Career Center

Assistant Collaborator at SF Brightworks

Brightworks is a school that says “Yes.” You want to send a GoPro to the stratosphere in a weather balloon? Let’s do it!  You want to build a sail car and go on a journey down an abandoned railway? Sure thing! You want to create a life sized simulation of a Mars habitat? Alright, let’s figure it out together! We trust that children are instinctual learners, and we value their partnership in their educational path. That is why we call our teachers “Collaborators”. We ask Collaborators to dream big, improvise, and learn alongside students. By taking the best practices from both early childhood education and hands-on, project-based experiential learning, we strive to meet students' needs in a flexible, mixed-age environment that breaks the traditional walls between school and the community outside the classroom. Brightworks is in its eleventh year and currently consists of ~110 students ages 5-18.

We here at Brightworks are looking for an educator (or playworker or youth mentor or plain ol’ rad human being) to join our team as an Assistant Collaborator. This Assistant Collaborator will support a Lead Collaborator and their group of students in building skills and executing on projects.  This Assistant collaborator would also be a part of the team that takes the students off campus for lunch and playtime during mid day.  A weekly schedule would be 9am-4pm Monday-Friday for a total of 35 hours.

COMPENSATION

Compensation and benefits package includes

• Hourly range between $25.39 - $37.30
• Benefits include medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and retirement plan.

WHO ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

We think great staff can come from any pocket of the world. Our staff have skills and interests in a dizzying range of fields from fiber arts to meditation, wine-making, screenwriting, botany, interior design, digital fabrication, installation art, and social justice. While we are excited to get to know you and discover what stokes your passion, we’ll take a particular interest in candidates that demonstrate the following superpowers: 

• Highly Fluent in the Languages of Children. 

You need to be able to nimbly code-switch between talking to a five-year-old about their beloved stuffed bunny rabbit and a twelve-year-old about their favorite YouTuber. Being comfortable with how children naturally are - even when they’re at their loudest, wildest, and silliest - is key to being great at this job.

• Master Multi-tasker.

Sometimes little crises will erupt in Aftercare, like hurt feelings or stubbed toes. You’ll need to drop what you’re doing and tend to them. Sometimes multiple kids will vie for your attention and you’ll need to find a way to gracefully divide your time. 

• Comfortable with Mess. 

Aftercare Collaborators play hard with kids, which means that you might leave work with grass stains on your knees or your fingernails painted purple or your shoes covered in sawdust. Leave your fancy clothes at home.   

• Curious, Creative, Collaborative, and Kind.

All of the characteristics that we want to nurture in children are the same values we look for in the folks we hire: Ask questions. Make things. Work together. Be nice. Never stop learning. 

APPLICATION PROCEDURES

To apply to work at Brightworks, shoot an email to hiring@sfbrightworks.org with the following PDF documents:

• Cover Letter: How did you hear about us? What is your background in education? Why are you excited to work with us? What’s the last project that excited you? 
• Resume: Includes relevant work experience.

Brightworks is an equal-opportunity employer and makes employment decisions based on merit. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex (including gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender, pregnancy, and breastfeeding), sexual orientation (including heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality), national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, marital status, age, medical condition, genetic characteristics or information, military and veteran status, and physical or mental disability, or any other consideration made unlawful by federal, state or local laws.

About Brightworks

Brightworks is a San Francisco independent K-12 school that believes "everything is interesting". We are a learning community that strives to create a meaningful learning experience for students based on depth of inquiry, collaboration through trust and creativity, and development into capable, adaptable citizens of the world. We use real tools, real materials, and real problems to encourage students’ love of learning, curiosity about the world, ability to engage, tenacity to think big, and persistence to do amazing things. The Brightworks mission is to ensure that engagement, constructivist learning is accessible to all children, families and educators. To that end, we tour and provide professional development to hundreds of educators each year both nationally and internationally. www.sfbrightworks.org

Connections working at Brightworks