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Posted: 05-Apr-26
Location: Cupertino, California
Type: Full Time
Salary: $120,000 - $140,000
Categories:
Preferred Education:
Are you an experienced, imaginative, and collaborative educator who believes in progressive gifted education? Do you enjoy creating meaningful learning experiences, and being part of a diverse, supportive and talented community? If so, please consider joining our team at Tessellations. We are currently accepting applications for a full-time Director of Innovation & Human Centered- Learning to start in August 2026. Competitive salary and full benefits available.
Tessellations is a modern, innovative Pre-K-9th 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, pursue a meaningful life, and advance an equitable and sustainable world.
At Tessellations, community is a core value. A strong community was instrumental in launching our school during the pandemic and has facilitated our rapid growth and success since then. Our team consists of passionate, qualified and dedicated staff from diverse backgrounds and includes a nationally renowned gifted expert. We believe that it is time to open a new chapter in 21st century gifted education by forging a model that fosters a cultural ecosystem within the school that promotes innovative thinking and intellectual risk taking. Moving on from an antiquated model born during the industrial revolution, we favor transferable skills over compliance and rote memorization, and collaboration over competition. We believe that assessments should function as guidance for depth and complexity of learning rather than for judgment or sorting.
Reports to: Head of School
Role Type: Senior leadership role; faculty-supporting, non-evaluative
Status: Full-time (or as determined)
Role Purpose
The Director of Innovation & Human-Centered Learning exists to steward Tessellations School’s relationship with artificial intelligence, STEAM, and emerging technologies in a way that is deeply aligned with the Beneventi 10 and Tessellations’ core values of Kind Hearts, Open Minds, Integrity, and Generosity.
This role supports faculty in thoughtfully integrating these tools to strengthen teaching and learning, deepen attunement and differentiation for gifted learners, and protect educator well-being and sustainability. The Director serves as a thought partner, ethical steward, and capacity-builder, not as an evaluator, implementer, or driver of mandates.
At Tessellations, AI is not a driver of our educational model. It is a powerful tool that, when used with restraint and ethical clarity, can remove barriers to learning, liberate higher-order thinking, and help students understand who they are as thinkers, learners, and people.
Values in Action (How the Core Values Shape This Role)
All responsibilities of this role are guided by Tessellations’ core values:
- Kind Hearts – Innovation must reduce harm, pressure, and exclusion, and honor the dignity and well-being of students and educators.
- Open Minds – Innovation must invite curiosity, reflection, multiple perspectives, and deep inquiry rather than certainty, speed, or premature closure.
- Integrity – Innovation must align with our stated philosophy and pedagogy, resisting performative adoption, shortcuts, or trend-driven decisions.
- Generosity – Innovation must build shared capacity, collaboration, and communal learning rather than concentrating expertise, prestige, or power.
Guiding Commitments (Beneventi 10–Aligned)
- Learning at Tessellations is fundamentally about who students are becoming, not merely what they can produce.
- Gifted learners require attunement, not just acceleration.
- Intelligence is relational, contextual, and moral, not merely technical.
- Faculty are designers and empathic facilitators of human development, not technicians.
- Innovation is an act of stewardship, not trend adoption.
Core Responsibilities
(Grounded in the Beneventi 10 and Core Values)
1. Faculty Partnership & Professional Support
(Kind Hearts | Integrity)
- Serve as a collaborative, non-evaluative thought partner to faculty in the use of AI and STEAM tools.
- Support teachers in designing immersive learning experiences that deepen inquiry, identity development, and relational intelligence.
- Help reduce cognitive and administrative burden so faculty can focus on attunement, differentiation, and meaningful student learning.
- Ensure all faculty engagement with AI is opt-in, paced by readiness, and psychologically safe.
2. Removing Barriers Without Lowering Cognitive Demand
(Open Minds | Integrity)
- Support thoughtful use of AI to remove barriers related to:
- working memory,
- processing speed,
- executive functioning,
- and emotional intensity.
- Ensure AI is used to liberate abstract reasoning, imagination, and creativity, not to replace thinking or diminish developmentally meaningful struggle.
