Education & Workforce Development Instructor-Young Mothers Job at Roca, Inc
About Roca
Roca is a fast-paced, data-driven, and relentless organization that serves over 1,200 high-risk young people every year. Through a unique intervention model, Roca proves that young people who are often feared, forgotten, and left out can in fact build safe, stable, and hopeful lives. At Roca, we believe that every young person matters and that with enough time and the right opportunities, change is possible. Roca’s strong outcomes and thousands of graduates are the proof that less jail is more future and that progress happens with work. Established in Chelsea, MA in 1988, Roca now has additional sites in Boston, Springfield, Lynn, and Holyoke, MA, and in Baltimore, MD, and recently opened a site in Hartford, CT.
In late 2020, Roca began a planning process for replication of its Young Mothers Program in Hartford, CT and the surrounding areas, where teen birth rates are three times the statewide rate and nearly twice the national rate, and where there are no two-generation programs designed to intensively serve highly traumatized and disconnected young mothers and children caught up in violence and involved in multiple systems. Through this expansion, Roca envisions serving at least 238 unduplicated mothers with an estimated 273 children over the first four years of program implementation. Roca Hartford opened in October 2021.
Position Overview
Roca’s work is based on the theory that young people, when re-engaged through positive and intensive relationships, can change their behaviors and develop life, education, and employment skills to disrupt the cycles of poverty and incarceration. Roca’s Intervention Model engages the highest-risk 16-24 year olds in a long-term process of behavior change and skill building opportunities. Understanding that meaningful change doesn’t happen overnight, we deliver an Intervention Model that is four years long and allows for relapse during the process. We know that lasting change requires a safe space to grow and to flex newly acquired decision-making skills. If a young person is seeking change or can make it through our model without relapsing, then they are not a candidate for Roca and can likely be served by a less intense program. We strive to meet short and intermediate term outcomes for Young Mothers including but not limited to: Increased Gains in Emotional Regulation, Increased Utilization of Early Childhood Services, Reduced Negative Systems Involvement, and in the long term: No Re-Incarcerations and Retained Employment.
The Education & Workforce Readiness Instructor reports to the Director of the Young Mothers Program. The Education & Workforce Readiness Instructor will work intensively to support and motivate the target population to re-engage in education and workforce programming to enable participants to enter the workforce. The Education & Workforce Readiness Instructor will implement educational assessments and deliver educational and workforce readiness programming in support of the organization benchmarks for successful educational gains with each participant.
Responsibilities
Outreach
- Provide weekly attendance and participant target lists for educational classes to youth workers in team check-ins and meetings.
- Conduct general and targeted outreach to young people to increase participation in programming.
- Go on outreach with Youth Workers to meet and find participants who may require off site programming.
Transformational Relationships
- Engage and build relationships with young people for the purpose of supporting change and skill development.
- Engage in intentional CBT based contacts with participants to help them identify and learn skills to shift negative behavioral cycles.
- Communicate with youth worker regarding participant barriers (substance abuse, street, domestic violence, etc.) and skills needed to be job ready.
- Follow-up daily with young people and youth workers regarding participation and progress in educational programming.
- Assess student level of engagement readiness (i.e. can they sit through a class, do they have substance abuse barriers, do they have street issues with other participants, etc.).
- Actively participate in the safety of the space for all participants through building coverage and communication across the organization.
Stage Based Programming
- Responsible for administering educational assessments/tests for baseline and follow up intervals to determine educational levels and monitor educational gains.
- Design and deliver programming for young people at various levels of readiness to engage in learning (i.e. engagement, drop in, semi-structured; formal-structured).
- Responsible for implementing high quality group and individual skill building programming including but not limited to:
- GED
- Workforce Readiness
- CBT
- Digital Literacy
- Financial Literacy
- ESL
- Parenting
Management, Learning, & Continuous Improvement
- Manage and oversee assessment testing and tracking for participants in educational programming.
- Ensure evidenced based assessments are implemented to determine baseline levels and track gains.
- Support other instructors in the administration of assessment test with participants.
- Track participant scores and testing cycles in Performance Management System.
- Support the development of appropriate ILP and coordinated educational supports for participants based on assessment scores.
- Stay apprised of most current assessment tools and support organizational capacity to implement with our participants as necessary.
Partners/Networks
- Maintain relationships with key partners as determined (i.e. pre-vocational training and trainers, testing centers, career one stops, etc.).
- Stay current and connected to networks or learning communities that inform best practices in GED, Workforce Readiness, Financial Literacy, etc.
General Responsibilities
- Maintain Efforts to Outcomes (ETO) data base through daily data entry of all work with participants, completion of assessments and all other tools as required for evaluation purposes.
- Utilize ETO reports and data to track participant progress and own performance in moving young people through change process and achieving expected performance indicator targets.
- Demonstrate mindfulness for resources and actively work to maintain their functioning.
- Participation in team meetings, participant reviews, program planning, trainings, etc.
- Participate in curriculum development and improvements as instructed.
- Understand, practice and promote the vision, mission, and values of the organization.
- Other tasks as assigned.
Qualifications
The very nature of Roca’s work requires an individual of great commitment and energy to the mission. Roca seeks a highly driven individual who is a good fit both personally and professionally for the culture of Roca.
In addition, the ideal candidate for this position will be a trustworthy decision-maker. He/she will have a sense of humor, feel passionate and committed to direct work with high-risk youth, and demonstrate interest in coaching and supporting coworkers.
Roca expects candidates to have the following skills:
- Bachelor’s Degree
- Some GED teaching experience - Post-collegiate experience teaching or working with a disenfranchised population in alternative settings is preferred
- Strong written and oral communication skills
- Excellent group management and behavior modification skills
- Desire to work with street involved high risk young people
- Ability to outreach to, engage and motivate young people to increase attendance in educational programming
- Capacity to think and act intentionally and strategically to help young people change behaviors
- Creative and flexible problem-solving and thinking
- Excellent at organizing, managing and completing multiple complex projects and tasks simultaneously with thoroughness, accuracy, timeliness and good humor.
- Self-motivation, initiative, sound judgment, and commitment to ongoing learning are essential
- Ability to work as a part of a team
- Bilingual (English/Spanish) is preferred but not required
Requirements for the position:
- Travel around the service area
- Computer Literate
- Valid state issued driver’s license and current driving record
- Willingness and ability to work outside of normal business hours, and Holidays and/or weekends as needed.
- Working with diverse cultures
- Strong attendance and high energy
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