Youth Development Specialist

This is not a teaching position. This is a motivation role.

The greatest support you can offer a student who reached 99% of their target is to insist it is not complete. If that expectation feels harsh, this role is not for you. If it energizes you because maintaining high standards demonstrates your belief in what a student can achieve, read on.

At Alpha, academic learning happens through AI-powered applications. No classroom lectures. No printed textbooks. Approximately 60% of your time is spent facilitating one-hour life-skills workshops covering public speaking, focus, and how to give and receive constructive feedback. Around 30% of your time involves working with students individually or in small groups, analyzing their progress via Coachbot analytics, and driving each one toward their weekly app targets. The remaining 10% is dedicated to data analysis that informs your coaching strategy for the week ahead. You will not be following a rigid script; workshops provide a framework, and top performers in this role customize them and create new content when they identify unmet needs.

A successful semester means at least 90% of your cohort achieves their weekly app targets, demonstrates measurable improvement in life skills on Test2Pass, and rates their experience with you at 4 out of 5 or higher. Falling short on any of these three metrics means the role has not been fulfilled. As you demonstrate your ability to maintain these standards, advancement opportunities open to Lead Guide — where you mentor newer Guides while continuing to manage a cohort — and eventually to Campus Lead, overseeing an entire school and managing parent engagement.

If you are drawn to conventional teaching, prefer ready-made curricula, or view compassion and rigorous expectations as contradictory, this position is not suitable. If your background includes athletic coaching, camp counseling, tutoring where you refused to let a student give up, or performance work that enabled you to command the attention of middle schoolers, the final stage before receiving an offer is a full-day on-campus session coaching actual Alpha students. If that prospect excites you most, submit your application today.

What You Will Be Doing

• Facilitating one-hour life-skills workshops for K-8 cohorts covering public speaking, focus, feedback exchange, and other transferable skills, customizing the existing framework and creating new sessions when you identify developmental gaps
• Conducting daily individual and small-group motivation sessions designed to push every student toward their weekly app targets, leveraging Coachbot analytics, Alpha's incentive structures (school currency, leaderboards), and your personal rapport with each student to overcome resistance
• Delivering the Test2Pass (Alpha's mastery-based assessment) for each life skill, and providing continued coaching to students who do not achieve passing scores until mastery is demonstrated
• Adjusting your coaching approach across a broad age spectrum, from kindergarteners who require high energy and physical activity to 8th graders who respond to direct conversation and personal accountability
• Analyzing weekly cohort performance data in Coachbot, pinpointing students who are falling behind, and modifying your coaching tactics for the upcoming week based on data-driven insights

What You Won’t Be Doing

• Delivering traditional whiteboard instruction; academic content is handled by the apps, not by you
• Creating an entire curriculum from scratch; you begin with an established playbook and personalize it with your own style and narrative techniques
• Passively monitoring students on computers; motivation in this context is active, individualized, and persistent
• Working through bureaucratic processes to secure resources for students in need; if a student requires additional coaching time, you decide and implement immediately
• Evaluating homework, conducting standardized test preparation, or handling parent communications; Campus Leads manage parent-facing responsibilities, and the other tasks do not exist in this model

Youth Development Specialist Key Responsibilities

Guarantee that every student in your K-8 cohort reaches their weekly learning targets, achieves mastery in each life skill, and finishes the year expressing genuine appreciation for your impact.

Basic Requirements

• Willing to work on-site at an Alpha campus in Beverly Hills, CA; La Jolla (San Diego), CA; Palo Alto, CA; Piedmont, CA; South Bay (LA), CA; Greenwich, CT; Boca Raton, FL; Fort Lauderdale, FL; Miami Beach, FL; Palm Beach Gardens, FL; Chicago, IL; Raleigh, NC; Portland, OR (relocation assistance available)
• Bachelor's degree in any field
• At least 3 years of direct experience working with K-8 students (classroom teaching, coaching, tutoring, camp counseling, or youth program leadership)
• A concrete example you can articulate of motivating a K-8 student toward a challenging goal: the objective, your actions, and the result
• Comfort allowing AI to manage instructional content while you concentrate on motivation and life-skills development
• Legal authorization to work in the US without requiring visa sponsorship

Nice-to-have Requirements

• Background in youth sports coaching, debate, camp leadership, theater, or after-school programs where you held direct responsibility for motivating children toward defined objectives
• Demonstrated personal achievement (academic, athletic, or professional) that shows holding others to demanding standards is intrinsic to who you are, not performative
• Narrative ability and presence sufficient to engage a room of 12-year-olds for an hour without needing to raise your voice
• Proven success converting disengaged or resistant students into motivated, active learners

About Alpha

Want to join a learning rebellion that’s transforming the traditional classroom?

Alpha School is on a mission to reshape education with a bold approach that harnesses AI to accelerate learning and unleash student potential.

They don’t play by the old rules.

Alpha is creating a new paradigm where students master core academics in just two hours a day, freeing up time for hands-on, passion-driven learning that truly prepares them for the real world.

Alpha School is rewriting the rules of education.

Sounds too good to be true? It’s not.

There is so much to cover for this exciting role, and space here is limited. Hit the Apply button if you found this interesting and want to learn more. We look forward to meeting you!

Working with us

This is a full-time (40 hours per week), long-term position. The position is immediately available and requires entering into an independent contractor agreement with Crossover as a Contractor of Record. The compensation level for this role is $60 USD/hour, which equates to $120,000 USD/year assuming 40 hours per week and 50 weeks per year. The payment period is weekly. Consult for more details on this topic.

Crossover Job Code: LJ-5607-US-CoralSpr-YouthDevelopme