Overview
Early Childhood Educator, Alpha – $120,000/year USD Jobs in Dallas, TX at Crossover
Title: Early Childhood Educator, Alpha – $120,000/year USD
Company: Crossover
Location: Dallas, TX
An AI system can teach a child of six to read. It cannot make that child care about reading. Closing that gap is your work.
At Alpha, students in grades K–3 complete academic learning via AI-driven applications over the course of two hours each day. As a Guide, you lead a single cohort band — K-1 (Kindergarten through 1st grade) or 2-3 (2nd through 3rd grade) — and adjust your energy, tempo, and workshop design to match that band. There are no lectures. There are no worksheets. Half of your day is spent facilitating one-hour life-skills workshops focused on public speaking, attention, and the practice of giving and receiving feedback. A playbook is provided, but those who excel in this role adapt it to their cohort and create new activities when gaps appear. The remaining half of your day is spent with students one-on-one or in small groups, analyzing Coachbot data, and coaching each child toward 100% completion of their weekly app targets. Warmth gives you permission to demand more. Demanding more communicates that you believe they are capable.
A quarter is successful when every student completes their weekly app targets, passes the Test2Pass for every life-skills workshop, and 90% or more report that they love you. Fall short on any one of these three and the job has not been done. In your first year, you will master the playbook; once you demonstrate your ability to uphold the standard, the opportunity to advance to Lead Guide opens, where you will mentor newer hires while continuing to run your own cohort.
If you are drawn to conventional teaching, prefer to receive a fully scripted curriculum, or view warmth and high expectations as incompatible, this role is not suited to you. If your background includes early-elementary teaching with a focus on circle time, camp counseling for young children, youth sports coaching, or performing in children's theater, the final stage before an offer is a shadow day coaching live Alpha students. Apply today.
What You Will Be Doing
- Facilitating one-hour life-skills workshops for K-3 cohorts on topics including public speaking, focus, feedback, and other foundational competencies, adapting the playbook to fit your cohort rather than delivering it verbatim.
- Conducting daily one-on-one and small-group motivation sessions to keep every student on track for weekly app completion, leveraging Coachbot analytics, Alpha's incentive structures (school currency, leaderboards), and the individual relationship you have built with each child.
- Administering Alpha's mastery-based assessment, the Test2Pass, for each life skill, and coaching students who do not pass on the first attempt until they achieve mastery.
- Meeting kindergarteners at their developmental level with songs, storytelling, physical activity, and humor while maintaining real, measurable expectations for second and third graders.
- Serving as the warm adult children are excited to see at morning drop-off AND the adult who will not allow them to settle for less than their capability.
What You Won’t Be Doing
- Delivering lessons from the whiteboard. Academic content is delivered through the apps, not through direct instruction from you.
- Creating curriculum materials from the ground up. Alpha supplies the playbook and your role is to bring it to life.
- Passively supervising children as they work on computers. Motivation in this model is active, relational, and sustained.
- Reducing a weekly target so that a child can meet it. When a student falls behind, the solution is to coach the student, not adjust the goal.
- Grading assignments, running test preparation sessions, or managing communication with parents. Campus Leads handle parent-facing responsibilities, and the other tasks do not exist in this model.
Early Childhood Educator Key Responsibilities
Ensure that every student in your K-3 cohort completes their weekly learning targets, achieves mastery of each life skill, and finishes the year reporting that 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, Miami Beach, or Palm Beach Gardens, FL; Chicago, IL; or Boston, MA (relocation support provided).
- Bachelor's degree in any subject.
- At least 3 years working directly with children ages 4 to 9 (early-elementary teaching, coaching, tutoring, camp counseling, or youth program leadership).
- A specific example you can describe of motivating a young child to a hard goal: the goal, what you did, and the outcome.
- Willingness to let AI handle the instructional content while you focus on motivation and life-skills coaching.
- Willingness to hold high standards with students even when they push back.
- Legally authorized to work in the US without visa sponsorship.
Nice-to-have Requirements
- Experience in youth athletics coaching, children's theater, camp leadership, Montessori/progressive early education, or after-school programs where you were directly responsible for motivating young kids toward specific goals.
- Personal history of high achievement (academic, athletic, or professional), such that holding others to a hard bar is a pattern, not a posture.
- Natural performer's presence with little kids: the ability to hold a room of kindergarteners through voice, silliness, and movement.
- Track record of turning shy or resistant little kids into confident, active 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-Dallas-EarlyChildhood.006
