Transitional Kindergarten Teacher, District, Salem Public Schools, Salem, MA [SY 2025-2026]

Transitional Kindergarten Teacher District Salem Public Schools Salem MA SY 2025-2026

About Salem Public Schools where belonging leads to opportunity.

Salem is a small diverse city with a proud maritime and immigrant history. Salem Public Schools is an urban public school district enrolling nearly 4000 students in 11 schools. Our vision is to ensure that all students will be locally engaged globally connected and fully prepared to thrive in a diverse and changing world. We hold dear our core values of belonging equity and opportunity in everything we do. We seek individuals who are passionate about urban education and understand the urgency of improving student achievement for all students regardless of ability economic status gender/gender identity language race/ethnicity sexual orientation or other backgrounds. We invite you to learn more about our strategic plan and core priorities on our website at Description:

Provide a short-term intensive general education bridge for students who are not yet prepared to meet the academic social or emotional demands of a traditional kindergarten.

What Youll Do:

Facilitate a structured program and class environment that promotes developmentally appropriate learning and personal growth. Establish effective rapport with students to motivate them in developing the skills attitudes and knowledge necessary for a strong kindergarten foundation. Build positive relationships with parents staff and sending schools to support each students transition and success.

Role Responsibilities:

Duties of this position include but are not limited to:

Instruction:

• Teach core content aligned with Massachusetts Curriculum Standards.
• Develop hands-on engaging lessons using district curricular resources and adapt materials to meet the needs of diverse learners.
• Provide individualized and small-group instruction tailored to each students learning needs.
• Design academic tasks that provide opportunities for multiple means of expression engagement and representation to meet diverse student needs.
• Utilize instructional strategies such as play inquiry group discussions and student pair-share activities.
  

Student Engagement:

• Explicitly teach reinforce and integrate social emotional learning skills such as self-awareness self-management relationship skills and responsible decision-making skills throughout the school day.
• Actively engage with children to foster a positive and healthy learning environment where students feel safe taking risks building self-esteem and emotional literacy and developing resilience

Classroom Environment:

• Build a positive classroom environment that supports the academic social-emotional and behavioral needs of students.
• Actively model and reinforce expected behaviors integrating teaching and re-teaching opportunities as needed.
• Facilitate developmentally appropriate academic and social activities for Kindergarten students throughout the day.
• Structure transitions between classroom activities ensuring clear expectations for student movement and tasks.
• Establish review and model classroom agreements and rules daily to support a positive classroom environment.
• Implement and consistently apply classroom management strategies ensuring students understand expected responses to behaviors.
• Ability to follow intervention plans

Student Assessment and Progress Monitoring:

• Assess students academic and social-emotional growth using common assessments DESSA screening and anecdotal notes.
• Maintain accurate student records and track progress to ensure readiness for kindergarten.

Communication and Collaboration:

• Communicate regularly with parents through conferences and other means to discuss student progress and provide updates.
• Collaborate with sending schools to ensure a smooth transition back to the students home school and access to any wrap-around services.

Professional Growth:

• Maintain professional competence through ongoing professional development and in-service coaching.

What Youll Bring:
We are looking for candidates who have diverse backgrounds and experiences are inspired by our mission and are highly motivated to change childrens lives through education. Youll be right at home here if you are a reflective practitioner who values collaboration with colleagues and pushes yourself your work and the people around you to the next level. We expect our SPS employees to:

• Hold a deep commitment to students and families and value diversity - The SPS community is vibrant diverse in background ethnicity language and perspective. You embrace and affirm the backgrounds of all members of the SPS community and view our diversity as a powerful resource that supports us each in learning and doing our best work.
• Hold high expectations for yourself students and colleagues You see potential in all especially our SPS students and maintain high expectations for achievement while providing the support necessary to meet that bar. You hold yourself to high expectations modeling SPS values and seeking opportunities to continuously improve.
• Build authentic caring relationships with colleagues students and families You build strong relationships across students families and colleagues that are collaborative in nature and contribute to the individual and collective success of SPS. You partner with families and colleagues to make decisions in the best interest of students and learning.
• Embrace feedback You are a reflective practitioner who learns from mistakes and challenges and uses them as opportunities for professional development. You model persistence and growth mindset and thrive in a culture of feedback.

Job Qualifications - Required:

• Bachelors Degree (Required); Masters Degree (Preferred)
• Required Massachusetts teaching certification/licensure in Moderate Disabilities PreK-2 or PreK-8
• Licensure in either Early Childhood PreK-2 or Elementary 1-6 is also a plus
• Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) Endorsement (Required within 1-year of start date)
• Ability to meet the expectations of the Massachusetts Standards and Indicators of Effective Teaching Practice
• Deep knowledge of the CASEL framework and proven ability to develop social emotional skills with young learners

Job Qualifications - Preferred:

• Experience in urban schools
• Experience working with diverse learners
• Demonstrated experience in Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) strategies strongly preferred
• Bilingual language proficiency (Spanish/English) strongly preferred
• Proficiency with technology (blended learning teacher/family communication Google G-Suite Apps etc.) desirable.
• Current authorization to work in the United States

Work Year: Teachers in Salem Public Schools work a 185 day school year (180 student contact days plus 5 professional development days. Please visit to view the 2024-2025 district and/or school calendar.

Salary: Teacher salaries in the Salem Public Schools are determined by the Salem Teachers Union collective bargaining agreement. Salary information can be found in Appendix A. Use our new Salem Teacher Salary estimator here.

Benefits: The City of Salem offers Group Insurance Commission (GIC) benefits to all full-time employees. Click here for more information about our health benefits.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Salem Public School District is committed to maintaining a work and learning environment free from discrimination on the basis of race color religion national origin pregnancy gender identity sexual orientation marital/civil union status ancestry place of birth age citizenship status veteran status political affiliation genetic information or disability as defined and required by state and federal laws. Additionally we prohibit retaliation against individuals who oppose such discrimination and harassment or who participate in an equal opportunity investigation.