Full-time, Hybrid (New York metropolitan area) including weekly school site visits across New York State and remote team work.

Start Date: July 15, 2025

Key Skills: Coaching, Professional Learning & Curriculum Design, Reading and Literacy or Bilingual Special Ed Background 

About Us: Bridges to Academic Success, a project of the Graduate Center, CUNY, provides educational services and advocates for newcomer multilingual students who enter U.S. schools with limited academic skills, including low levels of literacy and numeracy in their home languages, through school programming, curricula, and professional development for educators. We train teachers and administrators to support Students with Interrupted and Inconsistent Formal Education (SIFE) and Newcomer multilingual learners with implementation of our curricular materials and resources.  Bridges is grant-funded by the New York State Education Department (NYSED).

General Job Description: We are looking for a full-time Bilingual Instructional Specialist, Coach and Instructional Designer to join our team of coaches, professional learning developers, curriculum developers and researchers. 

The ideal candidate will have a language, literacy and bilingual Spanish background and have experience teaching English learners, particularly newcomers. The candidate will have some experience coaching teachers and/or leading and designing professional learning.

Under the general supervision of an RF (Research Foundation) Project Director/RF Principal Investigator (RFPI), the Instructional Coach must exercise substantial judgment and responsibility in leading the content area of Spanish Home Language Arts in alignment with the extensive systems required to develop and implement multiple Bridges projects across New York State. 

The Instructional Coach will be responsible for the consistency of Spanish Home Language Arts, coaching, and professional learning with the overall project goals and deadlines of the larger Bridges program.  To accomplish this, the Instructional Coach will maintain rigorous standards of project design and time management, meet regularly with team members to review projects, evaluate progress, set standards, and establish intermediate goals. They will be responsible for communicating efficiently about deadlines and content with all stakeholders about deliverables. 

Specific Job Responsibilities: The Instructional Coach will lead a year-long, online professional learning course and hybrid coaching series, including synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities across a variety of programs including Spanish Home Language Arts, English Language Arts and ENL. This includes developing all professional learning materials and building a professional learning community among NY State Spanish Home Language Arts teachers. 

In addition, he/she/they will develop and facilitate professional learning and coaching more broadly for secondary content-area teachers, including an emphasis on language development and scaffolds required to meet the needs of all newcomer ELLs. This will require both individual and collaborative work, on-site and remotely with teachers, and in professional development workshops, with the goal of supporting teachers to accelerate the learning of SIFE and newcomers in language and literacy. 

The coach will be responsible for designing and creating content as well as short videos to support teacher professional learning. All coaches and professional developers are expected to keep logs of their work and debrief on a weekly or biweekly basis with their direct supervisor, who will also offer training and support.  Other tasks will be discussed and designed as needed. 

Required Qualifications

• Bilingual Spanish Speaker, preferably with native proficiency
• 5+ years experience teaching literacy at the K-12 level, with at least some experience at the K-8 level.
• Experience with Science of Reading for MLLs;
• 3+ years experience working with and teaching English Language Learners and preferably SIFE and newcomers; 
• Experience coaching and/or mentoring teachers;
• Experience designing and facilitating professional learning sessions for teachers;
• Experience with designing curriculum or instructional materials;
• Strong track record of managing deliverables for external stakeholders;
• Interest in learning Bridges instructional methods, coaching model and design of professional development sessions;
• Knowledge and experience with curriculum development and design, including backwards design and the integration of content and language objectives, as well state standards;
• Willingness to give and receive feedback on work and to revise in response to feedback;
• Ability to develop and adhere to project management timelines and independently manage time effectively; 
• Ability to adapt to different school contexts; for example, different upper elementary and secondary grade levels, regional differences, school size, and population of SIFE and newcomers; 
• Facility with online platforms or technology including Google Suite; MSOffice; Adobe Acrobat; familiarity and interest in learning additional technology applications as needed; 
• Ability to fulfill a hybrid position, i.e., remote work plus school visits required in schools across Long Island, New York City, Hudson Valley, and occasionally areas of upstate and the West NY region.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with teacher teams.