Description

About Kontinua: The Kontinua Foundation is dedicated to providing every student with exceptional STEM education and clear pathways to college and STEM careers. The workforce of the future will demand scientists, engineers, programmers, architects, and data scientists with a deep understanding of math, physics, and computer science. Some students go to schools where there are good classes in these topics, but most don’t – and they are likely to be students of color and those who are economically disadvantaged. Our goal is to cultivate a strong, diverse pipeline of future scientists, developers, and engineers – one that authentically represents the full spectrum of student experiences and backgrounds and that increases economic opportunity for individuals, families, and communities. 

We do this by providing a free, self-paced learning experience that honors learners’ capabilities, needs, and circumstances and prepares them for STEM degrees and careers. We’ve designed our learning experience as a set of printable workbooks that students can use anywhere, anytime: no internet connection or digital devices are required. Students proceed at their own pace, ensuring that they can balance academic study with other responsibilities. 

About Our Curriculum: Mathematics, science, engineering, and technology are naturally interwoven, but traditional education artificially separates them. Rather than teaching these subjects in isolation, Kontinua presents them as an integrated learning journey that we call The Sequence, where each concept builds naturally on the previous ones. Students see the connections explicitly. The curriculum covers essential concepts in geometry, linear algebra, and vector calculus; basic algorithms and data structures; Python computer programming; basic data science and machine learning techniques; some chemistry; and physics topics that an engineer would know at the end of their first year of college.  You can find a more detailed content outline here. 

Kontinua’s learning experience provides the equivalent of four years of rigorous high school STEM instruction, designed for deep, sequential learning over time. At some point the course may be used in traditional high school settings, but initially we want to serve students in alternative high schools, credit recovery and GED programs, juvenile detention, competency-based schools, homeschools, and/or online academies. Flexible, self-paced instructional options may be particularly important for these students, and they may encounter the most barriers to accessing STEM careers and degrees.

What We’re Looking For: We’re seeking knowledgeable educators who have experience teaching math, physics, chemistry, computer science, and/or engineering at the high school level to help us finish and fine-tune the content in our course workbooks. In particular, we need good writers who can create content on the following topics:

• Magnetism and induction
• Angular momentum and gyroscopic forces
• How colors separate when refracted, rainbows, and chromatic aberration
• Simple linear regression and residuals
• How a transistor works
• Weather (Why is there wind? What is a high-pressure system? Why does it rain?)
• Python programming

We’re looking for writers who can revise and expand upon existing, unfinished content in several other areas as well. 

Your writing should: 

• Include clear, instructional text written in accordance with our style guide. The content should provide learners with the knowledge and skills they’d need to be successful in an introductory-level university course that includes the specified topic(s), presented in an accessible and engaging way. (example)
• Provide at least six practice problems and six text problems per chapter.
• Incorporate images as needed, either created by you or obtained from open source repositories.
• Include information that supports indexing.
• You’re welcome (but not required) to create a separate file that lists recommended, relevant free digital resources that learners can access on the internet for extra practice, application, and/or exploring specific concepts in greater depth. (example)
• After you’re assigned a chapter to write or revise, you’ll create your content in LaTeX, a typesetting system that includes features designed for the production of mathematical, technical, and scientific documentation. (If you’re not familiar, it’s relatively easy to learn and there are many good, free online tools that can help you create documents in LaTeX.)
• You’ll save your content as a student.tek file and upload it, along with any associated graphics, to a chapter folder in the Kontinua Foundation’s GitHub repository. 

Your content will be reviewed by a Kontinua staff member and we may ask you for revisions. After we agree that the content is satisfactory, you’ll invoice us for the time you spent. We’re paying writers $40/hour. 

We’re particularly interested in finding writers who have worked with students in nontraditional settings and/or who have experience creating culturally relevant curricula for diverse learners. 

If you’re interested in applying to write for us, please email a resume and cover letter to Mary Kadera, Executive Director: [email protected]. 

We look forward to hearing from you!