Our Mission
Quill.org's mission is to help low-income students become strong writers. In 2018, Fast Company recognized Quill.org as one of the Top 10 Most Innovative Education Companies of 2018 alongside Duolingo, Sesame Workshop, and Coursera. As an open-source organization, we work with a large community of developers and educators to build free online literacy tools to advance our mission of helping low-income K-12 students become strong writers and critical thinkers. Building on a strong pedagogical foundation and an innovative use of machine learning and natural language processing, we aim to serve 10 million students in the next five years. Quill currently offers six free online learning tools that bring the power of cutting-edge AI technology into the classroom: Quill Connect, Quill Lessons, Quill Diagnostic, Quill Proofreader, Quill Grammar, and Quill Reading for Evidence.
Your Role
In our newest tool, Quill Reading for Evidence, students read a non-fiction text and then explore key logical relationships through completing sentence stems. Our tool challenges students to write responses that are precise, logical, and based on evidence in the text. With custom AI-powered feedback, we coach students through revisions.
As a member of the curriculum team, you will work with the social studies lead to build Reading for Evidence activities that align with a high school world history or American history course. To develop these activities, you will research topics, write articles, and develop sentence stems for students. You will also work alongside the curriculum team to use AI to provide feedback on student writing; this will involve identifying and analyzing patterns within large sets of responses and drafting feedback to guide students’ revisions.
Since you will be creating new activities to help students develop their writing skills, it is essential that you can adapt your writing to ensure that it is accessible to learners with a wide range of English language abilities and support needs while still considering tone, cultural responsiveness, and student engagement. In addition, you should be an adept reviewer with the ability to quickly identify aspects of students’ writing that need revision or require feedback.
Content-wise, you should have both broad and deep social studies knowledge, with a knack for recognizing and clearly communicating compelling stories from the past—especially those that center diverse voices and experiences. Ideally, you will bring experience/familiarity with disciplinary literacy instruction as well. This role is best suited for an individual who is both creative and highly analytical—someone who has an aptitude for recognizing patterns and likes to solve complex puzzles but isn’t afraid to think outside the box and explore creative solutions to nuanced problems.
Responsibilities
- Create activities for our Reading for Evidence tool, which includes writing texts on a variety of social studies topics, creating sentence stems, and writing feedback that students will use to revise their writing.
- Evaluate and label large amounts of student data.
- Give, receive, and implement feedback on writing/activities as part of a collaborative development cycle.
- Collaborate on determining style guidelines, revising existing content, creating curriculum standards alignments, and other curriculum-based projects as needed.
Competencies and Experience
Successful candidates will demonstrate the following competencies:
- You are an extremely skilled writer who excels at unpacking and explaining complicated ideas in accessible and engaging ways.
- You have a strong sense of how ideas logically relate and can recognize weak logical relationships.
- You have strong research skills and are able to find and evaluate the credibility of useful sources.
- You have an understanding of pedagogical best practices in 7-12 grade social studies education.
- You have an understanding of DEIA best practices and effectively apply them to your work.
- You have a solid understanding of technical grammar and make few errors in your writing.
- You can recognize patterns in student responses and effectively categorize them based on those patterns.
- You can write feedback for students that is clear, accessible, and mirrors the tone and approach of a skilled teacher.
- You have strong spreadsheet skills or an aptitude for building data analysis skills quickly.
Successful candidates will have the following qualifications:
- A background in social studies; you may have experience as a middle or high school teacher, a curriculum developer, or perhaps you’ve recently completed an advanced degree in history
- Experience with data analysis using large datasets
- Experience in or familiarity with the education non-profit sector and/or a start-up environment
- Comfortable working remotely and utilizing Google Suite, Zoom, and Slack
This role may be a good fit for you if…
- you love to write and research.
- you get excited about history.
- you care deeply about education and serving students.
- you love data analysis and are excited by the idea of spending a lot of time in a spreadsheet.
- you enjoy building and improving digital products.
- you like to collaborate but also enjoy long periods of independent work.
- you are methodical and strategic.
- you have a growth mindset and value giving and receiving feedback; you’re not afraid of multiple rounds of feedback and revision on your work.
- you thrive in an environment with many unknowns, sudden shifts in priorities, and ambiguity.
Join Us!
At Quill, we offer a flexible schedule, benefits, and an amazing team of brilliant, supportive colleagues. We believe in a growth mindset, learning from our mistakes, and celebrating each other’s success as we work toward our collective impact.
Salary: The salary range for this position is $70,000 - $80,000.
In the interest of equity, Quill does not negotiate outside of this range; all of Quill’s salary ranges are developed through market research and a commitment to fairness and equity internally. Final salary offers will be a combination of a candidate’s skills, experience, and in consideration of current internal salaries.
Benefits: Health, Dental, Vision Insurance (Aetna), 4% 401k Matching, 33 Days Paid Holidays & Paid Days Off (with Unlimited Sick Leave and one week of office closure during the winter holidays), $1,500 professional development stipend annually.
Location: This is a remote/hybrid role. We're looking for someone who is willing to work in person in NYC one day a week, but we're willing to consider fully remote depending on the candidate..
Typical office hours: Quill maintains a 40 hour work week with typical hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Start date: Early-mid January
To apply: Please email your resume to jobs@quill.org with the subject line “Social Studies Curriculum Developer”
