Overview
Early Childhood Educator, Alpha – $120,000/year USD Jobs in Chicago, IL at Crossover
Title: Early Childhood Educator, Alpha – $120,000/year USD
Company: Crossover
Location: Chicago, IL
- $120,000 annual W2 salary paid weekly; health, dental, and vision benefits begin day one
- On-site role at an Alpha campus across 13 US locations in CA, CT, FL, IL, and MA (complete list provided below; relocation assistance available)
An AI can teach a six-year-old to read. It cannot make her want to. Closing that gap is what you do.
At Alpha, K-2 students complete academics through AI-powered applications in two hours daily. No lectures. No worksheets. Half your day is spent facilitating one-hour life-skills workshops—public speaking, focus, giving and receiving feedback. A playbook exists, but top performers adapt it to their cohort and create new activities when needed. The other half, you meet with students individually or in small groups, analyze Coachbot data, and coach each child toward 100% of their weekly app targets. Warmth buys you permission to demand more. Demanding more signals you believe they can succeed.
A successful quarter means every student reaches their weekly app targets, passes the Test2Pass for every life-skills workshop, and 90%+ report they love you. Fall short on any one of those three and the role wasn't executed. In year one you internalize the playbook; once you demonstrate you can maintain the standard, the pathway to Lead Guide opens, where you mentor new hires while continuing to lead your own cohort.
If you prefer traditional teaching, want curriculum delivered to you unchanged, or see warmth and rigor as opposing forces, this role is not for you. If you have been an early-elementary teacher who excelled at circle time, a camp counselor for young children, a youth sports coach, or a children's theater performer, the final step before an offer is a shadow day coaching actual Alpha students. Apply today.
What You Will Be Doing
- Facilitating one-hour life-skills workshops for K-2 cohorts covering public speaking, focus, feedback, and other enduring skills, tailoring the playbook to your group rather than following it verbatim.
- Conducting daily individual and small-group coaching sessions that maintain every student's progress toward weekly app targets, leveraging Coachbot analytics, Alpha's incentive structures (school currency, leaderboards), and the trust you've established with each child.
- Delivering the Test2Pass, Alpha's mastery-based assessment, for each life skill, and continuing to coach students who do not pass until mastery is achieved.
- Meeting kindergarteners at their developmental level with songs, stories, movement, and play while maintaining real, measurable expectations for first and second graders.
- Serving as the warm adult children are excited to see at arrival AND the adult who will not accept less than their best effort.
What You Won’t Be Doing
- Delivering whiteboard lectures. Academic content is housed in the applications, not delivered by you.
- Building curriculum from the ground up. Alpha supplies the playbook and you execute it with skill.
- Passively monitoring children on computers. Motivation here is intentional, individualized, and sustained.
- Reducing a weekly target so a child can meet it. If a student falls behind, the intervention focuses on the student, not the goal.
- Grading homework, conducting standardized test preparation, or handling parent outreach. Campus Leads manage parent-facing responsibilities, and the rest does not exist in this model.
Early Childhood Educator Key Responsibilities
Ensure every student in your K-2 cohort achieves their weekly learning targets, demonstrates mastery of each life skill, and finishes the year reporting they loved you.
Basic Requirements
- Willing to work on-site at an Alpha campus in La Jolla (San Diego), Lake Forest (Orange County), Palo Alto, Piedmont, San Francisco, Santa Monica, or South Bay (LA), CA; Greenwich, CT; Boca Raton, Miami, or Miami Beach, FL; Chicago, IL; or Boston, MA (relocation assistance provided).
- Bachelor's degree in any field.
- At least 3 years of direct experience working with children ages 4 to 7 (early-elementary teaching, coaching, tutoring, camp counseling, or youth program leadership).
- A concrete example you can articulate of motivating a young child toward a challenging goal: the goal itself, your actions, and the result.
- Willingness to allow AI to deliver instructional content while you concentrate on motivation and life-skills coaching.
- Willingness to maintain high expectations with students even when met with resistance.
- Legally authorized to work in the US without requiring visa sponsorship.
Nice-to-have Requirements
- Background in youth sports coaching, children's theater, camp leadership, Montessori/progressive early education, or after-school programs where you held direct accountability for motivating young children toward defined goals.
- Personal track record of high achievement (academic, athletic, or professional), reflecting a consistent pattern of holding others to demanding standards.
- Natural performer's energy with young children: the capacity to command a room of kindergarteners through voice, playfulness, and physicality.
- Demonstrated success converting shy or reluctant young children into confident, engaged participants.
About Alpha
Want to join a learning rebellion that’s transforming the traditional classroom?
Alpha School is on a mission to reshape education with a bold approach that harnesses AI to accelerate learning and unleash student potential.
They don’t play by the old rules.
Alpha is creating a new paradigm where students master core academics in just two hours a day, freeing up time for hands-on, passion-driven learning that truly prepares them for the real world.
Alpha School is rewriting the rules of education.
Sounds too good to be true? It’s not.
There is so much to cover for this exciting role, and space here is limited. Hit the Apply button if you found this interesting and want to learn more. We look forward to meeting you!
Working with us
This is a full-time (40 hours per week), long-term position. The position is immediately available and requires entering into an independent contractor agreement with Crossover as a Contractor of Record. The compensation level for this role is $60 USD/hour, which equates to $120,000 USD/year assuming 40 hours per week and 50 weeks per year. The payment period is weekly. Consult www.crossover.com/help-and-faqs for more details on this topic.
Crossover Job Code: LJ-5634-US-Chicago-EarlyChildhood.010
