Admissions
Hopefully you've looked around and The Grove School feels like a great place for your child. Fantastic! We’d love to meet up with you in person, answer your questions and tell you more first hand. Shoot us an e-mail or give us a call and we’ll get back to you shortly.
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Careers
We're looking for rare individuals. Teachers with degrees in early childhood or environmental education and a fire in the belly to make a difference. Administrators with a head for business and a heart for helping children reach their full potential. People who are so invested that they'll stay with us for years, growing and developing our educational community. Is that you?
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Let's play
Kids learn through play, but what about the grown ups? The Grove School is a playground for everyone. Join the fun!
(Psst, you can move the colored circles with your mouse.)
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  • our head of school

    our staff

    local families

    work with us

  • Lorrie Schelkle - Head of School at the Grove School of Cary

    Lorrie has been a Knowledge Universe employee for 16 years in various roles including Assistant Director, Director and Executive Administrator. Lorrie served in a "best of class" role as an Early Childhood leader where she lead her school and center team through the process of accreditation with the distinctive early education voluntary accreditation system, NAEYC. Lorrie is from Ohio and moved to North Carolina in 2011 with her husband and two children. They reside in Morrisville, NC.

  • our head of school

    our staff

    local families

    work with us

  • At The Grove School, children spend this crucial learning time with highly qualified educators. Our teachers are required to have degrees and credentials in early childhood or environmental education. They bring deep expertise into the classroom to make the first taste of subjects like math and solar energy fun and memorable. Connecting regularly with parents is also part of their job. Emails and tweets replace paper updates on each child’s progress and activities.

  • our head of school

    our staff

    local families

    work with us

  • The families who send their children to The Grove School are your friends and neighbors. They're the people you see on the playground, run into at the library and wave at out the window. We're all about being your local school and building a tight-knit community that reflects what's important to you.

  • our head of school

    our staff

    local families

    work with us

  • What if you worked at a preschool where you can use your education, creativity and passion to actually teach? Where you’re expected to bring an innovative curriculum to life? And where you build lifelong relationships with parents and children? It’s an amazing opportunity to make a positive impact on children’s lives at a school with a unique sense of purpose. Learn more about careers at The Grove School.

 
 
 

In any organization, company, team, group, etc., the difference between being just good and being GREAT always boils down to people.  In support of this, a CEO of a major company once said when asked to name the top five factors that led to his company’s success, replied with the following (as told in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great):

  1. “One would be people.
  2. Two would be people.
  3. Three would be people.
  4. Four would be people.
  5. And five would be people.”

As you know, our school is growing.  As a result, we are going through the process of looking for the best and the brightest teachers to grow with us.

And it is not an easy task!

Because our standards and expectations are so high and our program is so unique, it takes a very talented and unique teacher for our students and our school.  In the past month, we have received hundreds of resumes to review from all over the country.  We are honored to have so much interest from folks wanting to be a part of our school.  While that is a blessing, it is also a curse.  It does take a lot of our time, both Sarah (our Education Manager) and I, to review the incoming resumes and decide who should go forward in the selection process.

I would estimate that about 20% of the applicants move forward to the next phase which is a screening interview.  While I was doing my doctoral research at the University of Georgia, one of the professors I worked with published a study on hiring the right people.  Unfortunately, he found that even the best predictor of whether an employee would be a good fit for your organization was only correct about 21% of the time.  Starting with 100 applicants and by merging those two numbers, the 20% of applicants that move forward and the best predictor of a good fit being about 21%, that brings us to about 4 applicants out of 100 that are likely to be a good fit.

We cannot and will not settle for mediocre or average.  We must have exceptional talent.  For that reason, we have adopted the approach that Collins outlines in his book: “When in doubt, don’t hire and keep looking.”  As we rapidly grow and the pressure to hire staff to meet the demands of our incoming families increases, this approach can be quite scary!

The corollary to that is that we may need to limit our growth based upon our ability to find enough of the right people.  In a business sense, this corollary is equally scary.  No business would ever want to turn away customers, especially in today’s economy.  Naturally, we want every customer possible.

I am thrilled to report that our efforts and patience are paying off.  We have a lot of talent in our pipeline and are getting ready to bring on board a few more wonderfully talented teachers.  We anticipate our hiring to continue through the fall with our commensurate growth.

The pressure will continue to be on our leadership team to continually attract, hire and retain the right people.   After all, people make all the difference…the right people that is!

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