Assistant Graphic Designer Jobs in Spring Arbor, MI

Position Type:
Student Support Services/Home and School Support Specialist
Date Posted:
7/31/2026
Location:
Northwestern Academy of Visual and Performing Arts
At Northwestern Middle School our vision is a safe place where our staff and students love to be and love to learn! We all commit to creating a safe, compassionate, and academically engaging learning environment so all can reach their full potential.
Northwestern has transformed into a K-8 visual and performing arts academy. Visual and performing arts are powerful tools to help students discover healthy expression, build self-worth, engage in learning, and discover their power to contribute to the world. At the transformed Northwestern, students will:

• Choose from a variety of different music, literary and visual art, theater, and dance classes.
• Participate in a rich arts educational experience that includes various performances, visual arts and other community involvement opportunities.
• Benefit from major upgrades to the school itself, including a new Welcome Center, studio spaces for dance and art classes, brand new digital graphics and video production lab, and new kindergarten classrooms.

Position Summary:
The Home and School Support Specialist serves as a bridge between students' home lives and their experiences at school. The position helps identify and address barriers that affect attendance, engagement, wellness, and academic participation while building trusting relationships with students, families, school staff, and community partners.
The Specialist supports a positive and welcoming school environment where students feel connected, valued, and that they belong. The position provides Tier 1 attendance supports for all students, maintains assigned caseloads of students who are chronically absent (Tier 2) or at risk of chronic absence (Tier 2), provides mentoring and student check-ins, conducts family outreach and home visits, and connects students and families with school and community resources.
Major Responsibilities:
Attendance Support and Intervention

• Support implementation of Multi-Tiered System of Supports for attendance.
• Coordinate Tier 1 attendance programs, routines, communications, recognition, and incentives that promote regular attendance, school connectedness, and a sense of belonging for all students.
• Monitor attendance data to identify students who are chronically absent, approaching chronic absence, or showing concerning attendance patterns.
• Maintain assigned attendance caseloads and provide timely outreach, check-ins, goal setting, progress monitoring, and follow-up.
• Assist with attendance conferences, improvement plans, re-engagement meetings, and other interventions designed to remove barriers and improve attendance.
• Conduct home visits to strengthen home-school relationships, understand family needs, and support improved attendance.
• Maintain accurate records of contacts, interventions, home visits, referrals, and student progress.
• Coordinate additional home visit efforts with community partners, building staff & district staff.

Student Mentoring and Support

• Provide ongoing mentorship, encouragement, and relationship-based support to assigned students.
• Maintain various student and family caseloads based on attendance, engagement, behavior, social-emotional, or family-support needs.
• Help students develop skills in self-regulation, problem-solving, conflict resolution, help-seeking, accountability, task completion, and positive peer and adult relationships.
• Support students returning to school or class following extended absences, family challenges, conflict, suspension, or other disruptions.
• Seek out and coordinate appropriate mentoring opportunities, programs, and positive adult connections for students.
• Provide support that helps students reflect, regulate, solve problems, repair relationships when appropriate, and return to learning.
• Coordinate additional mentoring and support efforts with community partners, building staff & district staff.

Family Advocacy and Home-School Connection

• Serve as a welcoming and accessible point of contact for students and families.
• Build trusting relationships with caregivers and help bridge gaps between home circumstances and in-school expectations, routines, and supports.
• Communicate with families through phone calls, electronic communication, school meetings, community outreach, and home visits.
• Help families understand attendance expectations, school procedures, available supports, and opportunities to participate in the school community.
• Connect families with resources related to food, clothing, hygiene, transportation, housing, healthcare, counseling, tutoring, and other needs.
• Assist with family orientations, parent meetings, family nights, school events, student celebrations, newsletters, and family communications.
• Encourage family participation in conferences, school programs, volunteer opportunities, advisory groups, and engagement activities.
• Coordinate, create, and implement family engagement events and activities that strengthen partnerships among families, students, staff, and the school community.
• Develop meaningful opportunities for families to provide feedback on their experiences, needs, and priorities, and use that feedback to help inform school improvement and family engagement efforts.
• Collaborate with school staff, families, and community partners to plan, promote, facilitate, and evaluate family engagement initiatives that increase participation, strengthen school-home connections, and foster a welcoming culture of belonging.

