Secondary School Physics / Engineering teacher

Would you like to have the freedom to inspire a community of adolescents aged 12-18 with a love for physics and engineering?

Apply to join our Montessori secondary school - to work within a small team of motivated professionals who serve a community of young people who love to learn.

This school is different - visit www.themontessoriplace.org.uk to see why.

CONTEXT:

Montessori is an approach to education that sees adolescents as capable of far more than usually thought possible, or that the conventional structures of school allow. 

We have found that adolescents are meaning driven: deeply reflective about humanity and their place in it, in a way that standardised test-driven schooling cannot nurture.

We have found that adolescents are purpose driven: with intellectual, creative and entreprenuerial passions that go far beyod the norms and walls of conventional schools.

We have found that adolescents are mature and responsible about things that matter: able to take ownership for themselves, their education and their school community in a way that the control strutures of conventional schooling deny.

And we have found that each young person is unique: advancing in one or more areas of knowledge in ways that industrialised, timetabled, one-size-fits-all curricula cannot cater for.

The YPC is a community of c. 30 adolescents who live, work and study on a 13 acre ancient woodland in East Sussex. In this school without timetables, where learning takes place without testing, and where the only examinations students take before age 18 are their Maths and English GCSEs, the young person's love for a discipline has a chance to blossom. 

In the quiet countryside, away from the bombardment of advertising, these young people manage an ancient woodland under the guidance of an ecologist, renovate buildings under the guidance of a sculptor-carpenter, operate a commercial kitchen under the guidance of a chef, run a vegetable box scheme out of our Soil Association certified-organic Victorian walled garden, keep pigs and bees, study about the sonnet form, put on a performance of Henry IV, learn about benzene rings, factorise quadratic equations, write essays on revolutionary Russia, dissect sheep testicles, and discuss Plato. 

There is something truly wonderful and inspiring about working with young people in this way, being part of a single learning and living community. We get to observe them, get to know them, and have the enormous privilege of being able to help them learn and grow into the person they are meant to be. Their personalities reveal themselves: and the kind of human being we can trust to be stewards of our planet emerges: passionate about the world, committed to knowledge as a human endeavour, deeply respectful of themselves and each other.

If you are passionate about your discipline, and equally passionate about young people, if you want the ceiling to be taken off what can be done with young people within your discipline, come and join us. Teaching is a vocation: and this is an invitation to enter into that vocation, to be part of a project that will move you, and change you deeply, and for all the right reasons.

SUMMARY:

Purpose

To inspire young people aged 12-18 with a love for physics and engineering, and to support students to excel at A-level Physics.

Times

• Between 15 - 45 hours per week, subject to mutual agreement, 40 weeks per year

MAIN AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITY:

Direct work with young people

• Inspire young people to be enthusiastic and passionate about physics and/or engineering.

• Nurture in them the mindset, strategies and practices of a successful physicist/engineer.

• Equip them with the knowledge & skills they need to succeed at A-level Physics.

Observation

• Observe what generates enthusiasm, joy and fulfilment in the young people.

• Observe what obstacles they meet and determine how best to navigate through these.

Environment

• Set up and maintain a rich and diverse environment for studying physics and engineering.

• Set up and maintain systems to monitor progress in learning.

• Work closely with the YPC team to demonstrate collaborative working across disciplines.

• Identify opportunities to bring the study of physics into all apsects of community life.

Other

• Show through your own example what you aspire for in the young people.

• Provide reports on student progress both orally and in writing each week

• Other duties as appropriate to the post or as delegated by your line manager or a Director.