Eagle Rock School Seeks a Full-time Music & Performance Instructional Specialist

If music and theater are your passions and teaching specialties, and you have a deep desire to work with a diverse group of high school students from across the nation who fancy themselves musicians and actors among other things, you or someone you know may be interested in one of our latest job openings — Music & Performance Instructional Specialist.

In addition to leading a schoolwide music and performance program and overseeing our school’s theatrical performances, the winning candidate for this job will put together and deliver a curriculum that is both innovative and creative.

Other requirements for this position include skills in vocal technique and piano, including the ability to play contemporary and popular music; as well as the ability to teach voice, piano, guitar, bass, and drums. A basic understanding of technical theater, lighting design, sound design, set construction, props, and costumes is also a must.

At a minimum, our Music & Performance Instructional Specialist position requires a bachelor or master’s degree (preferred) in music, performance or a related degree. And to be even more specific, below is a short list of the expertise you should already have in your teaching tool kit before arriving for your first day of work:

  • Experience teaching high school music with a wide variety of course designs and program models.
  • Experience in Big Picture, Expeditionary Learning, or similar progressive school models.
  • A commitment to experiential education, project-based learning, and the creative process.
  • Experience working with diverse populations including students from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, LGBTQ students, and students from low-income families.
  • A demonstrated commitment to engage wholeheartedly in our organizational priority of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

In addition to real-world experience, you will need to demonstrate success in Continue reading…

Music & Performance Instructor Sought for Deeply Creative Students

Eagle Rock School & Professional Development Center (PDC) is seeking a music & performance instructional specialist who can help high school students committed to engaging themselves in their own education build confidence and express themselves — sometimes before an audience — through music and performance.

In addition to leading our school’s music program, our next Music & Performance Instructional Specialist will be asked to deliver innovative curriculum and oversee student theatrical performances. Specifically, we’re searching for someone with a number of advanced skills, including vocal technique; piano (the ability to play contemporary and popular music, improvise over chord changes and read written music); music theory and ear training; American contemporary and popular music performance; teach voice, piano, guitar, bass, and drums; as well as direct a theater production team.

Our best candidates for this unique opening will also have a basic understanding of technical theater (lighting design, sound design, set construction, props, and costumes); be able to teach non-Western music (knowledge of Latin music and ability to speak Spanish is a plus); and be able to instruct students on basic digital music and sound recording software.

Specific duties and responsibilities include:

The Role of Power Standards in this Trimester’s Class Offerings

It’s the beginning of our 77th trimester here at Eagle Rock School and Professional Development Center and our students are already well entrenched in furthering their education with meaningful classes — many promoting strong leadership and good citizenry in the world they will soon inherit. A rundown of those classes is offered below, but first, we’d like to give you some insight into how we plan for and assess educational progress here at Eagle Rock School.

(image courtesy of Josán Perales)

At Eagle Rock, we’ve long maintained an “Individual Learning Plan” for our students, as well as “Power Standards” that assess student progress within this plan. All of this is organized around what we call our “5 Expectations,” which include:

  1. Creating Healthy Life Choices
  2. Effective Communication
  3. Leadership for Justice
  4. Engaged Global Citizen
  5. Expanding Knowledge Base

The Individual Learning Plan (ILP for short) is a means of assessing each student’s progress in completing their graduation requirements. The plan is divvied up among three sections, which include: Continue reading…

Our 75th Trimester Begins with A Selection of Unique Classes

Spring break is history, which means our students are back in class for the beginning of the 75th trimester since our doors opened back in the early 1990s.

Delivering on our promise of reengaging students their own education, this new trimester — ER 75 — delivers a selection of unique classroom experiences, each designed to assist every student along his or her personal life journey.

Eagle-Rock-School-Classroom

That doesn’t mean we ignore the basics, such as mathematics, critical thinking, grammar and history. But one of the things that makes Eagle Rock School special is our curriculum that aims to present classes that challenge the mind, appreciate the environment and defend the underserved.

Offerings this trimester range from a study of the inequities of our nation’s prison system to recycling the world’s trash and creating art — in a class that is appropriately called “recreARTe.”

Below is a list of the first five-week class offerings currently underway at Eagle Rock, along with a brief description of what it is our students are undertaking in this new trimester (look for a follow-up post — covering the second set of five-week classes — around the 5th of July):

All Who Dared: Students enrolled in this class are using journalism techniques to uncover and document the history of Eagle Rock as we prepare to celebrate our 25th Anniversary. Through interviews, document examination, and other research methods, the class is collecting and presenting the Continue reading…