Location: Charlotte, NC, USA ? Virtual
Req Number: Req #57
Date Posted: Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Mystery.org is searching for a Content Creator & Scriptwriter to help us scale up Mystery Writing, a new K-5 supplemental writing curriculum that transforms writing from a task teachers and students dread to one they are excited about.
We’ve done this before: in 2014/15 we set out to make K-5 science the favorite subject for teachers and students, and we succeeded spectacularly: Mystery Science is the most popular elementary science resource in the US. Our lessons combine videos with engaging visuals and intriguing stories with hands-on, open-and-go activities. More than 200,000 teachers use our lessons regularly with nearly 4 million students.
The new writing product will apply the Mystery magic to the challenge of teaching writing. That’s where you come in: you will partner up with a visual storyteller & video editor and together, you’ll build lessons for Mystery Writing as we build out into a complete program. You’ll have some lesson models as inspiration, and training in our successful approaches to building delightful open-and-go activities. You’ll receive guidance from other team members developing different lesson types and will have access to teacher feedback on our lessons.
This position reports to Soo Kim, Sr Director of Content, and is a remote-first (US-based), full-time salaried position.
About You
Do you really get kids ages 5-10 and understand the elementary classroom context? You have lots of experience working with this age group (maybe you were an elementary teacher), and you understand the struggle of learning to write well. You can empathize with the dread of that blank page and know how to scaffold learning so that students can grow their confidence while building skills. You are also very keyed into what kids would find fun and engaging. Bonus if you have a knack for looking at a task, and would be able to say “well, that looks like it’s for K/1” or “that’s a bit tough for 3rd grade, it’s more like a 5th grade piece.”
Do you excel at developing engaging content, activities, or experiences on deadline, at a fast pace? You have at least a 1-2 year track record of creating content. Maybe you’ve written activity books, worked as a scriptwriter for a children’s TV show, executed a museum exhibit, or developed lessons for Teachers Pay Teachers. You’ve got experience working in a fast-paced environment: deadlines energize you to do good work and you’ve got a track record of getting things done on time. You’re just as excited about figuring out how to do what used to take 10 days in 8 as you are about the feeling of accomplishment that comes from publishing a piece of content.
Do you love getting feedback, learning from and with other experts, iterating, throwing ideas out, and starting over? You love the growth that comes from working with other experts, such as visual storytellers or curriculum designers, to create the best content possible. You don’t worry about getting it right the first time, but enjoy getting better over time, and thrive on a quick pace of feedback and iterating. You have a deep bank of knowledge on how to teach concrete skills, with lots of ideas to throw into the percolator.
Do you enjoy working closely with 1-2 others in a tight-knit team? You’ve worked with others on deliverables and enjoy the give-and-take of close collaboration on a deliverable. Think of the way a writer might work with an editor and illustrator, or how each member of the Fantastic Four has a distinct superpower contributing to a plan to save the day. It’s kind of like that!
About the Role
As a Content Creator & Scriptwriter, your main focus will be to:
Co-create interactive and open-and-go lesson approach to writing that is fun and engaging for kids and easy and delightful to use for teachers. Paired up with a visual storyteller/video editor, you’ll create 20-30 min scaffolded lessons that are teacher-ready and cover a range of topics – everything from sentence-level activities to longer form genre writing. You’ll have some lesson templates to model after, and your work will be to make each lesson motivating and fun for our 5-10-year-old students.
Write the “story” script that goes with the lesson and create the step-by-step activity, including ideating the key elements of supporting worksheets (which another team member will build out). You’ll come up with an engaging angle for a specific lesson and activity, embed student and teachers supports for differentiation, and use storytelling to help build confidence and joy to learning how to write, especially on some potentially dry topics like teaching appositives or note taking.
Quickly iterate with feedback from others to deliver final script and content for our Mystery Guide to narrate. As you build lessons and become better at it, we’ll also look to you to help improve the process so we can accelerate our production capacity to build more lessons more quickly.
Requirements
Legal right to work in the United States.
Benefits
We are proud to offer employees and their families a comprehensive benefits package:
- Medical-Dental-Vision
- Health Care Dependent Care
- Short & Long Term Disability
- Summer Hours
- Life Insurance
- 401(k)
- FSA/HSA
- Paid Time Off
- Volunteer Time
- Employee Assistance Program
- 7 Paid Holidays + Annual Winter Holiday Break (Typically the last week of December)
Discovery Education is an equal opportunity employer. Discovery Education is committed to being an employer of choice, not just a good place to work, but a great and inclusive place to work. To that end, we strive to recruit and maintain a workforce that meaningfully represents the diverse and culturally rich communities that we serve. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, protected veteran status or disabled status or, genetic information.
Other details
Pay Type Salary
PI240967807
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