Preschool Director

Crow’s Path is a relationship-centered nonprofit organization whose mission is to connect people of all ages to wildness. Through nature-based education, natural history, earth-based skills, creative play, storytelling, and community building, we cultivate meaningful relationships between people, place, and the more-than-human world.

Our programs encourage curiosity, wonder, resilience, and belonging while supporting children, families, educators, and community members in developing lasting relationships with themselves, one another, and the land.

Crow’s Path is wholly committed to creating, sustaining, and advocating for a safe, welcoming, and respectful community where staff and participants can show up as their full and wild selves. Our staff come from different backgrounds and have taken many different paths to become mentors in our programs. As much as we value practical experience and education backgrounds in hiring, we also value and weigh life experience, knowledge, and soft skills in our hiring process.

We work to support people of all identities in our programs. Research shows that people from marginalized groups (women, LGBTQ+, and people of color) are less likely to apply for jobs when they do not meet the listed criteria in the job description. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, even if your experience varies from what we have asked for. Above all, we seek applicants who will support our young participants as they navigate their own identities and those of their peers.

Applicants should be prepared to engage in discussions with other staff on gender, race, class, and power as topics arise.

The Wilds Preschool has become one of the most exciting new chapters in Crow’s Path’s growth since we first started running programs in 2010. We opened our doors (or a secret portal in the forest) to preschool families back in 2023 and maintain small group sizes (17 kids/day) with low staff to participant ratios (1:4). As we enter our fourth year, we are seeking a Preschool Director who is passionate about early childhood education, collaborative leadership, and nature-based learning to guide the continued development of our small, tight-knit preschool community.

The preschool is integrated into a larger tapestry of Crow’s Path programs, allowing kids the opportunity to grow, learn, and explore as they get older, moving from the preschool into the Field School and then on to middle school apprenticeships and high school internships. This position offers a unique opportunity to guide our preschool forward as it continues to hone its identity, deepen and expand connections between the preschool and our youth programs, and work alongside an experienced and creative team committed to relationship-centered education.

The Preschool Director will also lead the development of a 1-day-per-week pull-out kindergarten similar to the Field School.

The Preschool Director serves as both an educational leader and mentor, balancing administration, licensing, staff leadership, curriculum development, family partnerships, and direct work with children. This role is ideal for someone who enjoys building community, supporting educators, and helping an innovative organization continue to grow.

This position reports to the Executive Director and will work closely with the Program Development Director, After school Program Director, and Youth Programs Director. Our outdoor basecamp is on City land, and the Preschool Director collaborates closely with the Conservation Field Coordinator at the City of Burlington. The Preschool Director supervises preschool teaching staff and oversees student teachers, interns, and volunteers.

Burlington, Vermont (primarily our basecamp in the Arms Grant Forest as well as indoor classroom space at North Avenue Alliance Church)

The position is full-time, Monday-Friday. There are built-in scheduled paid time off around school vacation weeks and other breaks in our academic calendar.

The Preschool Director provides educational leadership for The Wilds Preschool by…