About This Role
The Preschool Teacher creates a safe, inclusive, inquiry-rich learning environment grounded in Reggio Emilia–inspired principles, viewing children as capable, competent, and full of potential. As a teacher-researcher, the Teacher listens, observes, documents, interprets, and reflects on children's thinking to develop emergent curriculum and meaningful project work. The Teacher partners with families and collaborates as an equal member of the Preschool team, sharing responsibility for children’s learning, care, and safety.
Responsibilities
- Provide in-person day-to-day classroom teaching, guidance, management, and active supervision of children in indoor and outdoor settings
- Build positive, respectful, responsive relationships with children; recognize their individual strengths, identities, interests, and developmental needs
- Support social-emotional growth, independence, self-regulation, relationships, and developmentally appropriate conflict resolution
- Collaborate with the Preschool team on daily routines, schedules, curriculum, learning experiences, and consistent classroom practices
- Use observation, conversation, questions, and children’s work to inform teaching decisions and respond to emerging learning needs
- Participate actively in team planning, reflection, and analysis of children’s experiences; contribute to the wider life of the school
- Approach children as capable, competent protagonists in their own learning; honor their theories, questions, interests, and multiple ways of expressing understanding
- Act as a teacher-researcher: observe and listen closely, develop hypotheses, document learning, interpret children’s thinking, and reflect with colleagues
- Collaborate with the Pedagogista, Atelierista, fellow Teachers, and Assistant Teachers to develop, sustain, and revisit meaningful short- and long-term inquiries
- Design thoughtful provocations, materials, experiences, and environments that invite exploration, relationships, creativity, and deeper investigation
- Remain open to unexpected directions and multiple possibilities rather than predetermining inquiry outcomes; use reflective dialogue to shape curriculum
- Contribute to Project Stories and other documentation of group inquiry; plan and coordinate research trips, risk assessments, transportation, family communication, materials, and child-specific needs in accordance with school procedures
- Identify and request curricular materials, play equipment, and supplies that support emerging projects
- Observe and capture significant learning through photographs, video, audio, children’s words, drawings, constructions, conversations, and work samples
- Transcribe conversations as appropriate; collect, label, organize, securely store, and maintain physical and digital documentation files
