Physics and Chemistry Teacher - Armand Hammer United World College

What are we looking for?

We are looking for an experienced Physics teacher who also has the ability to teach Chemistry. Please note any additional subjects you can teach in your cover letter.

What is the context?

Founded in 1982, the United World College-USA is one of 18 United World College (UWC) campuses worldwide and the only campus in the United States. The UWC movement seeks "to make education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future." As such, UWC-USA values and promotes all manner of inclusion, diversity, equity, and access as part of our fundamental mission to bring people together across differences in service of a more peaceful and sustainable world. Our students are selected through national committees in more than 150 countries, and nearly 85% of our students are on scholarship, ensuring unparalleled national and socioeconomic diversity in our student body. With expeditionary, place-based, and experiential learning at the center of our academic program, and a strong residential curriculum in our multinational/multicultural boarding environment, UWC-USA stretches its students, faculty and staff to learn and grow in a multi-perspectival community dedicated to democratic processes as reflective of our country location and traditions.

What do we want our education to prepare young people for?

UWC's mission began in response to the international tensions of the Cold War. Its mission to bring young people together before their prejudices are solidified, in service of peace and a sustainable future, is as important as ever. In the world our students know, the main obstacles to unity remain differences in identity that too often separate us from one another: nationality, culture, language, religion, ethnicity, race, gender, and sexual identity. The main obstacles to peace and sustainability today are not entirely new either, but the globalizing forces of our age have reshaped them. No matter where our students come from they increasingly see these challenges up close in local, national or international settings:

• Economic, political, and social inequality between those at the center and those on the margins of societies worldwide;
• Political polarization rooted in ideology, grievance, and uneven democratic practice/ institutions;
• Climate change, ecosystem destruction, and biodiversity collapse resulting from destructive modes of production, consumption, and land use.
• Accelerated technological innovation that alters our relationships to information, work and one another.

Beginning in the 2024-2025 academic year, the educational program at UWC-USA will seek to prepare students for these four global challenges by taking students out of the classroom to meet with organizations and institutions in northern New Mexico on a biweekly basis. For learning to prepare young people for these challenges of the future, we are committed to ensuring that they graduate from UWC-USA with contextualized, real-world understandings of the complexities of the challenges ahead.

Who should apply?

Qualifications - ideal candidates will demonstrate a combination of the following qualities:

• Strong identification with the vision, mission, and values of UWC-USA and ability to articulate and translate them in strategic and day to day implementation of programs
• Proven experience as a dynamic, innovative, student-centered facilitator of learning
• Three of more years of teaching experience at the 15- to 19-year-old level
• Teaching experience in a multicultural setting
• IB Diploma Program knowledge and experience, or experience in higher education in the relevant academic field
• Experience in residential school
• Experience living outside your home country
• Knowledge of instructional strategies used in the enhancement of curricular programs, ideally including place-based learning and expeditionary learning
• Commitment to learning and modeling constructive engagement of conflict among colleagues and students
• Commitment to learning and modeling personal, communal, and environmental sustainability
• Ability to use good judgment in establishing priorities and assessing and engaging difficult situations
• Exemplary discretion and confidentiality
• Ability to collaborate with colleagues across the curriculum
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Required Education

• Master's degree in a field related to one of the subject taught

Required License

• Eligible to obtain a NM Driver's License, and must be insurable by the school's insurance carrier.

Note: Broadly, we are able to support sponsorship for a J-1 visa, but this is not guaranteed.

Applications

Application review for teaching faculty positions will begin January 15, 2025. We will continue to review applications until the positions are filled. Please send the following materials via our application portal:

• Include a cover letter, CV, two professional references, and one former student who can serve as a reference (note: We will not be contacting any references unless you are selected as a semi-finalist, and we will notify you before any contact).
• A one to two-page response to each of the following two prompts: 1) What are the opportunities for innovation within the IB? What are some examples of where you have delivered your subject-area content in an innovative way? In particular, please note where you have experience with expeditionary, place-based, interdisciplinary, and/or experiential learning in your pedagogy. 2) Show how you have engaged at least one of the four global challenges in your teaching, or if you have not, how you would. Show what "work" your discipline does for the world.

We will keep all inquiries and applications strictly confidential until the semi-finalist phase, at which point it may be necessary for us to make limited outreach to references.

Please send questions to hr@uwc-usa.org.