Website Peninsula School
A leader in progressive education since 1925
Position Overview:
Peninsula School seeks an innovative, creative, and dynamic DEI leader to join our team. This position reports to the Head of School, and serves as a member of the School’s senior administrative team. The DEI Director collaborates across the school community to create, lead, and support opportunities for the systematic advancement of DEI strategic priorities, with a focus on 1) building a schoolwide inclusive environment; 2) renewing educational programs and practices for student and staff learning; and 3) expanding efforts to recruit and retain a diverse community. The successful candidate will provide strategic leadership to develop, implement, and evaluate Peninsula School’s DEI initiatives that align with the school’s progressive values and DEI strategic goals and priorities.
Key Responsibilities:
● Program Development: Support teaching staff on program, curriculum, pedagogy, and practice development aimed at teaching and learning for DEI, and collaborate to develop a process of continual review, reflection and evolution of the school’s program to reflect DEI.
● Professional Development & Support: Develop and facilitate professional development that impacts program, practices, and policies (e.g., anti-bias/anti-racist curriculum, gender-spectrum & LGBTQ+ affirming practices, restorative practices, and social justice education). Provide academic, emotional and social support for students, families, and staff of diverse backgrounds.
● Relationship Building & Collaboration with Diverse Stakeholders: Develop, sustain relationships and collaborate with students, families, staff, alumni, Board, and community partners.
● Data Driven Decision-Making: Collaborate on the gathering and use of data on DEI to inform strategies, assess progress towards goals, and develop new ideas.
● Safe, Responsive, & Restorative Practices: Develop systems and respond to emergent diversity and equity-related issues at the school, engaging restorative practices.
● Partnership with administrative team to advance DEI goals school wide, including –
○ Partner with the Head of School on strategy to recruit, hire, mentor, and retain staff and leadership who reflect and support a diverse and inclusive school community.
○ Partner with Admissions to continue recruiting a diverse and inclusive student and family body, and provide ongoing support for new families. Participate in School Tours, Open Houses, and DEI related dialogues with current and prospective families.
○ Partner with DEI Committees (board, staff, community) to coordinate DEI initiatives.
● Community Engagement & Outreach: Foster relationships with families to support their children and strengthen their connections to the school community. Provide family education and community events on DEI topics. Explore new partnerships in local communities.
● Youth Leadership: Develop student leadership in DEI, coordinating with affinity and alliance groups and collaborating with staff to develop other educational equity programs for students.
● Affinity & Alliance Groups: Grow, and sometimes lead, cross-cultural and identity-based student and family programming such as affinity and alliance groups.
● DEI Resources & Communications: Communicate Peninsula’s institutional vision, strategies, and lessons about DEI within and beyond the school. Provide staff, students, families, and community relevant and timely resources about DEI issues.
Qualifications:
Experience:
● Administrative experience leading DEI work at the primary and/or middle school level.
● Minimum of five years teaching and/or administrative experience, preferably in an independent school environment at the primary and/or middle school level.
● A bachelor’s degree and master’s degree or equivalent years of experience.
Leadership:
● Enthusiastic leader excited about building a new role, and who leads through the force of their expertise and commitment to DEI in schools.
● Excitement about Nursery-8th grade students and working in a progressive education environment. A belief in the mission, vision and progressive values of Peninsula School.
● Excellent organizational leadership skills for DEI with successful experience developing, implementing, leading, and evaluating DEI initiatives, as well as managing, and supporting individuals and teams engaged in an organization’s DEI work. Skills in team building, conflict resolution, and consensus building and decision-making with multiple constituents.
● Systems thinker who understands how decisions impact the whole of an organization with demonstrated capacity for data-driven decision-making.
● Excellent Instructional leadership skills for DEI. Ability to build an atmosphere of constructive and on-going dialogue about best practices in teaching, learning, and schooling. Proven competency in the classroom, including innovative teaching and recognition of an appropriate response to various learning profiles and diverse students. Experience in the curation and facilitation of anti-bias, anti-racist and culturally sustaining, gender spectrum & LGBTQ+ affirming curriculum, resources, and professional development. Fluency in DEI best practices.
● Collaborative leader & team player with ability to work collegially with multiple constituencies and foster distributed leadership. Demonstrated personal commitment to professional growth and to receiving and acting on constructive feedback.
Skills & Knowledge:
● Cultural humility and cultural competence with ability to examine identity and bias in self and support others to explore the same; and see and confront privilege and discrimination. ● Equity literate with an ability to identify and articulate the systems of inequity and exclusion within the school and devise the frameworks necessary to counter them.
● Emotional intelligence, empathy, maturity, and ability to work well with a wide range of people.
● Capacity to manage complexity, emotions, conflict and tensions inherent in equity work in schools.
● Intellectual curiosity about and engagement with DEI best practices in independent schools
● Effective oral, interpersonal, written, and presentation communication skills
● Organizational and time management skills.
● Problem solver with the ability to consider a broad range of internal and external factors
● Occasional availability on nights or weekends.
● Initial and continued criminal background clearance by DOJ and FBI
● Initial and continued tuberculosis clearance
Physical Demands:
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of the job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, the ability to adjust focus, and sound hearing. The ability to speak clearly and coherently is required. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit; use hands, talk and hear. The employee is frequently required to reach with hands and arms. On occasion, the employee is required to stand, walk, stoop, kneel, or crouch. Employee is required to operate a computer and office productivity machinery, communicate across a variety of media, and work in close proximity to others. The role may also require the employee to work in inclement weather during special activities and work at a desk for extended periods of time.
TO APPLY: Peninsula School is an equal opportunity employer and we actively promote the principles and practices of diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout the school community. We offer competitive compensation and a progressive community dedicated to learning and engaged citizenship. We encourage people of under-represented groups to apply (http://www.peninsulaschool.org/dei). Please send a cover letter and resumé, in MS word or PDF format, to hr@peninsulaschool.org
