I remember teachers from throughout my childhood.  They were all mentors in their own ways and they all had some impact on my life.

What a gift – to be in a profession where you can have an impact on so many lives, and where so many of your students will remember you forever.

That’s why so many young people, sometime in their childhoods, utter the declaration: “When I grow up, I want to be a teacher.” 

Too many great teachers feel frustrated in their jobs today.  They went into the profession with a vision of their future and, unfortunately, the reality doesn’t always live up to it. 

I want to offer those great teachers an alternative.  Long ago, you decided what you wanted to do when you grew up.  Now, many of you are asking: “What can I do to impact children’s lives in the way I’d envisioned?  How can I put my education, skill, experience and passion to use in an environment that truly makes that possible?”

“What can I do to grow?”

Matchbook Learning offers such an environment and provides an opportunity for you to view your life’s work through a different lens.  What if your portfolio of skills and experiences could become a platform?  What if that platform could impact not just the students in front of you, but potentially hundreds or even thousands of children?  What if this platform is not just something you bring to us, but one we help you develop, expand and grow with new skills, competencies and habits? 

High performing organizations in other fields - professional sports teams, Broadway theater houses and City Orchestras, for example – recruit talent from wherever they can find it.  They view their talent as their most important asset and they support its growth over time.

What if we viewed the teaching profession like that?  What if you viewed it like that?

Here’s the opportunity Matchbook Learning presents.  We are expanding our charter middle and high school in downtown Newark, NJ - Merit Prep.  We need teachers who want to be part of exciting change at that school as we build our new platform – a teaching and learning process that goes well beyond the traditional tasks of standardized test score maximization.  Our “platform,” or stage of excellence, is our technology enabled, student-centered classroom of joy, passion and mastery-based learning. 

If you are a teacher seeking or even dreaming how you might scale your influence and truly grow as a professional, consider applying to Merit Prep and we’ll offer you an incredibly competitive salary and benefits package - at the doorsteps of New York City and with three additional benefits that are rarely found in the teaching profession and yet fairly common in high performance organizations:

1. A personalized career pathway that allows you to learn new skills and competencies and earn marketable credentials in skills that influence the classroom, but that also can be applied to other ventures, such as design thinking, strategic planning, content creation, coaching and mentoring, master teaching and technology design to name a few.  Merit Prep will participate in Matchbook Learning’s Accelerator, a unique annual yearlong fellowship experience being designed to share our methodology with other interested schools around the country seeking to transform themselves via our model and methodology.
    
2. A personalized development plan to accelerate your progress down that personalized career pathway.  This would include over 100+ meaningful touch points or feedback sessions per year (40+ observations, 20+ coaching sessions, weekly customized professional development, intensive boot camp before the launch of school, etc.).
    
3. A technology platform we call “Spark” that can scale your growing creativity and prowess in teaching and learning to a growing audience of students and teachers beyond the immediate walls of school within which you serve. 

Isn’t this “Why You Grew Up?”  Join our team.  You can apply now for one of our openings in Newark for Fall 2016.  It doesn’t matter where you currently live in the country.  If you’re willing to move to the Newark/NYC/PA region for a full-time teaching position at Merit Prep, we’ll offer an attractive relocation package.