Transcend Education
PARTNER, MODEL DESIGN AND SPREAD
Start Date: Immediate
Role Type: Full time
Location: Flexible in US; fully remote team
Travel: 40%: estimated ~2-3x monthly, for 2-3 days at a time
Who We Are:
Transcend is a non profit organization that works in partnership with over 200 schools and 50 systems which collectively serve nearly 500,000 students in 30 states across the country. Founded in 2015, Transcend’s mission is to support communities to create and spread extraordinary, equitable learning environments. As an R&D hub for the field, Transcend provides schools and systems with research-backed, community-driven models and capacity so they can make significant leaps to reimagine the future of education.
For more information, visit our website or follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter; or check out this recent podcast featuring our two co-founders on Class Disrupted.
The Opportunity:
Over our six years of supporting school communities to create extraordinary equitable learning environments, we’ve found that school communities find incredible value in being able to access an innovative school model that has already proven successful elsewhere (e.g., the Whole Child Model, Success Bound, New Tech) and adopt/adapt it into their own working school design. This can save valuable time, provide deeper insight into what really works, and avoid known pitfalls that schools find when they start from scratch.
Although schools that have found success with their models are often willing and want to share and spread their models, it can be an additional challenge they face, and, the available supply of innovative models with strong implementation supports (quick-start guides, adaptable PD sessions, cohort or 1:1 coaching, etc.) and evidence of impact is still relatively low. This scarcity creates an environment where the majority of schools are still trying to create their own models from scratch instead of the easier and more efficient method of adopting/adapting from proven models.
To alleviate these issues, Transcend works to address the challenges originating schools/models face in advancing and codifying their designs and helps make their supports accessible to others wanting to implement change in their own schools.
Some examples of these types of partnerships include:
Partnering with Van Ness Elementary in DC to advance its Whole Child Model, codify its supports, and run multiple cohorts of a Whole Child Collaborative sharing approach, including expanding support to schools in TN and TX. See this case study for more details.
Partnering with Valor Collegiate Academies in Nashville to advance its innovative socio-emotional learning (SEL) Compass model, codify its supports, and design and continuously improve a Compass Camp sharing program that is currently running its 5th cohort for schools around the country.
Supporting Gradient Learning to codify the instructional look-fors and school-wide conditions that support the Summit Learning model, feeding into many of the implementation supports that they provide to hundreds of schools around the country.
Codifying and scaling innovative models is a major need in the field, and both existing model sharers and prospective model sharers want more support than we can currently provide.
In this role, you will get to:
Help transform promising designs into shareable models
Explore ‘why share’ with the school partner (or other source of promising design), iterating toward a ‘case for sharing’ that the school community is aligned around.
Explore ‘what to share’ with the school partner, iterating toward a model design (including codified supports) that has promising evidence of impact and can potentially be transferred to other contexts.
Explore ‘how to share’ with the school partner, iterating toward a model sharing strategy that can be piloted, continuously improved, and scaled over time.
Help improve and broaden existing model sharing efforts
Help the existing model sharer identify opportunities to improve the quality and/or scale of its sharing efforts.
Help the existing model sharer act on those opportunities by strengthening the model, improving the model sharing approach, and accessing new network connections,financial resources, support tools, etc..
Help the existing model sharer build its evidence base of impact over time, as one way of unlocking additional access to demand, funding, and continuous improvement.
To learn more about this role, listen to Ross Lipstein share more about the work here.
Who You Are:
You are one part educator and one part organizational strategist. You understand the realities of being in schools and can deeply empathize both with leaders who want to share an innovative model and with those who want to adopt/adapt an innovative model. You know what supports are most useful in making a new model successful in a school, and you feel committed to making sure that teachers and administrators are as well-supported as possible when taking on a change in their school.
You love collaborating to develop and improve strategies for sharing a model once it’s codified. You like exploring what can be learned from existing organizations/approaches in a given sector, and you don’t shy away from hard conversations about where a team needs to grow. You are comfortable building out staffing models and budgets and growth plans. You operate with humility and in constant iteration. You have a deep understanding of what good organizational and management consultation looks like, and you go about it in ways that value practitioner voice, interrupt patterns of oppression or inequity, and meet educators where they are.
You believe deeply in the power of education to change lives, and you can’t wait to work towards increasing the supply of innovative models so that more schools around the country are able to adopt and adapt models that give their students access to equitable and extraordinary learning.
In this role, you will get to contribute your:
Knowledge and experience with K-12 schools or other learning environments, including understanding and empathy for school leaders, educators, and students.
Your ability to guide an initiative or organization to set strategic direction and make intentional and effective decisions toward that direction (e.g., you have experience supporting model codification and sharing, in management consulting, or in a strategy leadership role, etc.).
Critical consciousness regarding opportunities to undo dynamics of oppression/inequity for yourself and in work related to model-sharing/organizational strategy.
Processes to learn about (e.g., via interviews, artifact review, classroom walk-throughs, etc.) and capture the design of learning experiences in K-12 education settings.
Skills to develop staffing models, budgets, and growth plans.
Ability to manage multiple projects that move quickly; ability to multitask and prioritize effectively.
Hunger for feedback and growth based on a personal commitment to excellence and constant learning – thriving on feedback from multiple sources, and fast-cycle iteration to arrive at the best possible product.
Ability to effectively build and nurture strong relationships and communications with a diverse range of stakeholders and at all levels of the organization, including Transcend teammates, independent contractors, school partners, and other members of the field.
Commitment to Transcend’s mission of transforming education, with a passion for creating extraordinary and equitable learning environments.
Desire to live into Transcend’s core values, and be a supportive leader and teammate.
Perks and Benefits:
Transcend is committed to providing our colleagues with a competitive benefits package. Transcend offers medical, dental, and vision coverage options, org-wide holidays, paid time off, paid parental leave, professional development opportunities, and fully remote work. We're also proud of our values-grounded, equity-focused, and fun(!) work environment, incredible colleagues, and a dedication to our work and to one another.
Join Us!
Transcend is an equal opportunity employer. We are building a diverse team that values diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we encourage candidates from historically under-represented groups to apply.