Job Opportunity

Family Involvement Consultant

Founded in 1999, Cool Culture is a citywide nonprofit organization that helps low-income families to access and enjoy New York City’s cultural life, in order to provide educational experiences for children and to strengthen the capacity of parents to serve as their child’s first educator.  Cool Culture’s programs enable low-income families to overcome issues of cost, lack of information and perception that museums are “not for us” prevent far too many families from taking advantage of the educational resources provided by New York City’s cultural institutions.  Cool Culture’s programs currently serve over 45,000 families throughout the five boroughs and it has developed partnerships with over 80 of the City’s best-known cultural institutions, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Cool Culture seeks a consultant who will be responsible for implementation of Literacy Without Walls a collaborative cultural involvement program between Cool Culture and New York City’s Title I Public Schools. The Consultant will be responsible for developing and leading the seven-part Literacy Without Walls workshop series.

ABOUT THE PROJECT:

Literacy Without Walls is designed to train early childhood education directors, teachers and social service workers to support parents’ involvement in their children’s education through the arts.  The program provides Family Assistants, Parent Coordinators, Social Workers and Teachers with strategies to support Parent Involvement via a series of professional development workshops.  The project seeks to help schools engage families in using the Cool Culture Family Pass to access programming for children and families in New York City’s museums, botanical gardens and zoos.

Responsibilities

The consultantwill be responsible for working with Cool Culture to:

• Work in collaboration with museum educators and teaching artists at 7 museums to determine the appropriate structure, focus and scope of each workshop as well as appropriate venues;

• Develop and implement a family involvement workshop curriculum and workshops that will:

• work with school staff to increase parent involvement in their child’s education;
• prepare educators to introduce their parents to the use of visual images for open ended exploration with children;  and
• compliment the themes introduced by the museum educators during the on-site experiences and family museum trips.

• Ensure workshop content is strategically and deliberately taught in the allocated time frame; this includes creating agendas, educational hand-outs;
  
  

Qualifications

• Masters or Pre-Doctoral / Doctorate degree in Early Childhood Education, Museum Education or Early Literacy;

• Minimum of five to seven years of relevant work experience in the area of literacy, family involvement, early childhood education, curriculum development and/or teaching instruction; knowledge of museum education and pedagogy and visual literacy a plus.
• Familiarity with preschool education standards, expertise in family involvement practice; proven track record of having successfully developed and taught or family support/involvement curriculum;
• Proven track record and comfort with curriculum development, hands-on teaching and coaching; and ability to refine curriculum and inform instructional practices to ensure outcomes are met;
• Ability to work collaboratively to establish and maintain effective working relationships with Cool Culture, early childhood staff and museum educators;
• Outstanding presentation skills as well as strong written and verbal communication skills.
• The successful candidate must be able to work independently and collaboratively under deadlines with the ability to remain flexible according to the needs of the program.

Hourly/per diem commensurate with experience.

To Apply

Please submit your cover letter, resume and availability to:
Candice Anderson,
Executive Director,
hr@cool-culture.org .