Part Time Saturday Enrichment Instructor (NYC)

About BEAM Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics (BEAM) creates pathways for students from low-income, low-access backgrounds to become scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists. We provide BEAM students the same access to high-quality preparation in STEM as their more affluent peers, and we invest deeply in our students' success, with programming from middle school through college graduation focused on joyous, exciting, and rigorous mathematics, building vibrant communities, and supporting students in key life transitions such as college admissions and financial aid. BEAM has grown from a small summer program serving 17 students in the summer of 2011 to a year-round, national program, serving 450+ students at six summer program sites and 600+ students in year-round programming in New York City and Los Angeles this school year.

In addition, our BEAM National pilot program now reaches around 1000 elementary-aged students in seven different states, working to create a new nationwide pathway modeled on our local work. 3X as likely to declare a STEM major as a matched comparison group.

About The Role

We are looking for passionate educators who excel at creating academic experiences where students are at the center of “doing the learning”—exploring patterns on the board, debating strategies, and justifying their reasoning to peers. Our ideal candidate has a love for understanding the “why” behind BEAM’s enrichment topics (such as mathematics, programming, and data science) and enjoys guiding students through inquiry and productive struggle toward understanding of the subject. What our classrooms look like Our classrooms are student-centered, lively, and discussion-rich.

Students explore patterns, debate conjectures, justify their reasoning, and collaborate on open-ended problems. Teachers guide thinking through purposeful questions, models, and structures that promote productive struggle. Teachers also step in when direct instruction is best called for to move the class forward.

We affirm students’ strengths and identities and help them grow as confident, capable problem solvers. What you will teach at BEAM BEAM’s enrichment classes allow 8th-11th grade BEAM students to dig deeply into a mathematical topic that they won’t see in school (or where they wouldn’t get time to explore at the same level of depth). They are called “Math Enrichment” to emphasize that these classes are not designed to supplement the math classes students are in, but rather to enrich students’ educational experience and to prepare them for STEM college courses and STEM careers.

When applying, instructors are welcome to express interest in one or more of the following roles; exact assignments will be made by BEAM. We hire instructors to teach the following experiences: Middle School (8th) Deepening Problem Solving & Reasoning: This course will help students to explore topics in discrete mathematics (such as number theory, combinatorics, graph theory, and set theory) to guide deeper reasoning. Expanding on students’ prior experience with BEAM, this course teaches problem solving and reasoning, with a focus on the role of proof in mathematical reasoning.

Programming: This computer science course teaches programming in Python, providing computational thinking and programming skills, with a special focus on data processing to support success in future BEAM majors. , programming in the fall to half of our 8th graders and then programming again in the spring to the other half of our students). All instructors who teach one of the 8th-grade courses (2 hours/week) will also teach one of our weekly skill-building workshops (1 hour/week) in addition to their assigned course.