Head Start UPK Teacher

POSITION SUMMARY

Working with and directing a teacher assistant and teacher aide, provide a safe and engaging learning environment in a classroom with up to 18 four‑year‑old children, ensuring that they are well supervised while in our care.

One year of early childhood lead teacher experience. Bachelor or advanced degree in Early Childhood Education, or in a related field that is supplemented by 18 credit hours in early childhood education. Must have (Level II), or be able to obtain within three years of hire (Level I), a valid NYS teaching certificate to include preschool education; e.g.:
Birth through 2nd Grade or Nursery through 6th Grade.

• Ensure that all children assigned to the classroom are supervised at all times. Perform regular counts of children assigned to ensure all are accounted for.
• Establish and maintain a safe, healthy learning environment.
• Provide a safe environment that prevents and reduces injuries.
• Promote good health and nutrition, and provide an environment that contributes to the prevention of illness.
• Use space, materials, and routines as resources to develop an interesting, secure, and enjoyable environment that encourages play, exploration, and learning.
• Advance physical and intellectual competence by providing a variety of equipment, activities, and opportunities that promote children’s physical development.
• Provide activities and opportunities that encourage curiosity, exploration, and problem solving appropriate to developmental levels and learning styles.
• Actively communicate with children and provide opportunities and support for children to understand, acquire, and use verbal and nonverbal communication methods.
• Provide opportunities that stimulate children to play with sound, rhythm, language, materials, space, and ideas in individual ways and express their creative abilities.
• Support social and emotional development and provide positive guidance. Provide physical and emotional security for each child and help each child to know, accept, and take pride in themselves, developing a sense of independence.
• Help each child feel accepted in the group, learn to communicate, get along with others, and encourage feelings of empathy and mutual respect among children and adults.
• Provide a supportive environment in which children can learn and practice appropriate and acceptable behaviors as individuals and as a group.
• Support each child's culture within the classroom.
• Maintain an open, friendly, and cooperative relationship with each child's family, encourage their involvement in the program, and support the child's relationship with their family on parent‑teacher conferences and volunteering at the site/classroom.
• Serve as a role model for Head Start parents and foster appropriate parent‑child interactions in the classroom and at home.
• Assist in extending classroom learning into the home through two educational home visits per year to assigned Head Start enrolled families and through school‑to‑home activities that support the implementation of the Outcomes Framework.
• Provide parents with knowledge of the Outcomes Framework through parent‑teacher conferences, home visits, and parent committee meetings.
• Ensure a well‑run, purposeful program responsive to participant needs. Manage the classroom using available resources to ensure an effective operation, including skills in organization, planning, and record keeping.