Lead Preschool Teacher

# Lead Preschool Teacher Mass Audubon(Mass Audubon)
Protecting the nature of Massachusetts for people & wildlife###

Job Description Boston Nature Center is seeking a Lead Preschool Teacher! The Lead Preschool Teacher is the primary early childhood educator of the teaching team and holds lead responsibility for one or more preschool classes, collaborating with co-teachers on curriculum development/implementation, student assessments, classroom management, and family communication. They are responsible for co-designing educational experiences for nature preschool students in accordance with Mass Audubon’s Action Agenda strategic goals, Mass Audubon’s education frameworks, guidelines, and policies for Early Education and Nature Preschools, and Massachusetts Early Education and Care (EEC) and overall best practices in nature-based early childhood education.

Lead Preschool Teacher candidates must possess a strong respect for young children and families, a love of teaching young children and a strong desire to connect children and nature and developing values for stewardship of natural and social communities. The Lead Preschool Teacher must have a keen love of designing nature-based curriculum and teaching outside and the ability to plan multi-sensory, play and nature-based, anti-bias, emergent and developmentally appropriate curriculum, incorporating a variety of hands-on/minds-on experiences.

The Lead Preschool Teacher is the primary contact for families in the class, prepares progress reports, parent-teacher team conferences and maintains a warm, professional relationship with children, their parents and caregivers.

The Lead Preschool Teacher may supervise Preschool Teachers (EEC certified Preschool Teachers or Assistant Teachers) or per diem educators such as substitute teachers (i.e. supervision in the classroom only) with support from the Preschool Director.

** Responsibilities
* ** General
* * Provide a physically and emotionally safe environment for young children both within an indoor and outdoor environment.
* Maintain clear communication with co-teachers and share teaching amongst the co-teaching faculty team.
* Create and maintain a healthy, safe, and positive environment for children using best practices in early childhood nature-based education.
* Work with other faculty colleagues to develop and steward a sense of community, belonging, and connection to nature in the preschool community.
* Responsible for emotional and physical health and safety of students and completing accident reports/injury forms as needed as well as medication logs. Communicate incidents with parent/guardian at the end of class, obtain signature and provide photocopies for parent and child’s preschool file.
* Assess and document student development; complete progress reports twice a year and conduct parent-teacher team conferences, as scheduled by Preschool Director.
* Maintain the physical environment by contributing to classroom housekeeping tasks as needed and storing personal belongings away from preschool program space.
* Enhance the physical space by thoughtfully placing child-initiated art, emergent language poems, emergent math charts and graphs, photographs of nature, students/families in class community, murals and other learning centers that reflect a nature-based curriculum
* Keeps up with relevant and ongoing changes in policies and guidelines within Mass Audubon, specific Mass Audubon sanctuary, and within MA Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) policies and regulations.
* Attend to all required safety and risk management requirements including, but not limited to conducting fire drills, filling out accident forms and medication logs, and informing Preschool Director of safety concerns as noted in daily activities.
* Must be comfortable exploring the natural world in a variety of weather throughout the year for 2 or more hours a day.
* Responsible and accountable to all Mass Audubon/MA EEC health and safety policies and guidelines.
* Always maintains communication with co-teachers and other relevant staff throughout the day.
* Meets weekly with teacher team to plan curriculum /troubleshoot challenges as…