Build the Future of School

A message from Transcend’s founders

Help us reach more communities to build the future of schooling

Nearly five years ago, we co-founded Transcend because we wanted to live in a world where every child has the opportunity to learn in the kinds of environments that allow her to thrive in and transform the world. We felt that fueling R&D capacity towards innovative school designs could support more and more communities to create and spread extraordinary, equitable learning environments.

Since that time, Transcend has grown to a vibrant group of 35+ amazing teammates, and we’ve been blessed to work with incredible district, charter, independent school, and other partners across the country. Places as diverse as Van Ness Elementary School in DC Public Schools, Valor Collegiate, Lindsay Unified School District, Edgecombe County Public Schools, nXu, Brooklyn STEAM, Montessori for All, St. Benedict’s, Intrinsic, and over 100 other communities.

Among our core beliefs is a strong conviction that school communities must be in the driver’s seat of their design processes, and we have learned so much about what kinds of resources and supports can best enable communities to create and spread extraordinary learning environments. This learning has led us to evolve the kinds of partnerships that Transcend undertakes with school communities. In this note, we are excited to share our latest articulation of three kinds of partnerships we engage in, with schools at three stages of the design journey:

IGNITE—LET’S START FROM THE BEGINNING…

For teams who are beginning to design (or redesign) a school, we provide powerful learning experiences, coaching, research-driven tools, inspiration visits, and access to a national community of supports. Our primary vehicles for this work are our cohort programs across the country, such as our School Design Collaborative, but we also also offer high-impact “spark workshops” and customized engagements with schools, systems, and communities.

ADVANCE—LET’S TURBO-CHARGE PROGRESS…

With schools who have already started down the path of school (re)design, we add capacity to help understand and strengthen local conditions for innovation, build strong and practical design products that enable effective implementation, and connect to resources across the country that accelerate progress. Learn more about our approach in this brief overview.

SPREAD—LET’S BOTTLE AND SHARE THE MAGIC…

How can a school’s innovation be shared with others? With schools who have successfully developed promising designs, we partner to test, refine, and codify the design and support them to effectively share it with other communities. Learn more about our approach in this brief overview.

Our approach to these partnerships reflects everything we’ve been learning over the past nearly five years. We’re on a mission to find and support school communities everywhere whose work to ignite their innovation journeys, advance their designs, and spread their promising models can benefit children in equitable ways.

To realize our vision, we must reach beyond our historical networks and find more and school communities who want to partner with us in this work. If you know of school communities who are at stages of building or spreading innovative models and might benefit from partnering with Transcend, we’d love to meet them. Please feel free to email us, forward people this blog post, or use the links below to help us spread the word.  

Thank you! 

Together, we can build the future.

Aylon and Jeff