Job Description

Talon R�idge Middle School - Founding Planning Team

Talon R�idge Middle School is seeking four exceptional educators to join our Founding Planning and help prepare TRMS for its opening in Fall of 2027.

Opening a new school offers a rare opportunity. We don't inherit a culture, we create one. We don't simply adopt routines and systems because "that's how we've always done it." We get to ask what our students need, what we believe about learning, and then intentionally build a school around those answers.

At Talon R�idge, that work has already begun.

TRMS is being built around R�: Respect, Responsibility, and Relationship and a commitment to developing young people as thinkers, learners, leaders, and connectors. We believe every student deserves meaningful intellectual challenge, increasing ownership of their learning, strong relationships with adults and peers, and a school designed to help them become increasingly capable and independent.

We also believe that adults who create that experience matter enormously.

Teachers at Talon R�idge will be trusted as professionals, expected to learn continuously, and asked to bring both expertise and curiosity to their work. Our Founding Planning Team will help us take these beliefs from ideas on paper to the everyday experiences of our students, staff, and families.

The Work

The four educators selected for the Founding Planning Team will work collaboratively with the principal and one another to help design and prepare Talon R�idge for opening.

This work will include:

• Building the Student Experience: Helping, translate our vision and R� commitments into the routines, traditions, expectations, structures, and experiences students encounter every day.
• Building the Learning Experience: Helping develop the instructional structures and professional practices that support intellectual challenge, students ownership, HQIM, GELL, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Building the Adult Experience: Helping create the systems and cultures that allow adults to collaborate, learn, receive feedback, take appropriate risks, and continuously improve their practice.
• Building the Community: Helping establish traditions, celebrations, communication structures, family connections, and the rituals that will eventually make Talon R�idge feel like our school.
• Building the Founding Staff: Participating in the selection process for educators who will become part of the inaugural TRMs team and helping welcome and prepare that staff for opening.
• Solving the Thousand Things We Haven't Thought of Yet: Because opening a school requires people who can encounter ambiguity, ask good questions, create solutions, adjust when something doesn't work, and keep moving forward.

Who We Are Looking For

We are not looking for four people who think exactly alike. In fact, we hope they don't.

We are looking for educators with different experiences, perspectives, strengths, and areas of expertise who share a commitment to what Talon R�idge is trying to build.

Strong candidates will be educators who:

• Believe deeply in the potential of every student and refuse to create artificial ceilings for what students can learn or become.
• See grade-level mastery as the floor, not the ceiling, and believe students deserve both meaningful support and meaningful challenge.
• Believe students should increasingly become owners of learning, able to understand what they are learning, evacuate how they are doing, and determine where they need to go next.
• Value relationships while understanding that care and high expectations belong together.
• Approach teaching as professional practice that requires collaboration, reflection, feedback, learning, and continuous improvement.
• Are willing to question existing practices while also recognizing that new is not automatically better.
• Can disagree productively, listen carefully, change their mind when evidence warrants it, and contribute their perspective when they believe something matters.
• Are comfortable working in ambiguity. Not everything will have an answer yet. That's why we are building a planning team.
• Bring ideas and are equally willing to help turn someone else's good idea into something great.
• Want to build something that will eventually belong not to the founding adults, but to the students, families, and community of Talon R�idge.

Four People. Different Strengths. One Team.

We intentionally want the Founding Planning Team to represent different areas of school.

Rather than seeking four identical teacher leaders, we are interested in building a team with complementary experiences across content areas, grade levels, student support, special populations, elective, and other aspects of the middle school experience.

Your current title matters less than what you can contribute to building an exceptional middle school.

What You Should Know Before Applying

Planning team members will complete much of this work outside of the regular 27J contract day, which may include afternoons/evenings, Mondays, and occasional additional commitments connected to staff selection or school planning.

• Planning Team Stipend: $2,000
• Planning Period: November 16th - June 8th
• Anticipated Meeting Schedule: Discussed and agreed upon with the planning team - But plan for some Mondays and evenings during the week.

Individuals selected for the Founding Planning Team are expected to become members of the Talon R�idge Middle School inaugural staff for the 2027-2028 school year.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Appropriate Colorado Department of Education certification/licensure for the position the applicant would hold at TRMS.
• Demonstrated success working collaboratively with colleagues.
• Knowledge of effective middle-level instructional practices, standards, curriculum, assessment and student support systems appropriate to the applicant's role.
• Commitment to continuous improvement of both individual and collective practice.
• Strong communication and relationship-building skills with students, colleagues, and families.
• Willingness and capacity to participate in the additional time commitment required of a founding planning team.

One More Thing�

You do NOT need to have all the answers. Actually, we're probably more interested in the questions you ask.

Opening Talon R�idge will require us to make hundreds of decisions. Some will be significant. Some will seem ridiculously small. Together, they will determine what it feels like to learn, teach, work, and belong at TRMS.

We are looking for four educators who want to help make those decisions thoughtfully, challenge our thinking when necessary, roll up their sleeves when something simply needs to get done, and help turn the vision for Talon R�idge into a real school.

If the opportunity to say, "I helped build that' excites you, we hope you'll apply.

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