About the Opportunity
826 Boston seeks a creative team member with strong organizational skills to serve as the Writers’ Room Manager. 826 Boston serves students in The Boston Public Schools (BPS) district through its innovative Writers’ Room Program. We are seeking a candidate with a strong command of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles and approaches, who can build on the current strengths of our Writers’ Room programs, including STEM writing, college essay support and book publishing.
The Manager will also lead the Writers’ Room team’s future growth, full-time (Monday-Thursday) in-person, navigating the social-emotional impact the Covid-19 pandemic and uptick of violence in the community has on students, and expanding the after-school program with a focus on creative writing, student leadership opportunities, homework support, and more.
Apply Here: https://826boston.bamboohr.com/careers/68
Mission
826 Boston is a nonprofit writing, tutoring, and publishing organization where students in grades K-12 and beyond can share their stories, amplify their voices, and develop as leaders in school and in life.
Responsibilities
Program Management
- Oversee programming at an 826 Boston Writers’ Room, including class visits with teachers, after-school programs, and publishing projects
- Serve as key liaison between 826 Boston, students, teachers, and leadership, local artists and authors, and community partners
- Collaborate with Publishing Coordinator in executing program publishing projects, including classroom publications, the literary magazine, and program-wide collections
- Coordinate volunteer support by facilitating pre- and debrief conversations, communicating teacher and classroom expectations, and providing coaching and support
- Represent 826 Boston at school conferences and meetings; co-lead quarterly meetings with school leaders alongside the Writers’ Room Director
Community Partnerships
- Build, cultivate, and manage strong relationships with school leadership, internal school partners, and community, local universities, and other community partners, artists, and leaders to offer potential programmatic partnership for the Writers’ Room
- Collaborate with the Volunteer Management Team to onboard and train volunteers from partner universities and companies for the Writers’ Room
Personnel Management
- Provide leadership and guidance to all Writers’ Room Team members; guide all team members in establishing individual work and service plans in support of team goals; identify areas for professional development
- Supervise two full-time AmeriCorps service members, a College for Social Innovation Fellow, and one part-time intern
Data Collection and Evaluation
- Maintain program data, including tracking volunteer and student attendance, overseeing student and teacher survey administration, and collecting student release forms
- Conduct and coordinate program evaluation in partnership with Director of Impact and Evaluation to measure and monitor student progress, improve program design, and report out on program impact to school partners
Additional Responsibilities
- Support organization-wide summer programming
- Collaborate with the Development and Events Manager and Communications Director to coordinate student authors that participation in 826 Boston and community events
- Collaborate with the Writers’ Room Director and Communications Director to ensure the Writers’ Room physical space and external facing programming material reflects the 826 Boston brand
- Provide support at select outreach and fundraising events, including nights and weekends on rare occasions
- Support Writers’ Room Director with co-leading monthly Writers’ Room team meetings and administrative tasks as needed
Qualifications
The ideal candidate is a team player with a steadfast commitment to improving the quality of K-12 education, including adopting antiracist/anti-oppressive approaches, with a desire to work in a collaborative and inclusive culture and a passion for youth empowerment through writing and publishing.
826 Boston recognizes that impostor syndrome and the confidence gap might prevent some applicants from applying. Few candidates will have all of the relevant experience listed below, but 826 Boston is committed to assessing candidates with transferable skills and a willingness to be trained for this role.
Skills and experiences
- 3+ years of professional experience working in a K-12 school, education, or youth development nonprofit
- Experience editing written work to prepare for publication
- Experience working in school communities in urban settings where the student population are exposed to community violence
- Exceptional organizational, time, project management, and resource management skills
- Demonstrated commitment to fostering community, building a strong sense of team, and embracing values of diversity, equity, and inclusion
- Ability to give and receive feedback with humility, regulation, and tact
- Willingness to carry out organizational processes related to the Writers’ Room program that require review and approval
- Knowledge of and fluency with social and racial justice, intersectionality, BIPoC and LGBTQIA+ history, and historic/current systems of oppression
- Ability to incorporate anti-racist and anti-oppressive practices into analysis, planning, and programming
- Ability to take initiative, demonstrate flexibility, and thrive in a fast-paced environment
- Familiarity with the BPS system, particularly the schools in Roxbury, Dorchester, and Jamaica Plain and ability to maintain a positive relationship with school leaders and partners
- Proficiency in Spanish, Haitian Creole, or Cape Verdean Creole preferred but not required
- Experience with Google Apps, Salesforce and InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, or similar design tools preferred but not required
Compensation
Salary is $56,650/year. Benefits include generous paid time off (including vacation, sick leave, holidays, Summer Fridays, and a two-week winter break); remote work from home on Friday’s, health and dental insurance (826 Boston covers 80% of premiums); parental leave; and more.
This is an exempt, full-time position that reports to the Writers’ Room Director. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis.
826 Boston Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement
At 826 Boston, we honor and actively work toward diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) across our organization. We are committed to centering the voices of the students who we serve, to creating inclusive spaces, and to incorporating feedback from our community into our decision-making processes. Our DEI lens is always evolving through the courageous conversations in which we participate and the relationships that we build through our work and service. We strengthen our cultural competency through experience, training, and feedback, which informs the development of all new organizational practices and goals and the evaluation of all existing procedures.
826 Boston is dedicated to providing a platform for student advocacy through writing and publishing opportunities. In our work and mission, we are committed to dismantling white supremacy culture by recognizing that we are complicit in systems of racism and oppression. We will work to hold ourselves accountable in addressing these harmful structures and behaviors. To learn more about our DEI Action Plans across the organization, please click here.
About Us
826 Boston is part of a national network of youth writing centers, co-founded by the award-winning author Dave Eggers and educator Nínive Calegari, that were named in GOOD Magazine’s “30 Places We Want to Work.” Since opening in 2007, 826 Boston has delivered its free youth writing and tutoring programs to more than 29,000 students and has been recognized by The Boston Globe as one of the best places in the city to volunteer. 826 Boston’s youth writers have published their work in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and in numerous award-winning 826 Boston books, including A Place for Me in the World, which was hailed as a “triumph of middle school education” by The Boston Globe. In 2013, the 826 National network garnered the prestigious American Literacy Prize awarded by the Library of Congress.