2024-2025 School Year: Middle School ELA Teacher (Grades 5th-8th)

at  Bricolage

Bricolage Academy Middle School is searching for a Middle School English Language Arts Teacher. Bricolage is a New Orleans charter school that started in 2013 with a Kindergarten and grew one year, and one grade, at a time until school year 2021-2022, during which we served Pk-8th grades. We opened our Middle School in the 2018 - 2019 school year when our founding class entered 5th grade.

UNDOING RACISM

We attempt to undo racism by addressing the traditional power structure by creating space for dialogue across traditional lines of division. We offer trainings and workshops that focus on racial reconciliation for teachers, students and families, and employ culturally responsive instructional practices. We are committed to supplementing the dominant narrative approach to History/Social Studies with culturally responsive pedagogy that uses “cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them” (Geneva Gay’s definition of culturally responsive teaching). This work is not ‘nice to have’; it is essential to advance equity.
Bricolage Academy is a school with a big goal: we aim to be the highest performing non-selective school in New Orleans. There are many people who contribute to making Bricolage special - parents, administration, students and community members - but teachers are at the center of it all. Bricolage teachers must demonstrate a deep commitment to our mission of advancing educational equity by creating innovators who change the world. Our teachers embody our organizational values (integrity, empathy and innovation). They are always trying to get better, have a deep love for children and approach everything with a joie de vivre. Our teachers create the kind of classrooms that nobody ever wants to leave - where it’s fun to learn and you can almost see the discovery fireworks bouncing off the walls. We’re looking for others who approach their work like we do – balancing seriousness and diligence with warmth and levity.

Specifically, the Middle School ELA Teacher is responsible for:

• student outcomes. We use multiple measures to assess student learning and preparedness, but it’s on teachers to deliver.
• creating a classroom culture where students:
• share in its ownership
• treat each other with empathy and act with integrity
• learn how to be responsibly autonomous
• delivering engaging, rigorous, and effective English Language Arts instruction that includes:
• using strategies Achieve the Core’s Core Actions and Wit and Wisdom
• explicit writing instruction using strategies from the Writing Revolution and Wit and Wisdom
• Project and experience-based instruction
• actively seeking ways to supplement the dominant narrative approach to literacy with culturally responsive pedagogy
• differentiating instruction to meet the needs of each individual student
• integrating technology, innovation, and design thinking into instruction
• being an active member of the school community including assuming before, during, and after school duty posts, advising/mentoring small groups of students and attending school activities and events
• developing relationships with colleagues, students and their families

Some other things you should know about us:
We’re building a new kind of school that doesn’t have a formula to follow. There is no ‘how-to’ book for our community. We’re making it ourselves. That requires people who can embrace vulnerability, take initiative, learn from mistakes, and be open to giving and receiving feedback.
Bricolage is a diverse community, but we are committed to being an anti-racist one. This means devoting time to understand what racism is, exploring how it manifests, and taking actions to dismantle it. Also, Bricolage’s diversity is not itself an end. Rather, we believe our diversity is a means to amplifying empathy, advancing equity and facilitating creativity and innovation.