MEET VANESSA ULLMANN

Proudly serving the Oak Cliff community and happy children for over 20 years

The Kessler School has put in considerable effort to prepare for an exciting and uniquely challenging year ahead. This is my sixth year as Head of School at TKS, and each year I find myself increasingly impressed with the work of our faculty and staff. The perseverance and diligence evident in our teachers to simultaneously manage educating students at school and home goes unmatched. It is obvious now more than ever, that our teachers are the children’s true heroes.

Prior to beginning my opportunity at TKS, I spent 8 years as an international educator in China allowing me to gain a better understanding of global education. My ultimate goal for The Kessler School is that we develop students’ skills to engage with diverse peers and promote actions students can take as citizens of the world. We strive to incorporate learning about culture, history and current issues regularly within our core content areas.

We pride ourselves in our implementation of a vertically aligned curriculum in reading, writing, math, science and social studies. Common teaching practices occur starting in PreK all the way through Middle School. A considerable amount of our operating cost goes toward teachers’ training and professional development. Teachers work with staff developers to train in our curriculum on campus as well as out of the state. The TKS language arts curriculum comes directly from Teachers College at Columbia University where our classroom teachers are sent for training.

Other unique opportunities TKS provides for students, is the exposure to working with specialists outside of our school during the daily schedule. Our STEM lab class comes from Mad Science Inc, the art program is provided by Oil & Cotton, and Oak Cliff Dance leads the creative movement class. We have also integrated Action Based Learning (ABL) in our daily teaching practices to allow students the ability to use movement and brain activities to promote academic growth.

The Kessler School community collaborates in equipping our students with skills and values that help develop self-sufficient, high achieving learners and aspiring leaders.

We remain committed to growing our school, meeting the needs of our community and are excited about our future, as we look toward the opening of a new campus in the coming years.

I welcome you to learn more about our school, our teachers and our community by visiting thekesslerschool.com.

“You will be happy to know, that in our opinion developed through our research, TKS has the best academic rigor balanced with the most opportunity for enrichment through specials (Spanish every day, PE/recess, art program, etc.) and alternative learning programs, like OWLs. And I found TKS testing methodology to be by far the most advanced in terms of individual bench marking and informing teachers to individual learning styles. In short, you should feel extremely proud of what you all have built to be a shining gem in our neighborhood, more over our city.”

LESLEE MALLINSON, TKS PARENT