About Ascend
Ascend is a network of high-performing public charter schools serving students across Brooklyn. Our mission is to ensure that all students, regardless of background, have access to an education that empowers them to unlock their full potential, achieve academic excellence, and pursue a future of boundless opportunity. We cultivate rigorous learning environments where students develop critical thinking skills, confidence, and a lifelong love of learning.
At Ascend, educational equity is a driving force. We are committed to closing the achievement gap by delivering high-quality instruction, fostering a culture of high expectations, and equipping every student with the knowledge and skills needed to excel in college and beyond. Through this unwavering commitment, we prepare students not only to succeed academically but to seize every opportunity that lies ahead.
About the Role
We seek school Deans of Culture and Community (DCC) who are passionate about building and leading a school culture that serves every student and the whole student. Our DCCs are the champions of our Responsive Classroom and restorative practices approach at our middle schools. They ensure our staff provide a rich, joyful learning experience where every student learns and grows. The dean will provide cultural leadership to the teaching staff and oversee the implementation of school-wide systems and procedures. In addition, the Dean of Culture and Community will drive the impact of critical partnerships: with the leadership team to ensure that all students, including those with exceptionalities, have the access and support needed to achieve; with families to ensure a true partnership is built and results in positive outcomes for the student; and with grade-level leaders to ensure each grade level achieves culture goals and establishes a positive, joyful learning community.
Join us as we foster our students’ innate curiosities, encourage discussion and debate, and guide students to think, imagine, debate, and create.
Responsibilities
School culture
- Leads and drives the school’s family partnership vision and strategic plans, including establishing partnership guidelines and support that results in reciprocity amongst our schools, our families, and our communities, and drives learning from and with each other
- Co-leads the planning and execution of Tier 1 interventions, including serving as a model and delivering feedback to strengthen interventions
- Leads and manages culture data systems (i.e. attendance, referrals, and logical consequences), related communication structures, and data-driven action plans that ensures data is used to strengthen school and classroom culture
- Partners with the leadership team in leading school-wide morning meeting, advisory, and community meeting planning and execution
- Partners with the student service team to implement systems that continuously provide the highest leverage support for vulnerable students
- Supports and partners with grade-level leaders and culture associates to ensure grade levels achieve culture goals
- Coaches and manages staff to achieve family communication vision and expectations, including providing effective family communication that benefits student learning
- Plan, leads, and oversees family and community events that reflect our vision and values
Curriculum and instruction
- Develop teachers' ability to foster and maintain a safe and culturally responsive classroom that results in love.
- Partners with student service team and leadership team to ensure that all students, including those with exceptionalities, have access and support needed to achieve and demonstrate readiness for the next grade
Fostering a diverse, equitable, inclusive, and anti-racist community
- Models and supports a race equity culture, including skill-building and leading self and others through awareness, growth, and development
- Partners to plan and execute individual or team activities with systems that support continuous improvement with a focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-racism, and excellence
- Serve as DASA liaison (Dignity for All Students Act)
Effective teaming
- Serves as the manager and coach for culture associates
- Coaches and develops staff, including planning and leading professional development, on behavior management, responsive classroom, and social-emotional learning
- Promotes and develops strong teams that collaborate, communicate, and work together for Ascend students and the community
- Observes and supports grade-level leaders in their planning and facilitation of grade-level meetings
- Works collaboratively, leverages data, and thinks flexibly to continuously improve school culture systems and decision-making processes that strengthen outcomes
Staff and reporting relationships
The Dean of Culture and Community reports to the principal and supervises all culture associates.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree, with an advanced degree, preferred
- At least three years teaching experience with a proven track record of elevating student achievement and classroom culture metrics
- At least one year of experience leading, managing, and coaching a team of adults that demonstrates an ability to drive results through others
- A passion, commitment, and expertise in responsive classroom and restorative practices
- A hunger for feedback and self-improvement
- A high level of ownership over the overall outcomes of the scholars they lead
- A hunger for feedback and self-important
- Self-awareness, with an ability to treat all members of the school’s community with respect and an accurate idea of one’s strengths and areas of growth
- Strong collaboration, interpersonal and communication skills, including working effectively with people from diverse backgrounds and with diverse perspectives
- Strong organizational, self-management, and problem-solving skills with the ability to handle many responsibilities simultaneously
- Alignment with the educational philosophy and core beliefs of Ascend Learning
