Middle School ELA Tutor & Executive Functioning Coach

Job Description

Job Description

Details

Status: Contractor/1099

Rate: $50-80/hr depending on experience

Location: Services are in-home across the greater Nashville area

Thrive Education Partners is seeking a Middle School ELA Tutor & Executive Functioning Coach to provide individualized support to students in the Greater Nashville area. We are looking for a dynamic, highly responsive educator who can help students strengthen their reading and writing skills while also developing the organization, planning, and learning strategies they need to become more confident and independent students.

Great individualized instruction 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. For many middle school students, academic challenges aren't isolated to a single subject—they are intertwined with executive functioning skills like organization, task initiation, time management, working memory, and knowing how to approach a complex assignment.

The ideal candidate is an experienced educator who can move seamlessly between explicit ELA instruction and executive functioning support. One session might involve helping a student organize and outline an analytical essay; another might focus on reading comprehension, breaking down a long-term project, preparing for an upcoming assessment, or developing a system for managing assignments across multiple classes. We are looking for someone who can identify the underlying need, adapt in the moment, and gradually equip students to manage more of the learning process independently.

What You'll Do

• Provide individualized academic support to middle school students, with a primary focus on reading, writing, and executive functioning.
• Assess students' current skills and identify specific academic and executive functioning priorities.
• Establish meaningful, measurable goals and intentionally plan instruction toward those goals.
• Strengthen reading comprehension, vocabulary, critical thinking, written expression, grammar, and increasingly sophisticated middle school literacy skills.
• Teach students how to brainstorm, outline, draft, revise, and edit paragraphs, essays, research assignments, and other written work.
• Help students break complex assignments and long-term projects into clear, manageable steps.
• Coach students in organization, planning, prioritization, time management, task initiation, study skills, and self-monitoring.
• Develop practical systems and strategies students can use across classes—not just during tutoring sessions.
• Support students in preparing for tests and assessments through stronger study, note-taking, and preparation strategies.
• Monitor progress and adjust instruction based on student performance and changing needs.
• Build strong relationships with students while providing the right balance of encouragement, structure, accountability, and challenge.
• Communicate thoughtfully with families and Thrive's educational team about progress, priorities, and areas of continued growth.

Our Approach

Our goal isn't simply to help a student stay on top of this week's assignments. We want to help students understand how they learn, how to approach challenging work, and what strategies allow them to be successful independently.

The right educator will be able to zoom in and out—addressing the essay due Friday while also recognizing the larger writing skill that needs development, or helping organize a busy week while teaching a planning system the student can eventually use without support. Over time, success means stronger academic skills, better systems, greater confidence, and a student who increasingly knows how to take ownership of their own learning.

Requirements

We're Looking for Someone Who...

• Has significant experience teaching or tutoring middle school students, particularly in English Language Arts.
• Is a strong reading and writing instructor who understands the progression of literacy skills through the middle grades.
• Has experience supporting students with executive functioning challenges, whether formally diagnosed or simply struggling with the increased demands of middle school.
• Can distinguish between a skill gap and a performance gap—and determine whether a student doesn't understand the material, doesn't know how to approach the task, or needs better systems to execute what they already know.
• Is comfortable supporting students with ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, language-based learning differences, or other learning profiles.
• Is highly responsive and able to pivot based on what a student needs in a particular session while still working toward larger, long-term goals.
• Can provide structure and accountability without becoming the student's organizational system for them.
• Connects naturally with middle schoolers and knows how to make learning engaging, relevant, and appropriately challenging.
• Brings warmth, energy, patience, creativity, and a strong belief in students' capacity for growth.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Education, English, Special Education, Literacy, or a related field.
• Classroom teaching, learning support, intervention, or significant tutoring experience.
• Experience with executive functioning coaching, academic coaching, or learning differences strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with evidence-based literacy instruction and progress monitoring is a plus.