Please see the attached link at the bottom of this description for more details on this position.

The Elementary School Director at Tessellations will play an integral role in bringing consistency to the core curriculum. The director will need to be the face of the elementary school and show up in spaces that communicate to students and parents. They will be a regular presence and uphold an advance the warm culture of Tessellation's learning environment, and its spirit of community.

The Elementary School Director (K-5) leads the daily operations of elementary division at Tessellation School, ensuring a developmentally, responsive, progressive, holistic, inquiry-driven, and intellectually engaging experience for gifted learners. This role fosters, academic, social, emotional, and personal growth while ensuring horizontal and vertical alignment across K-5 and into middle and high school. 

The Director works closely with grade band leaders K-3 and 4-5 to ensure consistency and instructional practices, student support assessment and curriculum implementation. Additionally, the Director plays a critical role in transitions for students and families at key moments, including:

• Entry into kindergarten (helping families and young learners. Adjust to the structure expectations, challenging parents/child relationship and gifted focused, progressive approach at Tessellations.)
• Transition from early elementary K3 to Upper Elementary (4–5)
• Preparation for middle school, ensuring students are academically and socially ready for the next phase of their education.

The Elementary School Director works closely with the Middle School and High School Director to ensure a seamless, aligned K–12 experience, collaborating on curriculum development, assessment practices, social – emotional programming, and student transitions. Additionally, the Director focuses on building faculty capacity, ensuring that educators receive the mentorship, training, feedback, and support necessary to implement, innovative, research–based instructional practices for gifted learners. As an instructional and cultural leader, the Director ensures the test relations, vision, missions, values, beliefs, and philosophy of gifted education are embedded throughout the K-5 program and reflected in students experiences, collaboration, and family partnerships.

Key Responsibilities:

• Collaborate closely with Middle and High School Director to ensure a seamless transition from elementary to middle school and middle to high school.
• Oversee the design, implementation, and evaluation of differentiated, inquiry based curriculum that supports, gifted learners and developing deep, conceptual, understanding, executive functioning, foundational, knowledge and skills, creative, problem-solving, and critical thinking.
• Work with grade band leaders through three and four through five to ensure instructional practices reflect the best approaches in gifted education.
• Conduct regular classroom observations, providing faculty and constructive feedback.

Desired Qualifications:

• Bachelors degree required. Masters degree in education, educational leadership or related field preferred.
• Minimum of five years of teaching and administrative experience, preferably in a gifted or independent school setting.
• Proven expertise in instructional leadership, student support, faculty development, and elementary education.
• Strong, understanding of gifted learners and their academic, social, and emotional needs preferred.
• Expertise and curriculum alignment, direct instruction, differentiation, project based learning, and inquiry based learning.
• Knowledge of restorative discipline and social emotional learning-based practices.
• Exceptional, organizational, communication, and leadership skills.
• Ability to build trust and strong relationships with students, families, faculty, and staff.

Benefits and Compensation:

The salary for this position aims to be competitive and commensurate with experience, falling with the range of $130,000 – $150,000 annually. Tessellations School offers a comprehensive benefits package, including medical, dental, and vision insurance and a matching 403(b) retirement plan.

Application Requirements and Search Process:

DRG is conducting this research on behalf of Tessellations. Interested candidates should submit, as soon as possible, materials, including the following:

• A cover letter indicating they are particularly interested in qualified for the position.
• A current resume.
• A statement of educational philosophy, plus in additional writing sample.
• The names email addresses and telephone numbers of five references to include the relationship with the references.

All application materials should be uploaded directly on the DRG website by visiting the following link: https://drgtalent.com/career/elementary-school-director-tessellations-school/

This position description is based on material provided by Tessellations, and equal opportunity employer committed to providing equal employment opportunities, and who does not discriminate based on perceived or actual race, color, national or ethnic origin, religion, sex, pregnancy, age, marital status, military or veteran status, medical condition, gender/identity/expression, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic provided by the state or federal law.

• Bachelors degree required
• Minimum of five years of teaching and administrative experience
• Exceptional, organizational, communication, and leadership skills.

About Tessellations School

Tessellations is a progressive PK-12 non-profit school for gifted learners based in Cupertino, CA. Our mission is to provide challenging experiential education that recognizes and nurtures the individual strengths of gifted learners, empowering them to confidently express who they are and pursue a meaningful life. At Tessellations, community is a core value, as it is the reason our small and mighty school was able to form and thrive despite the global pandemic. Our team consists of passionate, qualified and dedicated staff from diverse backgrounds and includes nationally renowned gifted experts. Our first year was online only. In our second year, we quadrupled in size, and we also added our Nature Campus. We’re in our fourth year with excellent staff and student retention, and extremely high family satisfaction. We moved to a larger campus in order to house our growing population, which will eventually be approximately 320 students in K-8. We launched our preschool in January 2024 and our high school in Fall 2024.

Connections working at Tessellations School