Youth Counselor, Alpha - $100,000/year USD

$100,000/year W2 salary with weekly pay; health, dental, and vision benefits begin day oneOn-site at an Alpha K-8 campus in Austin, TX; Brownsville, TX; Fort Worth, TX; Houston (Central, South, or The Woodlands), TX; Denver, CO; Oklahoma City, OK; Tulsa, OK; Nashville, TN; Park City, UT (Salt Lake City area); or Toronto, Canada (relocation support available)You are not here to teach. You are here to motivate.The most caring response to a kid who reaches 99% of their goal is to refuse to accept it as complete. If that principle unsettles you, this isn't your role. If it energizes you—because maintaining the standard is how you demonstrate belief in a student's ability—read on.At Alpha, academic learning happens through AI-powered applications. No lectures. No textbooks. Half your time is spent facilitating one-hour workshops on life skills: public speaking, focus, and how to give and receive meaningful feedback. The other half, you work with students individually or in small groups, analyze their progress via Coachbot analytics, and drive each one toward 100% completion of their weekly app targets. You will not follow a script—workshops provide a framework, but top performers customize them and create new ones when needed.A successful quarter means every student in your cohort completes their weekly app goals, passes the Test2Pass for every life-skills workshop, and 90%+ report they love you. Falling short on any of these three is falling short of the role. In your first year you internalize the playbook; as you demonstrate your ability to uphold standards, you become eligible for Lead Guide, where you mentor new hires while continuing direct work with students.If you thrive in traditional teaching environments, prefer ready-made curricula, or view warmth and rigor as opposing forces, this role is not a fit. If your background includes athletic coaching, camp counseling, tutoring where you refused to let students give up, or performing for groups of young children, the final interview stage is a full day on campus coaching actual Alpha students. If that prospect excites you most, submit your application today.What You Will Be DoingFacilitating one-hour life-skills workshops for K-8 cohorts covering public speaking, focus, feedback, and other essential skills, customizing the playbook and creating new sessions when you identify a needConducting daily individual and small-group motivation sessions that drive every student to 100% of their weekly app goals, leveraging Coachbot analytics, Alpha's incentive structures (school currency, leaderboards), and your relationship with each student to overcome resistanceManaging the Test2Pass (Alpha's mastery-based assessment) for each life skill, and providing continued coaching to students until they achieve passing scoresAdjusting your coaching approach across a broad age spectrum, from kindergarteners requiring high energy and physical activity to 8th graders needing direct conversation and accountabilityServing as the adult who maintains high expectations and the adult students trust and want to engage with; warmth creates the foundation for challenge, and challenge communicates your confidence in their potentialWhat You Won’t Be DoingDelivering instruction at a whiteboard; academic content is embedded in the applications, not delivered by youCreating curriculum from the ground up; you animate an established playbook through energy and narrativePassively monitoring students on computers; motivation in this context is active, individualized, and persistentReducing a weekly target to make it easier for a student to achieve; when a student is struggling, the solution is supporting the student, not adjusting the goalGrading assignments, conducting standardized test preparation, or handling parent outreach; Campus Leads manage parent communication, and the other tasks are not part of this modelYouth Counselor Key ResponsibilitiesEnsure every student in your K-8 cohort completes their weekly learning goals, achieves mastery of each life skill, and finishes the year reporting they loved you.Basic RequirementsWilling to work on-site at an Alpha campus in Austin, TX; Brownsville, TX; Fort Worth, TX; Houston, TX (Central, South, or The Woodlands); Denver, CO; Oklahoma City, OK; Tulsa, OK; Nashville, TN; Park City, UT; or Toronto, Canada (relocation support available)Bachelor's degree in any fieldMinimum 3 years of direct experience working with K-8 students (including classroom teaching, coaching, tutoring, camp counseling, or youth program leadership)A concrete example you can articulate of motivating a K-8 student toward a challenging goal: the objective, your actions, and the resultComfort allowing AI to manage instructional content while you concentrate on motivation and life-skills coachingDaily engagement with generative AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude)Legal authorization to work in the US without visa sponsorship (or in Canada for the Toronto campus)Nice-to-have RequirementsBackground in youth sports coaching, debate, camp leadership, theater, or after-school programs where you held direct responsibility for motivating children toward defined objectivesHistory of personal high achievement (academic, athletic, or professional), demonstrating that holding others to rigorous standards is intrinsic, not performativeStorytelling ability and stage presence capable of commanding the attention of a room full of 12-year-olds for an hour without needing to raise your voiceProven ability to convert disengaged or resistant students into engaged, active learnersAbout AlphaWant to join a learning rebellion that’s transforming the traditional classroom? Alpha School is on a mission to reshape education with a bold approach that harnesses AI to accelerate learning and unleash student potential.They don’t play by the old rules. Alpha is creating a new paradigm where students master core academics in just two hours a day, freeing up time for hands-on, passion-driven learning that truly prepares them for the real world.Alpha School is rewriting the rules of education.Sounds too good to be true? It’s not. There is so much to cover for this exciting role, and space here is limited. Hit the Apply button if you found this interesting and want to learn more. We look forward to meeting you!Working with usThis is a full-time (40 hours per week), long-term position. The position is immediately available and requires entering into an independent contractor agreement with Crossover as a Contractor of Record. The compensation level for this role is $50 USD/hour, which equates to $100,000 USD/year assuming 40 hours per week and 50 weeks per year. The payment period is weekly. Consult www.crossover.com/help-and-faqs for more details on this topic.Crossover Job Code: LJ-4415-US-Tulsa-YouthCounselor