Early Childhood Educator 0-5

AVANCE-Houston Inc•Houston, TX

About The Position

The Early Childhood Educator will be responsible for implementing the AVANCE Parent Child Education Curriculum and ensuring health and safety practices within the classroom environment. This role involves maintaining appropriate child-to-staff ratios, practicing active supervision, and completing lesson plans in a timely manner. The educator will ensure all policies and procedures are followed, particularly regarding diaper changing. A key aspect of the role is fostering open, friendly, and professional relationships with staff, children, and families, respecting all cultures, diversity, and ethnicities. The educator will provide developmentally appropriate learning experiences, plan and implement activities promoting literacy, language, cognitive, social/emotional, and physical/health development, and follow the classroom daily schedule. They will use various strategies to group children for instruction, promote collaboration, and build a caring community. The role requires using different teaching strategies to ensure each child's success through a balance of activities, and conducting daily observations, monthly home visits, and quarterly developmental assessments. Individualized approaches to promote each child's learning and development in both home and classroom settings are essential. Communication with parents regarding children's progress will be regular, both informally and formally. The educator will prepare supplies and ensure children's health and safety during indoor and outdoor activities, and conduct parent-teacher conferences and home visits. Documentation, including sign-in sheets, attendance, home visit reports, and daily activity sheets, must be completed. The educator will ensure children's belongings are labeled and collected. Serving meals and snacks in a family-style manner to promote good nutrition and food safety is also part of the role. The educator will implement "best practices" and learning materials, attend IFSP meetings, and incorporate IFSP goals into lesson plans. Establishing positive, caring, and nurturing relationships with children is paramount. The role includes attending staff meetings, workshops, and training conferences, giving directions to classroom volunteers, and participating in the preparation for special events. Maintaining proper hygiene for children and equipment, conducting 45-day screenings and quarterly ongoing assessments, and reporting suspected neglect, abuse, or medical conditions to the supervisor are required. The classroom must be kept organized and equipment sanitized. The educator must report to work on time and work a flexible schedule as needed to meet the needs of children and families, including completing monthly home visits. Other tasks as required will also be performed.

Requirements

High School Diploma or Equivalent
No experience required

Nice To Haves

CDA in Infants/ Toddler and/or Preschool or Willing to enroll and obtain CDA within One (1) year of hire.
At least six to one-year minimum experience in early childhood program, center/and or district preschool.

Responsibilities

Ensure ratios are being met within the classroom at all times; ensure you are practicing active supervision of children at all times.
Completes lesson plans in a timely manner.
Ensures all policies and procedures are followed when changing diapers for infants and toddlers.
Maintains an open, friendly and professional relationship with all staff, children and families to include respect to all cultures, diversity, and ethnicity.
Provides developmentally appropriate learning experiences for young children.
Plan and implement developmentally appropriate activities that promote children’s learning in literacy, language, cognitive, social/emotional, physical/health development on a weekly basis and follow classroom daily schedule.
Use a variety of strategies to flexibly group children for the purposes of instruction, promoting children’s development, supporting collaboration among children, and building a caring community of active enthusiastic learners.
Use different teaching strategies to ensure every child is successful in the classroom, by providing a balance of large group, small group and teacher directed, child-initiated activities that promote exploration, inquiry, creativity, and independence.
Conduct daily observations, monthly home visits and quarterly developmental assessments to collect information on individual children’s learning and progress.
Plan individualized approaches to promote each child’s learning and development within their home and in their classroom environment.
Communicate with parents regarding children’s progress on a regular basis, both informally and formally.
Study and prepare activities according to lesson plans and prepare materials/lesson plans according to child’s age.
Encourage parents to be involved in the curriculum through weekly family activities, classroom volunteering and attending monthly parent meetings, where they will be able learn more about the curriculum and give staff feedback and suggestions on center and classroom activities.
Provides and/or prepares supplies needed and ensures children’s health and safety are met during indoor and outdoor activities.
Communicate with parents regarding children’s progress on a regular basis, both informally and formally thru parent/ teacher conferences and home visits.
Ensures all documentation is completed by parents/guardian inclusive to sign-in sheet, attendance sheet, home visit reports, and daily activity sheets.
Ensures all children belongings are properly labeled and makes sure parents pick up all belongings at the end of the session and program year.
Serves meals and /or snacks. Conduct family-style meals, serves to promote good nutrition and food safety practices.
Implement “best practices” approaches and learning materials as needed.
Attend IFSP meetings, which result in incorporating IFSP’s in the lesson plans.
Establish positive, caring and nurturing relationships with children.
Attends staff meetings, workshops and training conferences as scheduled by supervisor.
Give directions to classroom volunteers.
Participates in the preparation for the programmatic special events.
Maintains proper hygiene in the children and all equipment and space used for care of children.
Conducts 45-day screening on children within case load and quarterly on-going assessment.
Report suspect neglect, abuse, medical conditions/illnesses to immediate supervisor
Ensure classroom is organized and classroom equipment and materials are sanitized for the children to use.
Report to work on time and work a flexible schedule when necessary, ensuring the needs of the children and families we serve are met.
Complete monthly home visits to participants homes.
Performs other tasks as required.