Looking for a few great teachers

Update(4/17): The openings in physics and physical science have now all been filled. Feel free to check out my school’s website for the latest information.

Last year, we had an opening in the physics, and I wrote a post here to help advertise the job, and I’m proud to say that I got some great responses from some very promising candidates, giving the normal placement services a run for their money. Although our ultimate hire didn’t come from the quantumprogress job network, I am convinced that in the future, connections through social networks will become essential tools in the recruiting process, so I’m posting a description of the job here in the hopes of proving this assertion right.

My school is looking for a physics teacher for the upcoming school year (2012-13). I teach at a private school in Atlanta, GA, and I thought I might make a pitch here for why you might want to consider joining our team.

• We have a large, diverse department. We’ve got 5 full time physics teachers in the high school. Our backgrounds, experiences and philosophies span a wide spectrum, yet we work well together. We also have one common free period every day to meet as a PLT to discuss ideas about curriculum and pedagogy.
• Our science faculty is over 20 members strong and very diverse, and a few more of them blog. We also have an incredible full-time lab assistant who help you to spend your generous budget for lab equipment and supplies, and help make your labs run like clockwork.
• You’ll have a lot of autonomy. One of the luxuries of teaching in private school, and our school in particular, is that you are given a large amount of control over what and how you teach, yet at the same time, you’ll have a tremendous network of colleagues with with to share ideas and gain feedback.
• You’ll teach 3 classes of 9th grade physics (sections run between 15-20 students). Our classes meet for six 55 minute periods each week. This is an astronomical amount of time for science classes. Having two 2-hour lab periods each week allows you to engage students with open ended labs.
• Our students are great, especially 9th graders. You’ll find them energetic, engaged and highly motivated.
• You’ll have some unique opportunities to collaborate with local universities and network with other Atlanta physics educators. Our teachers were instrumental in helping to restart the Atlanta Metro Physics Association, and we are working on some research collaborations with Georgia Tech to develop some computational modeling add-ons to the physics curriculum that promise to be very exiciting.
• There are tons of resources to support your teaching. Our labs are very well stocked, and you can even make use of the well stocked machine shop (complete with CNC machine and plasma cutter) used by our outstanding FIRST robotics team.
• The school is starting a 1-1 program next year—every student in the high school will be issued a MacBook Air, and you’ll also get your own new laptop over the summer to begin planning how to take advantage of this new opportunity. You’ll have a lot of support from other faculty, technology integration specialists, and the IT department.
• Our school has an excellent Learning for Life vision statement that we are continually striving to achieve, and a new principal who is leading the way.

In addition to this physics position, we also have a few other openings, including a 1 year opening in high school mathematics, A position teaching computer science/director of educational technology, and high school biology/AP environmental science.

If you’re interested in learning more about these positions, feel free to leave me a comment (they’re moderated), and I’ll get back to you directly.