Montessori Mentor - Higher Ground Education
Baltimore, MD
About the Job
Higher Ground is bringing on a Montessori Mentor to join our regional support team. A high-quality authentic Montessori program is core to our success, so this is a critical role in our organization. The Regional Programs Lead works alongside school leaders in achieving programmatic excellence by leveraging personal and in-house deep experience and knowledge of the Montessori pedagogy, helping to hire, train, and retain strong talent across our campuses, and supporting effective parent and staff communications. Each of these elements leads to full, thriving school communities.
We're scaling quickly and have over 115 schools with a current pace of growth of 50 new schools per year. We're looking for an individual who is both a big-picture thinker capable of surveying our vast landscape of school needs and a hands-on doer with the skills to quickly solve problems and scale practical, effective practices that help us have thriving and profitable schools. If you're excited about working in an entrepreneurial environment and building capacity in others to enable widespread change in education today, this role is for you.
Responsibilities
The Montessori Mentor will be a member of a small but mighty regional team supporting a portfolio of about a dozen schools. This team functions in a cross-functional manner including enabling school leaders and teams to own the holistic success of their school. Responsibilities include but are not limited to:
- Build programmatic excellence in school teams. This individual will play a key part in supporting our school teams to have excellent Montessori programming. Utilizing both deep experience and knowledge of the Montessori pedagogy alongside data-rich metrics, this regional team member ensures that we hire, coach, support and retain excellent Montessori educators in our schools. Behind this individual is our in-house Montessori training institute that provides Montessori teacher certification for all team members within our network.
- Hire, grow and retain excellent classroom teachers. A key part of this role will be securing, supporting, and retaining mission-driven talent. It's not enough to coach from afar, in our organization we jump in and do alongside others as they are building their capacity to do for themselves. You'll be coaching teachers and shaping Heads of School who are instructional leaders of their campus. As part of this work, you will model in classrooms with teachers and provide action oriented and practical feedback to improve program quality quickly. You will also build capacity in school leaders to observe and provide meaningful programmatic feedback and coaching as the leaders of their schools. This work will include a focus on a teacher interviewing, hiring, onboarding, and managing a solid and reliable Montessori substitute teacher pool in your region.
- View Program Quality within the lens of a profitable and thriving school. Having a high-quality Montessori program is mission critical. We believe that when you have an excellent program, successful student outcomes, thriving enrollment and passionately engaged staff --profitability is the outcome. We are unapologetically a for-profit education organization; this is how we can carry out our mission to bring Montessori education far and wide. To this end, profitability of each school within a region is the responsibility of every regional support team member, including the Programs Lead. This role will work collaboratively with the Regional Manager, Regional Operations Lead, and Regional Community Lead to ensure a full portfolio of thriving, successful and profitable schools
Skills
We'd love to talk to you if you have…
- 5+ years' Montessori classroom experience and certification
- Drive to dig in and do, not just direct or coach, including a propensity to get in the classroom and know every child and teacher at every school
- Rigorous analytical and problem-solving, including ability to assess a situation by gathering facts and evaluating data (esp. Excel, PowerBI, etc.)
- Ability to operate independently, and execute from end-to-end (incl. communication, time management, project management)
- Strong organizational skills and ability to manage multiple competing priorities
- Clear and succinct written and verbal communication skills
- A passion for education
About us
At Higher Ground, we're driven by a deep desire to bring about widespread change in education today. Since our founding 7 years ago, we have opened 115+ beautiful schools across the world serving brick and mortar and virtual students from birth through high school. We offer:
- Hybrid work: approx. 50% remote, 50% travel to schools in your region
- A competitive salary
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- Paid time off and paid holidays
- 100% tuition discount for two children at any school within our network
- Career growth and promotion opportunities, and a leadership team who wants you to thrive on your own terms
Higher Ground Education, Guidepost Montessori, and Academy of Thought and Industry are committed to a policy of Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO). We will not discriminate on the basis of age, sex, race, color, creed, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, alienage or citizenship, disability, marital status, military or veteran status, or any other legally recognized protected basis under applicable federal, state or local laws, regulations or ordinances. Our leadership is dedicated to ensuring the fulfillment of this policy. When requested, we are committed to reasonably accommodate employees and applicants with disabilities or special needs that may require an accommodation.