Music Teacher (9-12)

The St. Jerome Institute NOVA is seeking a teacher of Music for the 2026-2027 school year. SJI NOVA seeks in its founding year to bring into being in a new location what we have already proven possible: that joy and order can thrive together in harmony, that faith and reason are meant to work together, and that humility and the pursuit of excellence are the calling of all young people.

Music has a unique power to order the passions in accord with right reason, bringing them into a beautiful integration that removes inner conflict and allows their full expression. Good music teaches us to feel deeply for the right reasons, an essential step on the road to becoming great-souled. We sing because there is no other way to fully express what we feel and know in our hearts. The Music teacher at SJI NOVA will help students begin to understand the inner logic of music and its great power to shape our affections and draw us into communion with God and neighbor. In particular, the music teacher will help students cultivate the first instrument: the human voice. Through the practice of singing together, students will be introduced to the fundamental elements of music – melody, harmony, rhythm, tone, form, tempo, and dynamics. The study of music will also include an introduction to music theory, notation, and composition, the history of music, ear training and sight singing, harmony, and the pride of place that Gregorian chant holds in sacred music. In addition to the songs that students will sing together, students will also study and listen to masterpieces and master performers, taking advantage of live performances in and around the metro area when possible.

St. Jerome Institute NOVA (SJI), is a co-ed, classical liberal arts high school in the Catholic tradition. SJI NOVA will open in its doors in August 2026 in Falls Church, Virginia, and is a first daughter of the original campus in Washington, DC, which was founded in 2019. SJI has reinvented traditional education to meet the challenges of our time. Our curriculum opens the most fundamental questions of the human heart at the very moment when young men and women are longing to understand themselves and their place in the world. Shoulder to shoulder with great thinkers, writers, artists, and saints, and led by the light of the Catholic intellectual tradition, we embark on a grand journey of academic excellence and joyful self-discovery.

SJI possesses a remarkable school culture of joy, order, faithfulness, and academic rigor.  SJI is seeking candidates who know their subjects deeply and are capable of guiding students to virtue and leading them into the full maturity of Christian adulthood. Therefore, the ideal candidate has been deeply formed in the Catholic intellectual tradition and also possesses the rhetorical and leadership capacity to direct and inspire students, as well as an understanding of the St. Jerome Institute Educational Plan.