Partner, School Design Tools & Experiences

Partner, School Design Tools & Experiences

Role Type: Full-time
Title: Partner, School Design Tools & Experiences
Reports to: Kirsten Dargis, Journey Supports Team Lead
Travel: Willingness to travel approximately 6-8x / year (10-15%)

Who We Are:

Transcend’s mission is to support communities to create and spread extraordinary learning environments for all. Founded in 2015, Transcend has partnered with over 390 schools/partners, which collectively serve thousands of students in over 30 states across the country. As a research & development hub for the education 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. Transcend is a nonprofit that operates with a fully remote, nationwide team; currently with 120+ teammates and growing. For more information, follow us on LinkedIn, check out this podcast featuring our two co-founders on Class Disrupted, or read this recent article that illuminates the need for this work.

The Opportunity:

The core way we approach school design at Transcend is by supporting communities to go on locally-driven design journeys to reimagine their learning environments. Schools form design teams -- often made up of school leaders, teachers, students, caregivers, and other community members -- who learn from their wider community (via interviews, focus groups, etc), from the research about how learning best happens, and from existing innovative models. They use insights from this learning to envision and build out different aspects of a new model of school that fits the needs and aspirations of their community. They test and refine their design and strengthen the conditions needed to support this change along the way. Over time they implement this new model of school, leading to extraordinary learning for all of their students. 

As communities progress through their design journeys, they -- and the Design Partners supporting them -- will leverage a range of tools and resources: from guidance on forming a design team, to interview guides for talking to young people, to dynamic sessions for community members to envision their future school, to asynchronous modules to build capacity in a local Planning Team, among many others. The Journey Supports team at Transcend leads the compilation and iteration of these tools and resources. As Transcend seeks to simultaneously widen our reach and deepen our impact, this team’s work is central to the organization’s biggest bets.

As a Partner, School Design Tools & Experiences you’ll play a unique role in living out the Journey Supports Team charge by supporting the development of tools & resources that reflect our best understanding of key elements of design journeys, as well as capacity-building experiences that help train Design Partners to play their role. You’ll work closely with other members of the Journey Supports Team to ensure that our centralized tools & resources reflect the learnings from across our work and align with our organizational frameworks. And, you’ll work with teammates across Transcend to put these tools into action and iterate on them based on what you learn. 

In this role, you will get to:

• Translate existing resources and guidance into polished, accessible, and engaging tools that solve specific user needs and challenges. Examples of these tools include: a 3-pager about leading focus groups, protocol + guidance for analyzing pilot data, a script for a video telling the story of a community’s design journey, etc.
• Innovate and design new approaches to design journey activities, such as an engaging 2-hour session for a Design Team to envision their profile of a graduate.
• Envision and build learning experiences that empower others to lead design journeys with confidence. Examples of this might include: a practice activity to help a Design Partner prepare to analyze pilot data, or a case study to help folks practice creating a journey plan.
• Work closely alongside teammates who are leveraging these products to learn from how they are being used and improve them accordingly. 
• Support the organization of our tools and resources in our knowledge and learning management systems.
• Contribute to the broader vision for how our tools and resources can help Transcend to scale the impact of our work without sacrificing quality.
• Be an active and collaborative member of Transcend’s Journey Supports Team.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with other strategic collaborators across the organization including our Usable Knowledge team, our MarComms team, our Business Development team, and our Portfolio teams. 

Who You Are

You are an excellent designer and builder with a wealth of knowledge and experience in creating resources and learning sessions that engage and propel adult learners. Your clarity of thought and communication are some of your biggest superpowers. It’s not uncommon for you to synthesize and reflect back on what you’ve heard from others in ways that inspire them to say, “Wow, yes - that’s what we’ve been trying to say, but you said it more clearly!” You can swim in big concepts and also sweat the details. Not only are you masterful at synthesizing messy ideas into clear and compelling information, you also find ways to convey that information that are sticky and delightful to engage with. In your hands, a tool becomes more than a means to an end; it becomes a pathway for adult learners to better live out the reasons they got into education in the first place. In all of this, you are driven by a deep commitment to redesigning education to be more engaging and effective for more young people. 

To all of this, you bring: 

• A deep commitment to Transcend’s mission of transforming education, and an eagerness to add to Transcend’s culture and live into Transcend’s core values
• An ability to distill complex ideas into clear, user-centered tools and resources that prioritize usability, a compelling visual design, and a thoughtful structure
• Excellent written communication and synthesis skills
• Skills and experience in designing effective and engaging learning experiences for adults
• An ability to skillfully develop and refine an idea and product over time with multiple rounds of feedback from others 
• A strong orientation to detail
• Confidence in owning your work while remaining responsive to team input and taking direction from others
• Exceptional project management and organizational skills that allow you to gather and organize multiple work streams and logistics efficiently, and prioritize tasks and meet deadlines
• Strong personal organization systems for the remote work environment
• An orientation of flexibility, enthusiasm, and trust when working with a highly collaborative team
• Entrepreneurial hunger to build, learn, and lead in a lean and at times ambiguous context
• Experience working in or supporting K-12 schools as a teacher, curriculum designer, instructional coach, or school leader
• Proficiency with Google Suite apps including Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Slide, and Google Draw, with the ability to apply the available tools in each to solve design and accessibility challenges in creative ways 
• Experience and basic proficiency with all or a subset of these tools + platforms: Notion, Articulate Storyline, Nearpod, Adobe Illustrator, Canva, and/or video editing tools
• A drive to strengthen your skills in those tools and to explore how AI can support more effective and efficient building of tools and resources

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 take pride in our collaborative environment, exceptional team, and shared commitment to principled, impactful work. 

Join Us!

We are an experienced team focused on extraordinary learning for all. We welcome candidates who are passionate about ensuring that all students thrive.