- Partner with faculty to help gifted learners:
- engage more fully in complex thinking,
- sustain inquiry and iteration,
- and express original ideas with clarity and rigorous precision through generative interactions.
3. Innovations Lab Stewardship
(Generosity | Open Minds)
- Stewards the Innovations Lab as a shared “tinkering garage” – similar to the library – used intentionally by teachers to deepen rigorous design thinking embedded in project-based learning.
- Develop and teach Innovations and STEAM lessons and enriching experiences for students grades TK-3
- Ensures the lab functions as an extension of classroom learning, not a separate program, mandate, or showcase.
- Curates tools and resources that support interdisciplinary inquiry, ethical reflection, and sustained engagement.
- Protects the lab as a space for depth, iteration, collaboration, and relational learning rather than speed or output.
4. Relational & Generative Intelligence / Ethical Innovation
(Kind Hearts | Integrity)
- Guide Tessellations’ approach to AI through a relational, ethical, and meaning-centered lens.
- Support faculty in helping students examine:
- how tools shape thinking and authorship,
- the impact of innovation on people and systems,
- and their responsibilities as creators in an interconnected, equitable, and sustainable world.
- Reinforces the belief that ethical innovation emerges from relational and generative intelligence, not technical fluency alone.
5. Pilot Design & Institutional Learning & Teaching
(Integrity | Open Minds)
- Designs and supports small-scale, time-bound pilots where faculty interest and readiness exist.
- Establishes clear purposes, ethical guardrails, and learning goals, with explicit off-ramps.
- Ensures that:
- pilots precede programs,
- ethics precede efficiency,
- meaning precedes scale.
- Builds shared faculty capacity without pressure to expand, standardize, or accelerate adoption.
- Teach innovations sections
6. Community & Parent Engagement
(Generosity | Integrity)
- Thoughtfully leverage parent expertise, think tanks, and universities to connect learning to real-world contexts and ethical questions.
- Ensure parent involvement enriches learning without driving instructional priorities, evaluation, or pressure.
- Help articulate Tessellations’ human-centered approach to AI clearly and honestly to families.
Explicit Boundaries of the Role
The Director of Innovation & Human-Centered Learning:
- Does not evaluate faculty
- Does not mandate tools or platforms
- Does not set curricular requirements
- Does not function as a marketing or branding role
- Does not pursue innovation for visibility, speed, or competition
Success is measured by student depth, faculty trust, educator well-being, and institutional coherence.
Qualifications & Dispositions
Required
- Deep understanding of gifted education and asynchronous development
- Strong grounding in pedagogy, differentiation, and project-based learning
- Ethical fluency in AI and emerging technologies
- Ability to collaborate respectfully with experienced educators
- Comfort with ambiguity, restraint, and reflective practice
Highly Valued
- Kind heart, integrity, open-minded, and generous
- Experience in faculty coaching, instructional design, or interdisciplinary learning
- Background in human-centered design, ethics, or systems thinking
- Capacity to translate complexity into humane, usable practice
- Temperament aligned with stewardship rather than evangelism
Indicators of Success (12–24 Months)
- Faculty experience reduced friction and increased clarity and sustainability
- Teachers engage voluntarily with the role and the Innovations Lab
- AI and STEAM tools are used selectively, ethically, and purposefully
- Students demonstrate stronger self-understanding as thinkers, learners, and people
- Innovation enhances – rather than distorts – Tessellations’ identity and values
At Tessellations School, this role exists to put humanity at the center of technology, honoring kind hearts, open minds, integrity, and generosity while advancing the Beneventi 10. Through thoughtful stewardship of AI and innovation, we empower gifted learners without distortion and prepare students to meet an uncertain future with grounding, ethical clarity, and purpose so that they can advance an equitable and sustainable world.
Compensation
Salary range: $120,000 - $140,000
Benefits include medical, dental, vision, life, 401(k), short-term disability insurance, flexible spending account, paid time off, holidays, and school breaks.
To Apply
Please submit a cover letter and resume to careers@tessellations.school. For more information about our school, visit http://www.tessellations.school.
Tessellations is an Equal Opportunity Employer — we do not discriminate against any employee or job applicant on the bases of race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, creed, disability, sex, or reproductive health decision making.
