Upper Elementary & Middle School ELA Tutor

Job Description

Job Description

Thrive Education Partners is seeking an exceptional ELA teacher to support upper elementary and middle school students with reading- and writing-based learning needs. We are looking for a dynamic, responsive educator who understands that strong literacy instruction is about helping students become confident, capable readers, writers, thinkers, and communicators. It starts with developing a clear understanding of exactly where a student is academically, identifying the skills or barriers holding them back, setting meaningful goals, and designing instruction that leads to clear, measurable progress.

The ideal candidate is an experienced educator who can quickly identify where a student is getting stuck, adapt instruction in the moment, and make reading and writing feel approachable and engaging. This person should be equally comfortable strengthening foundational literacy skills and helping a middle school student tackle increasingly sophisticated texts, essays, research assignments, and written responses.

• $50-80/hr depending on experience
• Tutoring services are provided in-home across the greater Nashville area

• Provide individualized ELA instruction for students in approximately grades 4–8, adapting lessons to each student's learning profile, school expectations, and academic goals.
• Support students with a range of reading and writing-based learning needs, including challenges with comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, written expression, organization, grammar, and spelling.
• Help students learn to analyze increasingly complex texts, identify main ideas and supporting evidence, make inferences, and articulate their thinking.
• Teach the writing process explicitly—from brainstorming and outlining to drafting, revising, editing, and producing polished work.
• Help students strengthen paragraph and essay structure, sentence development, evidence-based writing, and written organization.
• Break larger reading and writing assignments into manageable steps while developing students' independence and executive-function skills.
• Collaborate with families and, when appropriate, Thrive's educational team to identify priorities, monitor progress, and adjust instruction.
• Bring creativity, warmth, energy, and flexibility to sessions so students remain engaged and invested in their own growth.

The right tutor will combine strong literacy instruction with warmth, creativity, and high expectations—helping students build both the skills and confidence they need to become more independent readers and writers.

Rather than simply helping a student complete the assignment in front of them, our tutors focus on developing strategies and habits that students can carry into future classes, assignments, and academic challenges.

Requirements

• Has professional experience teaching or tutoring upper elementary and/or middle school ELA.
• Has a strong understanding of literacy development and the progression of reading and writing skills from upper elementary through eighth grade.
• Has experience supporting students who do not learn reading and writing easily and can differentiate instruction without lowering expectations.
• Is dynamic and highly responsive—able to read the student, pivot when something isn't working, and find another pathway into the learning.
• Can balance academic rigor with relationship-building, encouragement, and confidence development.
• Understands that a student may be bright and articulate while still struggling to organize thoughts, comprehend complex text, or translate ideas effectively onto paper.
• Is comfortable supporting both skill remediation and current schoolwork, while keeping an eye on the larger goal of building transferable literacy skills.
• Communicates clearly and professionally with parents and other members of a student's educational team.
• Brings curiosity, creativity, patience, and a genuine enjoyment of working with this age group.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Education, English, Special Education, Literacy, or a related field.
• Classroom teaching, intervention, learning-support, or significant tutoring experience.
• Experience working with students with dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD, executive-function challenges, language-based learning differences, or other literacy needs is strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with structured, explicit approaches to reading and writing instruction is a plus.