensus decision-making and dialogue are essential practices in our school.  We seek employees who can thrive in a collective leadership environment.  All staff members are part of a community of learners.  We work together on behalf of students to improve the school’s program, share expertise, build knowledge in our disciplines and model collaborative learning.  Staff culture is characterized by trust and respectful collegiality.  Teachers focus on solutions free of judgment, blame, and defensiveness and support each other in improving their practice.  School leaders, teachers and students join together to maintain a school culture characterized by self –discipline, compassion, collaboration, and joy in learning.

All applicants for all positions must understand and embrace SBCS’s approach to learning and leading, which is rooted in the tenets of EL Education. 

• We champion a positive student culture school-wide by devoting time and attention to developing and maintaining traditions, systems, and structures necessary to support school culture.
• We celebrate and define the values of EL through our daily words and actions, displays and materials related to the school vision, through community meetings, and through public events.
• We model and promote EL traditions such as opening readings, team-building activities, and staff and student recognition for achievement and acts of character to build and sustain both staff culture and whole-school culture.
• We take responsibility for all students, and act proactively to ensure that the school’s code of character is demonstrated in hallways and common spaces, and during school-sponsored events on and off school grounds.
• We model our Habits of Scholarship in word and action.

• We frame and address issues related to student discipline constructively, in line with the EL commitment to fostering a strong school culture and individual student character. School discipline is framed in terms of self-discipline and become a self-directed learner.
• Student misbehavior is treated as a learning opportunity for both students and teachers.  Teachers probe for causes of misbehavior or conflict, and consequences are logical, consistent, and clearly communicated.
• Classroom norms reinforce the Habits of Scholarship and establish classroom cultures focused on responsibility for learning, compassionate behavior, and positive student leadership.
• Kindness is essential in all of our work and relationships.
• We expect students and staff to learn in and through the arts.
• We value outdoor experiences for staff and students, and implement a fitness and adventure program that is based on the tenets of Outward Bound.
• Our students are bound for their “best fit” high schools and post secondary college or training.
• We want our students to reach their highest potential as they strive for a healthy, happy life beyond school.