2024 - 2025 Kipp Durham Middle Dean Of Students

Job Description
CRUCIAL COMPETENCIES
Our Dean of Students will blow the following four crucial competencies* out of the water:
Driving for Results:
Our Dean of Students will have a strong desire to help create and nourish the environment that supports outstanding student learning results and the task-oriented actions required for success. Our Dean of Students will set high goals for themselves and their students, making persistent, well-planned efforts to achieve these goals despite barriers and resistance;
holding others accountable for doing their part to achieve results;
and putting in all the extra effort necessary to ensure success.
Influencing for Results:
Our Dean of Students will motivate others—students, staff colleagues, and families—and influence their thinking and behavior to obtain outstanding student learning results. Our Dean of Students will understand that they cannot accomplish change alone, but instead must influence the work of others. They will use a variety of influencing moves—inspiring students, nurturing ridiculously joyful AND rigorous schoolwide culture, grasping and responding to unspoken student needs and motivations, and simultaneously supporting and prodding colleagues to collaborate on the path to schoolwide success—as the situation requires. The relationships they will form are for the purpose of influencing others to enhance student learning, not just for the purpose of personal bonding.
Problem-Solving:
Our Dean of Students will be LASER FOCUSED on planning, organizing, and delivering high quality supports for the school and the specific students in their care. They will work through any challenge and overcome any obstacles to ensure that all students demonstrate dramatic student achievement gains and develop their social-emotional skills.
Personal Effectiveness:
Our Dean of Students will exhibit flexibility and optimism when faced with stressful, uncomfortable, and unfamiliar situations;
maintain confidence in themselves and a willingness to keep improving despite the many challenges of their role;
actively embrace the constant changes needed to ensure student learning in high-challenge situations;
and hold and maintain astrong belief in the human potential for learning and improvement, despite significant societal pressures to settle for less. Our Dean of Students will see themselves as a SCHOOLWIDE colleague oriented around solutions and being proactive in their engagements.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES
Modeling and Nurturing Relationships
Support efforts of every student to succeed academically and behaviorally and pursue choice-filled lives after they leave our care
Model positive interactions with students, as well as a variety of ways (principles of Love and Logic, Lemov techniques, etc) to handle misbehavior and disruptions
Plan, implement, and provide ongoing professional development and feedback to all staff focused on building positive student relationships, student culture, and classroom community
Support teachers in class to problem solve ways to address challenging student behavior
Serve as a resource for teachers to determine best ways to develop student management techniques
Collaborate with the school social workers to support at-risk and in-crisis students
Provide students in crisis with a space and strategies to cope, and/or improve in-class behaviors
Serve as the coordinator and leadership point person for student removals/in-school or out-of-school suspensions
Communicate with families of students in-crisis on a regular basis, and collaborate/problem solve the best ways to address student behaviors and support student needs
Lead/Assist in the creation and implementation of individual behavior plans for students who need extra love and support
Lead meetings with colleagues to discuss individual student and classroom needs
Set clear, high expectations, and hold students accountable for performance—all of which requires taking personal responsibility and doing everything required to reach challenging goals
Embrace and incorporate the gift of feedback from wherever it comes—colleagues, principal, assistant principal, regional coaches, students, wherever—in the spirit of Pursuing Excellence, one of KIPP NC core values
Do all the operational things that support great instruction, like maintaining an accurate and timely gradebook, keeping records, and completing tasks for data tracking systems
Building Positive Classroom and Schoolwide Cultures
Develop positive relationships with students, families, teachers, and staff through regular positive phone calls to families, routine curbside check-ins with families at arrival and dismissal, weekly newsletters, and attendance at all school events, including Back-to-School Night, family conferences, report card conferences, and all other school celebrations
Leverage those relationships to induce behaviors and instructional habits from students that are significantly different from those previously exhibited;
pinpoint and tap the needs, wants, and underlying motivations of students
Provide teachers with professional development/resources to build a positive student and classroom culture
Lead the implementation of our school’s values integration/character development/Social Emotional Learning into classroom community
Plan and Manage Advisory/Community Meetings and Pride Time
Create structures and expectations for increasing student independence in the classroom and throughout the school
Facilitate, encourage and increase family engagement, relationships, communication, and participation
Create and lead a schedule of events throughout the year to involve families in school community
Lead onboarding process for new families, potentially involving home visits with new families
Organize and implement family engagement events/activities at the school, including, but not limited to, Coffee and Conversations, Potential Family Breakfasts, Family Workshops, and schoolwide family engagement events such as Family Feast, Family Saturdays, and Family Conferences
Participate fully in the daily routines of a school that form the foundation of culture, like arrival/dismissal, advisory/circle time, lunch, hallway transitions, and the 1,000 other moments that make up a day
Embody, nurture, and build KIPP NC’s core values (Pursuing Excellence, Building Knowledge, Fighting Injustice, Sparking Joy, and Rising Together) and the school’s student and staff cultures
Assume personal responsibility for student achievement, all the students in the school, and the success of staff colleagues
Create and maintain a joyful classroom space that exudes love, builds a sense of belonging, and celebrates learning, which includes displaying current student work and grade level/content- appropriate and identity-affirming decorations
Developing Teachers and Colleagues
Prioritize staff training needs and organize a plan for individual and staff-wide professional development focused on school and student culture, discipline, and character/SEL development;
oversee the implementation of the plan and revise as necessary in response to student and teacher needs
Conduct classroom observations and to follow-up with targeted feedback and support for teachers that help them to become even more effective teachers;
work with teachers to problem solve areas of classroom discipline, behavior, and culture/community difficulty
Collaborate with Leadership Team to plan summer training and professional development full-days and half-days during the school year
Develop a menu of internal and external professional development opportunities available to our teachers and consistent with our mission/vision
Be a regular presence in classrooms, informally observing and following-up with teachers in order to improve teacher effectiveness
Utilize a variety of techniques (video, literal notes, real-time coaching, etc.) to provide feedback and coaching to staff
Exemplifying a Growth Mindset
Collaborate with school and regional colleagues to identify areas of strength and areas of growth for professional development throughout the year, some of which will be leader-led, and some of which will happen in the quiet after-school moments in classrooms with colleagues in the routine preparation for the next day
Attend practice clinics to hone and sharpen skills and delivery
Participate in Teacher Work Days, Regional Data Days, and Professional Development meetings after school;
satiate their hunger tolearn and grow as a professional
Taking Care of Yourself
Use the many benefits the organization offers employees (health benefits, generous school holidays, etc.) to relieve stress after the workday is done or over school breaks and holidays, as the job of turning a school around is tough—teachers will experience stress and emotional challenges associated with all the essential duties enumerated above, and self-care will be a priority