TECHNOLOGY, INNOVATION, DESIGN, AND ENGINEERING LEAD / COACH / The Nueva School / hillsborough, CA
The Nueva School/hillsborough, CA (Bay Area)Tinkerer, Builder, Designer, Engineer
Do you love to tinker and build? Does the latest issue of Make Magazine send you to your workbench? The internationally-known Nueva School is looking for you! Our kids love to invent and create. We're looking for someone with a similar mindset (and a lot more years of training) to help assist and guide them. Working in our 3,500 square foot state-of-the-art Innovation Lab, designed by Stanford's d.school, you will have the opportunity to foster our students' curiosity, design skills, and ability to create working solutions for real world problems.
About The Nueva School:
Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, The Nueva School is a nationally and internationally recognized independent school serving gifted students, preK-8. Nueva offers a constructivist program, project-based learning, and specialists in design thinking, reading, math, science, visual and performing arts, music, physical education, computer, and social-emotional learning.
Nueva was founded with the unique mission of serving the special needs of high-ability children and of disseminating research to the greater community on best educational practices. Now in its 43rd year, Nueva has flourished under these guiding principles to become one of the leading, if not the leading, preK-8th grade independent school specializing in education for gifted and talented children in the country.
About the Innovation Lab:
Opened in 2007, Nueva's Innovation Lab or I-Lab is a place where we are pioneering the teaching of Design Thinking to K-8 students. Design Thinking is a non-linear process that provides mindsets and techniques to help solve non-algorithmic problems, i.e. those problems that are more open-ended. Using a constructivist approach with ethnographic methods, students brainstorm and prototype solutions to problems they have identified. The I-Lab is home to a complete woodshop and a LaserCamm for students to use in their prototyping.
Job Description:
• Full-time
• Develop and teach engineering classes in a variety of grades, particularly 4th-8th, and in Academies (electives)
• Work with students on individual or small group projects, including 2nd-8th graders
• Assist students, particularly with the manufacturing of their prototypes
• Offer experienced support to students as they learn through taking apart donated items
• Provide expertise to non-engineering teachers about projects they would like to offer, and co-teach as needed
• Help develop engineering scope and sequence
• Manage and develop robotics programs
• Work to keep I-Lab organized and well-stocked
• Assist in communicating to the larger Nueva community about the work going on in the I-Lab through website development, photography, videography, and text.
• Collaborate effectively with the I-Lab Director
Requirements:
• Passion for working with kids and teaching
• Ability to relate to children of high potential
• Teaching and education experience a plus, but not necessary
• Enthusiasm and skill at helping children build their engineering skills over time
• Ability to help guide students from their initial ideas to completion, while leaving locus of control in the students' hands
• Technological savvy
• Resourceful
• Experience and confidence with woodworking machinery and hand tools
• Familiarity and excitement about CAD software, Lasercamms, and 3-D printers
• Interest in keeping abreast of new technologies as they emerge, promoting them at Nueva, training faculty, and making recommendations for new purchases to keep the I-Lab on the cutting edge
• Expertise with LEGO Mindstorms is a plus, but not necessary
• Familiarity with Design Thinking is a plus, but not necessary
• Hardworking, organized, and reliable, with a focus on safety
• Excitement about co-creating the best Design/Engineering program possible for our students
• Willingness to share our program with the larger world through conferences, papers, fairs, etc.
• BS or comparable degree, and/or experience in physics, engineering.
