2nd Grade Class Teacher Position for 2023-2024

The Siskiyou School is looking for a 2nd Grade Class Teacher for the 2023-2024 School Year.

Overview of our School

Now in its 17th year, the Siskiyou School is a vibrant 1st through 8th grade Waldorf school with a staff of 25 full and part-time teachers. We are on a beautiful, well-developed two-acre campus in a residential neighborhood just a ten-minute bike ride from downtown Ashland. Classes range in size from 18-26. About eight home-based Waldorf pre-schools and kindergartens feed into the school and help constitute our first grade class every year.

Thanks to our board’s consistently sound management, we are in a good place financially – even after these two difficult COVID-affected years. In keeping with our founders’ intent to make our school affordable for as many as possible, our school’s tuition remains on the low end, even though we offer a full program and support a full staff. Additionally, we maintain a robust tuition assistance/remission program that allows thirty percent of our students to attend.

Each year the faculty, in conjunction with the board and administration, sets new goals for the school. Four years ago, for example, our focus was on building our last full-sized classroom; that was achieved in the summer of 2019. Most recently, we have been investing in trainings for the staff and board around diversity, equity, and inclusion and taking steps to ensure that DEI values are reflected in all areas of our school. As a school community we have always been good at finding ways to grow and move forward together to serve the children at the center of our work.

A last hallmark of the school worth noting is the level of support we have put in place to ensure the range of students in each class are best met and to make the job of class teachers sustainable. Class teachers in 1st-3rd have assistants for main lesson and for their language arts and math classes. Class teachers in 5th-8th are supported by a dedicated middle school language arts/literature teacher and two middle school math teachers. Children in grades 1-4 needing extra help with reading and writing attend daily Ohana Program classes. Children needing one-on-one instruction have tutoring available on campus during the school day with qualified tutors.

Large classes are split in two for core skills work to ensure all students get the attention they need for math and language arts skills. Lastly, all specialty classes—music, handwork, games, woodworking, gardening, lower grades science (ACORN Program), Mandarin, Spanish and drama—are taught by very experienced specialty teachers. Supporting our teachers effectively is the best way we know to do well by our students.

This fall we will add our new Kindergarten program to our school; it will run Monday through Friday for children ages five and six years old.

Our Campus

Since we bought the 631 Clay Street property in 2006, our campus has grown from housing just the original old church building to including eight new, spacious and beautiful classrooms, a performance and assembly space which hosts our theater program, and breakout rooms for track and specialty classes. Additionally, in the last six years, we have been able to expand our original campus footprint considerably, acquiring an adjacent house as well as an adjacent lot, on two different sides of our central quad. We use the house mainly for our special education classes, and the new lot is allowing us to develop our busy gardening program—and house one of our newly erected outdoor tent classrooms! Last but not least, a vast and gorgeous city park adjoins our school, and this bonus serves the school wonderfully through the year. We use the park for festivals as well as for games classes and recesses. We use it for morning walks with classes and as a place for the younger children to run and play on big play structures. The park is also the site of our end of year field day, and occasionally, of our Olympiad or Medieval Games. Over the years, all these different aspects and improvements have turned our campus into a haven for the children; they are truly so happy to be together here.

For a fuller description of our school, please check out our website at www.siskiyouschool.org.

If interested, please send a resume, autobiographical sketch and letter of interest to our Administrator, Aurilia McNamara at aurilia.mcnamara@siskiyouschool.org. Thank you!