General Information

GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT

BELOVED COMMUNITY CHARTER SCHOOL


Working at BelovED


At many truly excellent schools, even the most committed teachers can feel burned out after a few years.


At Beloved Community Charter School, we mesh the high expectations culture and successful classroom management practices of America’s top-performing charter school operators with a proven education program and effective professional development protocols, plus teacher supports that are designed to avoid teacher burnout, so educators can remain charged and enthusiastic throughout an entire career.  


If you want to work at a school that will help you professionally develop to your highest potential and help inner-city children achieve to their highest potential, if you love the sense of purpose and accomplishment one receives from this extremely meaningful work –then Beloved Community Charter School is for you.



School Overview


BelovED Community Charter School is named in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of a community where people care about and help one another.  (To read more about King’s vision, and ours, click here.)


It is among the most ethnically and economically diverse public schools in the State of New Jersey. 


It Founders established BelovED to model how combining a particular set of research-proven Best Practices could lead to:

  • OUTSTANDING student learning;

  • HAPPY scholars and parents; and

  • JOB-ENJOYING teachers.


BelovED’s school model is achieving EVERY ONE of these objectives, proving that urban public schools can be GREAT and that the American dream of an EXCELLENT EDUCATION FOR EVERY CHILD can be realized!


Distinctive elements of the school model include:

  • A high-expectations academic culture merged with a caring and fun school climate  

  • Positive values, habits, character and community building 

  • Extensive professional development support for teachers

  • A carefully sequenced curriculum aligned with state and common core standards

  • Data driven instruction empowered by regular formative assessment

  • Instructional groupings by students’ level of standards mastery, not categorizations of  ability

  • A novel system of class prefects and peer-tutoring

  • A sophisticated academic performance monitoring and parental communication system

  • Carefully crafted, non-stigmatizing interventions when a student exhibits difficulty mastering a standard – including tutoring in very small groups from Language Arts/Literacy and/or Math specialists who serve on staff full-time

  • A longer school day with more time for critical learning 

  • Student Life activities that teach confidence, initiative, and leadership

  • An academy system that divides the larger school into smaller schools

  • In high school, Advanced Placement and college-level courses 


The school’s founders are seeking to refine their model in a way that will facilitate its adoption by district-operated public schools and spur improvements in public education far beyond the Beloved Community Charter School network.



The Education Program


The School’s education program is built upon a cumulative, mastery-based curriculum; an innovative, highly effective pedagogy; and intensive use of educator-empowering, formative assessments. 


Instruction is guided by a set of precisely defined learning objectives for each grade level that are right-sized to be the focus of individual lessons and are carefully sequenced to lead students toward efficient mastery of the State’s year-end grade-level learning objectives.


Think of a staircase.  When the step-up height of each step is too small, climbing the staircase from one floor to the next takes longer than necessary.  When the step-up height is too great, climbing the staircase leaves climbers exhausted.  When the step up height is just right, and each step is in its proper place relative to the steps below it and the steps above it, climbers make steady, maximally efficient progress from one floor to the next.  It’s the same with instruction.  It helps when lessons are focused upon learning objectives that are right-sized as to challenge, and sequenced in an order that facilitates students making steady, maximally efficient progress up the learning staircase.


As an equal opportunity employer, BelovED hires without consideration to race, religion, creed, color, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, or disability.