Wheeling Country Day School is a student-centered, active, engaging environment. Preschool - 8th-grade children are encouraged to take risks and develop confidence and pride in their ability to think, create and communicate.
With an opening in our middle school, Wheeling Country Day School is seeking an experienced co-teacher for the 2021-2022 school year to join our collaborative and innovative faculty. The right candidates will complement the strengths of WCDS and add their expertise and passion to enrich our excellent educational program and our vibrant professional learning community.
Founded in 1929 as a secondary school (8th and 9th grades) concentrating on preparation for high school studies, WCDS was different in that it focused on thorough and personal instruction. Soon adding grades in the more formative years of a child’s life, WCDS became known for its elementary education in the last two decades. Recent years found us dismayed by statistics showing that student engagement plummets to 40% during middle school with a simultaneous 90% loss in their creative capacity, so we re-opened our middle school doors to interdisciplinary deep learning in August 2019.
In that inaugural year, we housed a single class of 16 sixth-grade students in an open-ended, state-of-the-art learning space equipped with adaptive resources and furniture based on Universal Design For Learning (UDL) principles. In this classroom, we ‘Teach to the Edges’, an initiative by WCDS to reach all students by focusing on needs rather than pinpoint an average learner, who in reality does not exist in any classroom. In 2020 we added 13 new sixth grade students for a total of 29 middle school students. Rather than build, we secured space at a municipal park for our middle school classrooms to create physical distancing during the pandemic and access to a world of outdoor activities. We will open the eighth grade in 2021 to complete our new division.
a flexible, creative, and enthusiastic approach to learning and collaborating
experienced passion for teaching children
excellent written and verbal communication skills
commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion work
facility with technology
enthusiasm about our school’s mission and philosophy
a bachelor’s degree in elementary or middle education, or content-specific major (masters preferred)
About Wheeling Country Day School
Wheeling Country Day School is the only independent elementary and middle school in the state of West Virginia. We have intentionally designed a culture to multiply innovation. We support teachers to create innovative programs that engage students in topics that matter and impact their lives beyond classroom walls. Students develop the intrinsic motivation to value learning and honor their passions more than grades.
Such a purposeful school culture allows students and teachers to experiment and explore in an effort to fail forward, where mistakes and missteps are inevitable but reflection and upcycling of an idea is expected. A teacher evolves into a mentor, facilitator and fellow learner with the autonomy to create engaging and resonant learning experiences.
Where our success has completely changed the game, is the work we are doing with struggling learners. In our culture of possibility, we refused to see learners as lazy or blanket them with a message to "try harder." We opened the Center for Multisensory Learning within our school to better understand and nurture the potential within those students who learn differently. Employing Orton-Gillingham and multi-sensory me...thodologies, we met students where they were and abandoned one-size-fits-all learning in favor of differentiation. Still, a diagnosis of autism or dyslexia makes the total school experience a frightening and confusing place with social and emotional landmines that are difficult to navigate and tolerate. As we know to do, we changed the environment. Learning does not happen in a vacuum, absent of the relationships a child has at school or the beliefs that a child holds about him or herself, so the total environment needs to be modified - the people, the materials, the physical surroundings, and the expectations.
From the school's leader to the youngest child each person pushes out of a comfort zone where one must humble oneself to truly learn. That's the lightning in a bottle - every individual as a learner, as a risk taker with a mission to leave something better than we found it and with the scaffolding to support possibility for all kinds of minds. We are doing this in a safe city of 26,000 people with the demographics being such that a progressive independent school should not exist. We are in a state that ranks 47th in education in some polls, yet it is possible here because of our culture.
