Preschool Head Teacher

SALARY RANGE
: $54,630 – $114,862 annually based on degree and student contact hours

The Head Teacher serves as a collaborative leader within Mid-Pacific’s Reggio Emilia-inspired Preschool program. Members of the preschool team are partners, teammates, and collaborators who share responsibility for all aspects of the team process. The quality of children’s learning experiences depends upon consistent, clear communication, the co-construction of perspectives, and a shared commitment to observing, analyzing, and reflecting upon children’s work to inform curriculum development.

The Head Teacher fosters a learning environment grounded in the belief that children are capable, competent, and rich in their thinking and experiences. Working in partnership with the Pedagogista, Atelierista, Teachers, and Assistant Teachers, the Head Teacher contributes to a culture of inquiry, collaboration, and reflective practice. This includes maintaining an openness to questioning, sharing hypotheses about classroom work, and engaging in ongoing analysis of documentation—including conversations, observations, digital stills, audio, video, and other artifacts of learning—to frame curriculum and support children's growth.

The Head Teacher demonstrates a strong understanding of early childhood development, developmentally appropriate practice, and the core principles of Reggio-inspired education, including relationships, documentation, collaboration, the image of the child, parents as partners, the environment as the third teacher, teacher as researcher, and reflective practice. The Head Teacher remains engaged in ongoing research into best practices in early childhood education, approaches the work with flexibility and openness to possibilities, values the collaborative process, and serves as a researcher of children’s learning to support meaningful curriculum development.

The Head Teacher is ultimately responsible for the team members and children entrusted to his/her area of responsibility. These oversight responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following.

• Provide day-to-day classroom management and supervision, including maintaining a safe learning environment, supporting children in managing their work and relationships in a positive manner, and ensuring all health and safety procedures are followed.
• Oversee the health, safety, and well-being of the children entrusted to the classroom, in collaboration with the Preschool team.
• Provide in‑person classroom instruction, supervision, and support to students during the school day.

• Oversee the Learning Story process, including documentation analysis, writing Learning Stories in collaboration with the Teacher and Pedagogista, facilitating team reflection and discussion, and ensuring completion, revision, labeling, and submission of student documentation.
• Work closely with the Pedagogista on the Learning Story for each child and share responsibility with the Teacher in writing Learning Stories.
• Ensure team discussion, analysis, and reflection occur when collecting documentation, making decisions on Learning Stories, and identifying what these stories uncover about each child’s learning.
• Oversee the documentation process, including organizing daily documentation, classroom blogs, galleries, parent education materials, emails, digital files, documentation panels, and other records of children’s learning.
• Analyze and reflect upon the day‑to‑day work of children based on documentation, including conversations, observations, digital stills, audio, video, and other forms of documentation.
• Collaborate with the Atelierista regarding Learning Story layout, visual presentation, documentation aesthetics, and the final review and editing process.
• Ensure all final student documents are reviewed, organized, labeled, and uploaded to designated annual storage systems by established deadlines.

• Work directly with the Principal and Pedagogista on curriculum development,…