Private Special Education Teacher

Thrive Education Partners is seeking an experienced, relationship-driven Private Special Education Teacher to lead a highly personalized educational program for a middle school student in Thousand Oaks, California. We are looking for a warm, dynamic, and highly responsive educator who understands how to support a student with individualized learning needs while maintaining high expectations for growth, independence, and engagement.

Great individualized instruction starts with understanding the whole learner: where a student is academically, how they learn best, which underlying skills or learning differences may be creating barriers, and what supports will help them move forward. In this role, the educator will use that understanding to establish meaningful goals, thoughtfully adapt grade-level content, design targeted instruction, and help the student make clear, measurable progress over time.

The ideal candidate is an experienced special educator who can recognize why a student is struggling, not simply that they are struggling. This person should be comfortable adapting curriculum, breaking complex skills into manageable steps, providing explicit and systematic instruction, and adjusting their approach in real time based on student response. Just as importantly, they should be excited to build a strong relationship with one learner and create an engaging academic program around the student's strengths, interests, and needs.

This is a full-time, year-round position and the educator is the one teacher at the center of the student's week. The family is looking for someone who will stay, and a commitment of at least two years is the goal. The educator will work in close partnership with the family, an established team of support professionals, and Thrive's Educational Manager. This is an opportunity for a special educator who values strong relationships, individualized instruction, and the autonomy to build a thoughtful educational program around one student's strengths, needs, and long-term growth.

Student Profile

You'll work with a warm, social, and engaging middle school student who benefits from individualized special education instruction and a thoughtful, relationship-centered approach. The student is a strong visual learner who notices patterns quickly, takes real pride in work completed independently, and has interests, music above all, that can be used creatively to make academic work engaging and meaningful.

The student benefits from support in areas including communication, processing, self-regulation, and academic skill development. Retrieval takes time, so the answer often arrives ten to twenty seconds after the question, and how material is presented, print size, contrast, spacing, and how much appears at once, changes what the student is able to read and do. The family is seeking an educator who can provide access to age-appropriate, grade-level concepts through carefully adapted instruction, meeting the student at their current access point while maintaining meaningful expectations for growth.

Academic priorities this year include grade-level content across core subjects at the student's access point, structured literacy work on vowels and multisyllabic decoding taught inside that content, foundational mathematics targets, and executive function taught directly as its own area of instruction rather than as whatever is left over at the end of a lesson.

Strong relationships matter in this placement. The student responds especially well to educators who are warm and encouraging, communicate clearly, remain steady through moments of frustration, and demonstrate genuine confidence in the student's ability to learn. Clear expectations, real wait time, and work the student finishes without help are what produce the best days.

What You'll Do

• Take day-to-day ownership of a personalized academic program across core subject areas.
• Adapt grade-level concepts, curriculum, and materials to create accessible, age-appropriate instruction.
• Design engaging, multi-sensory learning experiences responsive to the student's strengths, interests, and learning profile.
• Set the visual and physical conditions for learning before instruction begins, including print size, contrast, line isolation, seating, and planned breaks.
• Identify foundational skills that need additional support while continuing to introduce meaningful new academic content.
• Establish baselines in each subject early in the placement and check every skill in more than one format before drawing a conclusion about what the student knows.
• Incorporate opportunities to strengthen independence, communication, executive functioning, stamina, and self-regulation within the educational program.
• Convene and run a small peer group one day a week, with parents participating, building toward two groups by spring.
• Use community-based and experiential learning to support academic, functional, and social development, with Friday afternoons given to community access and generalization.
• Monitor progress and adjust pacing, materials, supports, and instructional strategies in response to the student's needs.
• Keep dated work samples, instructional records, and progress documentation that support the student's long-term diploma pathway.
• Communicate consistently with the family and collaborate with the student's support professionals and Thrive's Educational Manager to maintain a coordinated educational approach.

What Makes Someone Successful

• You are warm, dynamic, relational, and professional, and you know how to build trust while maintaining clear expectations.
• You hold an active California Special Education teaching credential and have the instructional expertise to thoughtfully adapt academic content for an individual learner.
• You understand how to make learning accessible without making it unnecessarily simplistic or developmentally inappropriate.
• You wait. You ask the question once, hold the silence, offer a clue rather than the answer, and leave the work with the student.
• When a student's output drops, you check the conditions first, including presentation, wait time, and the form of the question, before drawing conclusions about ability.
• You can respond calmly and flexibly when a student experiences frustration, fatigue, or difficulty while continuing to support meaningful engagement and progress.
• You are an excellent communicator who values partnership with parents, specialists, and other educators.
• You enjoy professional autonomy and are comfortable designing curriculum, solving instructional problems, monitoring progress, and refining your approach over time.