Positive School Environment and Student Belonging

• Support a positive, safe, welcoming, and culturally responsive school environment where students and families feel valued and connected.
• Assist with schoolwide activities that strengthen attendance, student recognition, belonging, wellness, and positive relationships.
• Use trauma-informed, restorative, culturally responsive, and social-emotional approaches when supporting students and families.
• Collaborate with staff providing behavior, attendance, restorative, trauma-informed, social-emotional learning, wellness, and family-engagement supports.
• Support proactive approaches that reduce missed instructional time and help students remain engaged in learning.

Community Partnerships and Resource Coordination

• Develop and maintain relationships with community organizations, service providers, mentors, volunteers, and other partners.
• Maintain current information about community resources and connect students and families with appropriate services.
• Engage community partners to bring mentoring, enrichment, basic-needs support, family education, and other opportunities into the school.
• Follow up with families and partners, when appropriate, to support access to services and continuity of care.
• Represent the school professionally during assigned family and community events.

Collaboration, Documentation, and Professional Responsibilities

• Participate in attendance, MTSS, SST, re-entry, and student-support meetings as assigned.
• Collaborate with administrators, teachers, support staff, district departments, families, and community providers.
• Collect and submit required data related to attendance, student caseloads, mentoring, family contacts, home visits, referrals, participation, and outcomes.
• Maintain confidentiality and exercise sound judgment when handling student and family information.
• Attend staff meetings, professional development, and occasional evening activities as assigned.
• Perform other related duties consistent with the purpose and level of the position.

Qualifications:

• Associate or bachelor's degree in education, human services, social work, criminal justice, psychology, family studies, community engagement, counseling, or a related field.
• A minimum of three years of successful experience working with students, families, schools, youth programs, community organizations, social-service programs, or related settings.
• Experience mentoring adolescents or supporting students with attendance, engagement, behavioral, academic, or social-emotional needs.
• Experience conducting family outreach or connecting families with school and community resources.
• Valid driver's license, reliable transportation, and ability to travel to homes, community locations, meetings, and school events.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Five or more years of relevant experience working with students, families, attendance initiatives, mentoring programs, or community-based services.
• Experience supporting students who are chronically absent or at risk of chronic absence.
• Experience with trauma-informed practices, restorative practices, social-emotional learning, wellness, or family engagement.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Knowledge of Battle Creek-area community resources and organizations.
• Ability to attend occasional evening meetings, family events, and community activities.
• Ability to build positive relationships with students and families from diverse backgrounds.
• Ability to mentor students and manage multiple student caseloads.
• Understanding of attendance barriers, chronic absenteeism, student engagement, and family-support practices.
• Ability to communicate respectfully and effectively with students, caregivers, staff, and community partners.
• Ability to organize activities, maintain documentation, manage competing priorities, and follow through on assigned responsibilities.
• Ability to work independently while following the direction of building and district leadership.
• Ability to remain calm, professional, and solution-focused in challenging situations.
• Knowledge of community resources and the ability to build productive partnerships.
• Basic proficiency with email, word processing, spreadsheets, student information systems, and other district technology.
• Commitment to student success, family partnership, equity, inclusion, confidentiality, and respectful service.

Contract: 188 Work Days
Salary: $22.50/hour
Reports To: Building Principal
SCHOOL SAFETY CLEARANCE: The successful candidate will be subject to a fingerprint and background check as a condition of employment. All fees required for this check (estimated $73.00) may be the responsibility of the successful applicant.
The Battle Creek Public School District is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate on the basis of race, color, handicap, sex, age, religion, national origin, weight, height, or marital status in its employment practices.