All In.

You’ll wake early, eat a quick breakfast, and take the train or drive to school. It’s not uncommon for you to run into another teacher on the train and spark a conversation about their kids or lives outside of teaching.

The first stop is often the teacher workroom for coffee or tea (which we provide). You’ll then unpack, prep any final materials for the day, and then head over to morning huddle.

Our days start for staff with Morning Huddle, a quick, 5-minute meeting to go over the day’s announcements and responsibilities, share shout-outs, and start the day on the right foot.

You’ll have a range of responsibilities during arrival, including everything from proactively greeting scholars on nearby street corners, facilitating breakfast or hallway transitions, and ensuring scholars are in uniform.

At the elementary school, class begins with Morning Meeting, where you will preview the day, teach key social-emotional skills, and sing songs with scholars. At the Middle School you lead an advisory period with your scholars, checking in on their grades and leading character lessons.

Throughout the day, you’re monitoring hallways during scholar transitions. In the high school, you do this from your classroom entrance, and in the elementary school, you have scholars walk with partners in lines. The less time scholars are moving in the hallway, the more time they have to learn!

Most teachers at Coney Island Prep have another teacher in the room, whether it’s a co-teacher, an apprentice teacher, or a paraprofessional. You use different co-teaching strategies: in parallel teaching, the classroom is evenly divided as both teachers execute the same lesson; with alternative teaching, a smaller group of scholars gets extra support from one teacher while still in the larger classroom.

During your prep periods, you are planning with fellow teachers, debriefing lessons with your coach, calling families, and, depending on the time of day, grabbing a meal.

Our instruction is almost entirely standards-aligned to ensure our scholars are held to high academic expectations. Each school also has clear behavioral expectations that you are upholding in class, including positive and negative consequences depending on scholars’ actions.

Our schools have free lunch for all students. Most teachers have responsibilities during lunch, whether it’s supporting in the cafeteria in high school and elementary school, or facilitating orderly lunch procedures in the classroom at our middle school.

You will sometimes be responsible for hallway bathroom duty. Depending on the school’s procedures, this is generally a way of ensuring scholars are limiting time in the restroom and we are noticing any larger trends to address.

Across our three schools, you are proactively involved in dismissal to ensure a safe and orderly student transition to home. At the Elementary school, you are helping scholars onto buses and greeting families; at the middle school, you are spread out to street corners, bus stops, and other key locations; at the high school, you have rotating posts at the subway station, outside the school, or in the hallways. We ensure our scholars uphold our values until they are safely home.

There is a lot happening after school. Some scholars attend after school activities like sports and clubs, while others get extra tutoring from teachers. If you aren’t leading these, you’re often making calls to families, grading, preparing materials for the next day, or checking in with your coach or another teacher.

With everything prepped for the next day, you head home. Much like the ride to school, you’ll often catch a train with a colleague, read, or listen to a podcast or music.