POSITION SUMMARY:
The Preschool Lead Child Care Teacher is responsible for guiding and instructing children through creative planning and implementation of a developmentally appropriate daily program of activities promoting each child's affective, cognitive, physical, perceptual-motor, communicative and social competence. The position involves the close supervision of the Assistant Teacher enhancing a team teaching approach to ensure the safe and healthful care and management of children in a nurturing environment.
Involvement includes maintaining contact and open communication with parents, program staff and community resources. Supervisory
Responsibilities:
The preschool lead child care teacher supervises other assistant teacher(s) in their classroom. All department staff are responsible for each other’s safety and well-being.
ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:
- Demonstrates appropriate interactions with children: 1.
- Interacts frequently with children showing affection, interest, and respect.
- 2.
- Makes self available and is responsive to children.
- 3.
- Speaks with children in a friendly, courteous manner.
- 4.
- Talks with individual children, and encourages children of all ages to use language.
- 5.
- Treats children of all races, religions, family backgrounds, and cultures equally with respect and consideration.
- 6.
- Provides all children with equal opportunities to take part in all activities.
- 7.
- Encourages independence in children, as they are ready.
- 8.
- Uses positive approaches to help children behave constructively.
- 9.
- Refrains from use of physical punishment or negative discipline methods that hurt, frighten or humiliate children.
- 10.
- Helps children deal with anger, sadness and frustration by comforting, identifying, reflecting feelings, and helping children use words to solve their problems.
- 11.
- Encourage prosocial behavior in children such as cooperating, helping taking turns, talking to solve problems.
- 12.
- Expectations of children's social behavior are developmentally appropriate.
- 13.
- Encourages children to talk about feelings and ideas instead of solving problems with force.
- Establishes and maintains a safe and healthful learning environment: 14.
- Maintains an efficient, well-arranged classroom including interest areas that provide direction and a sense of organization.
- 15.
- Keeps equipment and materials in good repair and stored in a safe, orderly fashion.
- 16.
- Keeps equipment and materials sanitized and clean.
- 17.
- Provides materials and activities appropriate for the children's developmental progress and individual learning styles.
- 18.
- Implements a well-established positive routine adapted to the needs of children.
- 19.
- Encourages daily health routines with children including tooth brushing and hand washing.
- 20.
- Provides adequate supervision ensuring the safety of active children.
- 21.
- Plans emergency procedures, maintains emergency information and initiates emergency action when necessary.
- Advances children's physical and intellectual competence: 22.
- Promotes language understanding and use in an appropriate atmosphere (flannel-board, puppets, songs, story records, etc.).
- 23.
- Provides opportunities for development of cognitive skills and awareness of concepts.
- 24.
- Promotes physical development of children (large and small muscles).
- 25.
- Attends to the physical needs of the children by providing a pleasant rest time daily.
- 26.
- Provides a variety of opportunities for creative expression (dramatic play, movement, art, music, language, etc.) 27.
- Plans for a multi-sensory classroom environment (activities for visual, auditory, tactile development, etc.) Supports children's social-emotional development and provides positive guidance: 28.
- Provides children with opportunities for success through individual, small group and large group activities, including free play.
- 29.
- Involves children in all phases of self-help training (dressing, toileting, eating, etc.).
- 30.
- Utilizes appropriate group management techniques.
- 31.
- Eats with children modeling proper table manners and sharing the same menu.
- 32.
- Includes multi-cultural and multi-ethnic materials, displays and activities in curriculum input.
- 33.
- Provides educational opportunities through individualized hands-on food experiences that integrate curriculum areas into nutrition (reading readiness, science, math, language, etc.).
- 34.
- Provides guidance in nutritional experiences including family-style meals (self-service, passing, pouring, table setting, table cleaning, etc.).
- Establishes positive and productive communication with families: 35.
- Maintains contact with parents through calendars, verbal and written communication, phone calls, posted information, etc.
- 36.
- Involves parents in the education plan for their children by sharing individualized developmental information (parent-teacher conferences).
- 37.
- Provides opportunities for parents to participate in program planning and classroom activities (fundraisers, party donations, game loans, etc.).
- 38.
- Speaks with families in a friendly, courteous, and respectful manner.
- Carries out supplementary and planning
responsibilities:
- 39.
- Evaluates each child and conducts formal observations as required.
- 40.
- Plans developmental goals for each child through the uses of daily curriculum, individualized objectives and long range goals.
- 41.
- Carries out Individual Education Plans for special needs children, when appropriate.
- 42.
- Evaluates the success of the plans.
- 43.
- Maintains accurate, up-to-date records (children's files, time sheets attendance, meal participation forms, inventories, etc.).
- 44.
- Plans, organizes, reports and participates in educational field trips.
- 45.
- Make referrals to appropriate community agencies.
- 46.
- Reports immediately any child suspected of being abused to the Preschool Director.
- 47.
- Attends and participates in pre-school staff meetings, teachers' meetings, agency staff meetings and other appropriate meetings.
- 48.
- Coordinates activities of Assistant Lead Teachers and supervises execution of activities as assigned by the Preschool Director.
- 49.
- Helps with maintainging cleanliness of classroom (washes tables before and after snack, sweeps floor, cleans up any spills promptly, etc.) 50.
- Follows appropriate dress code set forth by the agency.
- 51.
- Completes required number of training hours annually.
- 52.
- Adheres to policies and procedures as outlined in the Employee Handbook and Poicy and Procedure Manual.