Experience supporting students with intellectual or developmental disabilities is valuable. More important is strong special education practice, sound professional judgment, and a genuine commitment to individualized, age-respectful instruction.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Education, Special Education, or a related field
• Active California Education Specialist teaching credential appropriate to the student's support needs, Mild/Moderate or Extensive Support Needs
• Minimum of 3 years of relevant teaching experience
• Experience adapting grade-level curriculum and developing individualized learning plans for students with diverse learning needs
• Experience assessing the same skill in more than one format
• Experience partnering closely with parents and collaborating with multidisciplinary support teams
• Strong communication, organization, and progress-monitoring skills
• Eligible to work in the United States
• Must reside in or be willing to relocate to the Thousand Oaks, California area prior to employment
• Valid California driver's license and reliable transportation for community-based learning and activities

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience teaching at the middle or high school level
• Experience supporting middle school students with intellectual or developmental disabilities
• Experience adapting age-appropriate academic content to a student's individual access point
• Structured literacy training
• AAC or assistive technology experience
• Master's in Special Education, or BCBA or RBT certification
• Comfort teaching through music, and experience convening or running small peer groups
• Experience with experiential, community-based, or interdisciplinary learning
• Experience in private education, home-based education, or another highly personalized 1:1 learning environment

Professional Standards

• Current background check required; Thrive facilitates this process
• Verifiable references from prior teaching roles, including at least one direct supervisor or administrator
• Strong professionalism, discretion, and adaptability when working within a family's home
• Comfort maintaining strict confidentiality and signing an NDA as a condition of employment

Benefits

Logistics & Compensation

• Location: Thousand Oaks, California
• Setting: In-person, primarily 1:1 private education, with community-based and small-group instruction
• Schedule:
• • Monday: 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM
  • Tuesday: 12:00 to 4:00 PM
  • Wednesday: 11:00 AM to 2:45 PM
  • Thursday: 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM
  • Friday: 1:00 to 5:00 PM
• Hours: 20 to 22 teaching hours per week plus 6 to 8 hours of planning and preparation, up to 30 hours total
• Planning time: Built into the working day and protected, much of it while the student is with another provider
• Summer: Reduced schedule, so instruction continues at a lighter cadence alongside camp and other summer opportunities
• Start: Mid-September 2026
• Compensation: $75,000 to $110,000 annually, depending on experience and qualifications
• Employment: Full-time, year-round W2 employee of Thrive Education Partners

Support from Thrive

• Dedicated Thrive support throughout the recruitment, interview, and placement process
• A dedicated Educational Manager who designs the academic program, maintains the records, and coaches the educator weekly
• The learning plan, course sequence, and assessment framework in place before the first teaching week
• Ongoing collaboration with Thrive's Educational Management team around curriculum, assessment, progress monitoring, and educational strategy
• Substitute coverage and a continuity plan so instruction holds when the educator is away
• Professional development and instructional support as needs evolve
• Access to Thrive's broader network of educators, specialists, and educational resources
• Ongoing partnership to support a strong, sustainable educator-family relationship

Why This Role

This is an opportunity to practice individualized teaching with a level of focus that is difficult to achieve in a traditional classroom. You’ll have the time to know one student deeply, design instruction around how they learn best, and continually refine your approach based on what you see working.

You’ll also have meaningful professional autonomy without working in isolation. The family has built an established team of support professionals and is looking for a teacher who will become a core part of that collaborative team. For an educator who values creativity, strong relationships, thoughtful special education practice, and the opportunity to see the impact of their work over time, this is a uniquely rewarding role.

About Thrive

Thrive Education Partners connects exceptional educators with families seeking highly personalized education. Our private teacher placements are built around strong educator-student relationships, individualized instruction, thoughtful collaboration, and the belief that education should be responsive to each student as a learner.

Thrive supports educators and families throughout the placement process and provides ongoing Educational Management to help create cohesive, high-quality learning experiences.

Thrive Education Partners is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and make hiring decisions based on experience, skills, and business needs, without regard to any status protected by applicable law.