Bard High School Early College II

Faculty Positions:

Arts
Biology, Chemistry or Physics
Computer Science
Mathematics

Description: Early College Teaching

Teaching at the Bard High School Early Colleges

People interested in teaching at BHSEC in Manhattan or Queens will want to understand how these institutions differ from most high schools or institutions of higher education. As Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, explains: "Our premise at BHSEC is that high school age students are young adults whose ambition to learn must be taken seriously. The love of learning dominates the culture of BHSEC. Our curriculum, which is rigorous and discipline-based, moves students rapidly through the requirements of high school to more sophisticated and demanding college education. Mastery of subjects is demonstrated not by standardized tests, but by reasoned analysis and the ability to make a thoughtful and well-supported case for one's views; therefore it leads, at the end of the twelfth grade, to the earning of an A.A. degree from Bard College."

Crucial to student development in this setting is the particular character of the faculty, all of whom teach in both the college and high school programs. We seek to recruit teachers and scholars qualified to be professors in the nation’s best liberal arts colleges and universities who have a special interest in adolescents and how they learn. In electing to teach at BHSEC, such people show that their commitment to their fields includes active interest in how best to foster engagement with and appreciation of its challenges and explanatory power. BHSEC offers such people a rare opportunity to work with a diverse population of New York City students, encouraging their academic ambition to go on to four-year colleges and graduate or professional school experiences to which they might not otherwise aspire. To rise to the challenge of college work, these students must be expected and encouraged to enter into active and thoughtful interchange with their teachers as well as with their classmates. BHSEC faculty use a delicate interplay of affirmation and critique, enticing these younger students to stretch their vision of true accomplishment without discouraging them about their current achievements.

BHSEC in Manhattan and in Queens are housed in traditional school buildings that serve about 500 students; the rigor and approach of the faculty is essential to creating the collegiate atmosphere. Most disciplines are represented by only one professor who has creative responsibility for developing a curriculum that leads students into the field. Early college teachers develop the willingness and ability to articulate and explain underlying disciplinary assumptions that too often, in traditional college settings, go unacknowledged and have to be intuited or picked up over time. They model intellectual engagement, enthusiasm, and dedication; they balance rigor with informality and help students learn to speak and write an academic prose that is informed, direct, and imbued with individual voice. Interdisciplinary collaboration among faculty members is frequent and essential.

Teachers at BHSEC advise and support students in building the competence and responsibility necessary for success in early college. While high schools often feel bound to regulate students' choices and behavior, the aim at BHSEC is to help students develop self-discipline and the maturity that comes from having earned the trust and respect of others.

We welcome applications from teachers and scholars interested in joining this learning community.

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