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.

QUALIFICATIONS: 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 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.

Job Responsibilities

• Ensure that all children assigned to classroom are supervised at all times. Perform regular counts of children assigned to ensure that all are accounted for.
• Establish and maintain a safe, healthy, learning environment.
  
  

Provide a safe environment to prevent and reduce injuries.B.

Promote good health and nutrition, and provide an environment that contributes to the prevention of illness.C.

Use space, materials and routines as resources for developing an interesting, secure, and enjoyable environment that encourages play, exploration, and learning.

• Advance physical and intellectual competence.A.
  
  

Provide a variety of equipment, activities and opportunities to promote the physical development of children.

Provide activities and opportunities that encourage curiosity, exploration, and problem solving appropriate to the developmental levels and learning styles of children.C.

Actively communicate with children, and provide opportunities and support for children to understand, acquire, and use verbal and nonverbal means of communicating thoughts and feelings.D.

Provide opportunities that stimulate children to play with sound, rhythm, language, materials, space and ideas in individual ways and to express their creative abilities.

• Support social and emotional development and providing positive guidance.A.
  
  

Provide physical and emotional security for each child and help each child to know, accept, and take pride in him- or her-self, and to develop a sense of independence.B.

Help each child to feel accepted in the group, help children learn to communicate and get along with others, and encourage feelings of empathy and mutual respect among children and adults.C.

Provide a supportive environment in which children can begin to learn and practice appropriate and acceptable behaviors as individuals and as a group.D.

Support each childs culture within the classroom.

• Establish positive and productive relationships with families.A.
  
  

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 his or her family, through parent-teacher conferences and volunteering at the site/classroom.B.

Serve as a role model for Head Start parents and foster appropriate parent-child interactions in the classroom and in the home.C.

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.D.

Provide parents with the 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.A.
  
  

Manage the classroom using available resources to ensure an effective operation. This includes skills in organization, planning, record keepi