Illuminated Life School

Some things you should know before applying:

• Although we’re headquartered in Puerto Rico, our headquarters team works virtually so if you take a job at our HQ, you’ll be working from home and occasionally traveling for meetings.
• In addition to licensed teachers, we employ people who are not necessarily licensed teachers to guide our students through our project based curriculum, life skills training such as gardening, food preparation, First-Aid, dog/pet training, communication skills, negotiating, financial intelligence, entrepreneurship, healthy relationships and more. We hire people who are ideal for the position regardless of their education background. We provide a complete training program to our guides so as long as you have a high school diploma or GED, you can apply for a guide position.
• We believe our primary job is to raise up a generation of illuminated humans by creating an equitable learning environment where ALL students can succeed, helping them identify their unique genius, fostering a love of learning in them, equipping them with critical thinking skills and life skills, and empowering them to be conscious global citizens and contributing members of society.
• Everything we do is looked at through a racial equity lens before it’s executed to ensure that we’re creating a truly level playing field for all students which means an anti-racist school and educational experience for all students.
• We weave emotional intelligence and critical thinking into all of our curriculum and we have a very strong focus on financial literacy and physical, mental and emotional health.
• We don’t label students because we don’t want students to live into any label other than brilliant superstar on a hero’s journey. We honor their constant growth and assume they will continually show up differently.
• We take a student-centered approach and believe in learning by doing so the majority of our curriculum is taught via Project-Based Learning, and includes experiments, quests, passion projects and real life simulations. For example, students will engage in real life simulations where they are calculating odds, taking risks, pitching themselves and their ideas, problem solving, holding themselves and others accountable, and more. Our teachers/guides are trained to trust the children and provide a space where our students are free and joyful in their discoveries. The portion of our curriculum that is more structured, is taught in a highly innovative way which enables our students to learn significantly faster and get a deeper understanding of the knowledge. You’ll be trained on these highly effective methods and we’ll be continuing to refine and innovate every year so you’ll be expected to learn new techniques and up-level your skills every year as well.
• You’ll be able to custom-tailor your students experience and work with their parents to make smart decisions that are in the best interest for each student without a bunch of red tape in your way.
• We don’t have traditional classrooms and students of varying grades are mixed together.
• Our curriculum is a blend of online and offline learning and we’re launching a virtual school (in addition to pod schools and physical schools) so that students can roll in and out of physical/pod schools and our online academy anytime.
• Because of the highly effective education model we use, students rarely get more than 15 minutes of homework, with the exception of reading.
• You’ll be required to do a significant amount of personal development and racial equity development on an ongoing basis so that you’re able to show up as your best-self for our students. The majority of the personal development programming that’s required will be provided to you, at no cost to you. It was designed by world-class experts and in addition to helping you be an amazing faculty member, it’ll most likely improve every area of your life. Regardless of your position within our organization, personal development is required.
• We don’t believe in over-working our faculty. It’s not good for you and it’s not good for our students. When a department or team member becomes overburdened, we bring in more resources. We provide every single student a custom-tailored whole-child world class education without overworking our team.
• At each school we’re committed to hiring staff that’s reflective of the community that school serves, committed to equity, and diverse.
• Our starting pay for faculty is above average for the area plus we provide a healthy benefits package. We do not have an Academic Tenure program nor do we believe in that program.
• At our physical schools, students and faculty will get FREE cafeteria meals. All meals served in our school cafeterias will be fresh whole-food based meals and free of all major allergens.
• All of our physical schools will be year-round schools with a flexible J-Term in July. All teachers/guides get paid time off for the entire month of July (the J-Term is guided by student teachers and community members so that teachers/guides can have a summer break). All teachers/guides also get paid time off on major holidays, plus 2-4 days between each quarter, and an additional 15 flex days each year (a total of approximately 9.5 weeks of paid vacation).
• The school year in our physical schools will start in mid August (the specific day varies each year). Faculty start back a couple of weeks before the new school year starts. Teachers/Guides are off during J-Term in July, then students are off on summer break at the beginning of August. Teachers/Guides start back in the beginning of August, and the new school year starts in mid August.