Exalt Hiring for Education Advocate at New York, NY Full Time

Title: Education Advocate

Reports to: TBD

Summary:
exalt elevates expectations of personal success for youth ages 15-19 who’ve been involved in the criminal justice system. We inspire youth at a critical crossroads to believe in their worth, from the first steps in contemplation through the journey to create lasting behavioral change. Our powerful combination of structured classes for tangible skill development, individualized support to navigate the education and justice systems, placement in paid internships and an alumni network of resources equips youth with the tools and experience to avoid further criminal justice system involvement. At exalt, we empower youth to see a future filled with hope – and we provide the road map to get there.

The Education Advocate is an analytical thinker and proactive change agent, who has demonstrated success throughout their career in advancing under-resourced students through challenging and complex systems. This individual is primarily tasked with ensuring that all of exalt’s young people continue to make strides in terms of their educational progression and employability, while also working at a systemic level to alleviate barriers to access and ensure tangible gains for court-involved students. The court-involved students served by exalt face a myriad of personal and structural challenges with the potential to hinder their educational progress. Many of these challenges derive from their status as justice-involved teens. Over the years, exalt has developed a comprehensive and compelling model that has been proven to ensure court-involved students make educational and vocational improvements, to get their court cases closed and vacated and assist them to attain high school, college and vocational diplomas as well as internship and job opportunities at some of NYC’s elite institutions. The individual in this role will work collaboratively with exalt staff as well internal and external stakeholders to build upon and expand on our past successes and positively impact the youth justice sector to saturate key tenets of our educational approach.

The individual in this role will also work to collect and log comprehensive educational data, build out and expand our new tutoring services component as well as cultivate deeper connections with school partners. One of their primary objectives will be to develop a plan for providing technical support to teachers/schools around engagement with court-involved youth. In addition to tutoring support, this role will assist students with crafting and following their IPP’s (Individualized Progress Plans) over the summer and support school enrollments and transfers for youth that request or need them based on our assessments. Finally they will host regular academic classes to focus on ensuring academic gains for our students in the subject areas of Math and Literacy.

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Responsibilities

Strategically Analyze and Assess court-involved students exalt serves and propose solutions for helping them to continue to advance in the worlds of education and work.

Research reveals, school failure and unemployment are linked to criminal justice involvement; 67% of prison inmates nationwide are high school dropouts.

In addition to needing to develop a range of essential “soft-skills”, exalt’s youth need to develop the motivation and momentum to re-engage in their education.

The majority of exalt’s students are overaged and undercredited and not on track to graduate from HS by age 20 unless they receive the kind of transformative intervention offered by our program.

exalt students are all assessed for reading ability and on average tend to read between a 4th and 6th grade reading level.

Build out and expand new tutoring services component:
Utilize Freirian-inspired model to engage youth typically resistant to educational settings.

Gauge and Assess individual student learning styles, challenges and strengths and tailor instruction to maximize student engagement and comprehension.

Meet weekly with students who request support with Math and ELA tutoring o Collaborate with partners at Petey Greene Program to recruit students for tutoring as well as to prep for weekly sessions.

Collaborate with Program Coordinators, teachers, and other exalt staff as needed to assess students progress in the area of educational progression for their IPPs (individual progress plans) and ensure students continue to meet and exceed educational goals o Devise strategies to address the diverse needs of students at high risk not meeting their educational progression goals;

Link individual meetings as well as group instruction to exalt’s long term goals for students: increased investment and persistence in school, employability, and sustained avoidance of further justice system involvement.

Devise systems and strategies to ensure that all pre and post assessments occur on schedule.

As needed, assist with pre and post assessments that gauge students educational progress and enter all information into salesforce database

Collect and Log Comprehensive Educational Data

Develop a comprehensive 360 degree view of NYC’s educational and vocational landscapes o Understand the unique organizational perspective and role of exalt to intervene in the lives of our court-involved students and help them to make transformative changes

Cultivate and sustain partnerships with key stakeholders in the New York City

Department of Education, the Department of Youth and Community Development, Administration for Children’s Services as well as various companies and institutions that can assist our young people with employability.

Assists other program team staff to manage organizational culture on a day-to-day basis. This includes setting and maintaining tone for student behavior in the office space, greeting and directing external constituents appropriately; notifying staff of inaccurate or inappropriate office procedures; updating staff on new office policies/procedures.

Competencies

Demonstrated strategic thinking ability and advanced knowledge of systems and networks that pertain to high school age youth typically marginalized or failed by traditional educational settings. Be able to independently analyze and assess systems and tap into networks to leverage key stakeholders to help advance educational and vocational goals.

Adaptability: Able to adapt quickly to new information and unexpected obstacles, and approach change positively. Can adapt exalt’s curriculum to the specific needs, learning styles and personalities of each cohort of students.

Applied learning: Able to learn and apply new position-related information quickly i.e. all exalt youth interface with the juvenile or criminal (adult) justice systems.

Cultural competence: has strong familiarity with and understanding of exalt students’ histories, cultures and the socio-economic and political factors which have shaped those, and can use culturally relevant and contextualized lessons and teaching methods in class. Classes are typically comprised of 80% Black American and Caribbean youth and 20% Latino youth.

Communication: Clearly and effectively conveys and receives information and ideas to/from students and colleagues through a variety of media. Demonstrates strong written, oral and listening skills.

Planning and Organizing: Organizes work, sets priorities, determines resources requirements and seeks input and support from supervisors/colleagues; determines necessary sequence of activities needed to achieve goals.

Stress tolerance: exalt students face a plethora of obstacles in their lives and often have pending court requirements that put their freedom in jeopardy. Staff must be able to manage making challenging decisions (e.g. potentially releasing a student from the program who cannot meet standards despite program flexibility), and balance the emotional aspects of working with young people facing severe challenges.

Key Performance Indicators

School Transfers/Enrollment: 95% or greater school enrollment or transfer for exalt students who that lag behind on educational progress.

Employability: 95% or greater advancement to additional part-time, full-time, seasonal and additional intern and work opportunities for exalt graduates that are eligible.

Technical Assistance for Schools: Develop a pilot technical assistance initiative to train school staff and leaders in exalt’s unique methodology and approach.

Tutoring: Improved educational outcomes in Math and ELA through successful tutoring support for all exalt students that request/require assistance.

Literacy: Progression from 4th to 6th to 8th grade or higher reading level by post program completion.

Criminal Justice Avoidance: 80% or more of eligible youth receive sentence reductions and 92% or more are not reconvicted of a crime up to 2 years out from completion of exalt.

Compensation

Salary Range is approximately $65,000 to $75,000 per year, commensurate with experience.

exalt offers competitive benefits to all full time employees that include but are not limited to:

medical, monthly metrocard provision, vision, life insurance and 401k.

Qualifications

Bachelors Degree required.

Minimum of 3 years teaching experience in high school or an alternative educational program.

Bilingual, Spanish-speaking a plus.