Thrive Education Partners is seeking an experienced, relationship-driven Private Special Education Teacher to lead a highly personalized educational program for a middle school student in Thousand Oaks, California. We are looking for a warm, dynamic, and highly responsive educator who understands how to support a student with individualized learning needs while maintaining high expectations for growth, independence, and engagement.
Great individualized instruction starts with understanding the whole learner: where a student is academically, how they learn best, which underlying skills or learning differences may be creating barriers, and what supports will help them move forward. In this role, the educator will use that understanding to establish meaningful goals, thoughtfully adapt grade-level content, design targeted instruction, and help the student make clear, measurable progress over time.
The ideal candidate is an experienced special educator who can recognize why a student is struggling—not simply that they are struggling. This person should be comfortable adapting curriculum, breaking complex skills into manageable steps, providing explicit and systematic instruction, and adjusting their approach in real time based on student response. Just as importantly, they should be excited to build a strong relationship with one learner and create an engaging academic program around the student's strengths, interests, and needs.
The educator will work in close partnership with the family, an established team of support professionals, and Thrive's Educational Manager. This is an opportunity for a special educator who values strong relationships, individualized instruction, and the autonomy to build a thoughtful educational program around one student's strengths, needs, and long-term growth.
You'll work with a warm, social, and engaging middle school student who benefits from individualized special education instruction and a thoughtful, relationship-centered approach. The student is a strong visual learner with interests that can be used creatively to make academic work engaging and meaningful.
The student benefits from support in areas including communication, processing, self-regulation, and academic skill development. The family is seeking an educator who can provide access to age-appropriate, grade-level concepts through carefully adapted instruction, meeting the student at their current access point while maintaining meaningful expectations for growth.
Strong relationships matter in this placement. The student responds especially well to educators who are warm and encouraging, communicate clearly, remain steady through moments of frustration, and demonstrate genuine confidence in the student's ability to learn.
Experience supporting students with intellectual or developmental disabilities is valuable. More important is strong special education practice, sound professional judgment, and a genuine commitment to individualized, age-respectful instruction.
Requirements
Benefits
This is an opportunity to practice individualized teaching with a level of focus that is difficult to achieve in a traditional classroom. You’ll have the time to know one student deeply, design instruction around how they learn best, and continually refine your approach based on what you see working.
You’ll also have meaningful professional autonomy without working in isolation. The family has built an established team of support professionals and is looking for a teacher who will become a core part of that collaborative team. For an educator who values creativity, strong relationships, thoughtful special education practice, and the opportunity to see the impact of their work over time, this is a uniquely rewarding role.
Thrive Education Partners connects exceptional educators with families seeking highly personalized education. Our private teacher placements are built around strong educator-student relationships, individualized instruction, thoughtful collaboration, and the belief that education should be responsive to each student as a learner.
Thrive supports educators and families throughout the placement process and provides ongoing Educational Management to help create cohesive, high-quality learning experiences.
Thrive Education Partners is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and make hiring decisions based on experience, skills, and business needs, without regard to any status protected by applicable law.
Thrive Tutoring is a boutique tutoring agency. We match students in K-12 with highly qualified professional educators for personalized learning in the comfort of the student's home. Our mission at Thrive is simple: to provide students with the individualized attention they need to succeed.
