Job description
We are seeking a Learning Experience Designer (LXD) to be a key driver in the development and production of high-quality instructional materials for our supplemental K-12 English Language Arts (ELA) product. This role is ideal for a hands-on curriculum builder with a strong foundation in ELA pedagogy who is passionate about creating engaging, standards-aligned lessons, activities, texts, and assessments for K-12 students.
Key Responsibilities
Content Creation and Curation
- Material Authoring: Directly write, design, and structure detailed lessons, activities, and student worksheets/interactives based on established instructional models and product specifications.
- Text Selection and Editing: Identify, vet, and edit grade-appropriate student-facing texts (fiction and non-fiction) to ensure they align with ELA learning objectives and provide rich opportunities for skills practice.
- Assessment Design: Develop clear and concise low-stakes formative and summative assessment items and rubrics (e.g., multiple-choice, short answer, essay prompts) that effectively measure student progress against specific learning outcomes and standards.
- Quality Assurance: Review and provide focused editorial and pedagogical feedback on content drafts produced by internal teams or external contributors or vendors, ensuring accuracy, fidelity to the curriculum model, and student engagement.
Science of Reading Best Practices and Curriculum Alignment
- Instructional Application: Apply fundamental, evidence-based principles of learning science, including best practices for reading comprehension, language or vocabulary acquisition, and writing mechanics, to the design of every lesson, activity and assessment.
- Science of Reading: Stay up to date with research and best practices for teaching students how to leverage the pillars of the science of reading including phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, reading comprehension and vocabulary.
- Standards Adherence: Ensure all content development strictly adheres to relevant state ELA standards across the K-12 continuum.
- Accessibility and Scaffolding: Design materials with embedded scaffolds and differentiation strategies to make content accessible and meaningful for a wide range of learners, including Multilingual Learners (MLLs).
Collaboration and Workflow
- Team Coordination: Work effectively with freelance contributors, other learning experience designers, and product managers to ensure content quality is consistently high.
- Feedback: Provide detailed and consistent feedback to contributors to ensure output meets Newsela’s high quality standards. Ensure all feedback is rooted in documentation from Newsela or in ELA best practices.
- Organization: Prioritize and deliver work on time and within Newsela’s standards of quality. Understand Newsela’s quality standards and their purposes, so they can be effectively applied across all content.
- Learning Design: Translate high-level blueprints into detailed design specifications and content outlines that guide a scalable and consistent content development process that leverages AI tools, human contributors and staff.
Qualifications
Required
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in Instructional Design, Education, Curriculum & Instruction, English, Journalism or a related field.
- Experience: 3+ years of experience in K-12 curriculum development, instructional design, or content creation, preferably for an educational technology or publishing company.
- ELA Knowledge: Strong working knowledge of K-12 ELA pedagogy, standards, and effective teaching methods.
- Content Skills: Excellent writing and editing with demonstrated ability to produce high-quality, polished instructional content.
- Fluency with AI tools
- Other: Strong organizational skills as well as verbal communication skills and ability to prioritize and re-prioritize in conjunction with business needs.
Preferred
- Prior classroom teaching experience (K-12 ELA).
- Experience working with digital content authoring tools or content management systems (CMS).
