Summary
Assisting the Lead Teacher with supervision of the children, within a laboratory early care and education environment, ensuring their health, safety, and welfare; and instructs them in activities designed to promote social/ emotional, physical, and intellectual growth. Serves as a professional model and mentor to ECE program students.

Knowledge & Responsibilities:

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following. Other duties may be assigned.

• Maintains constant supervision of children.
• Assists in providing developmentally appropriate activities balancing children's needs for individual and group activities, physical and quiet play, and child initiated and teacher initiated activities.
• Assist the lead teacher in maintaining an individual portfolio assessment system on each child and contributes to each parent conferences twice a year or as needed.
• Assists with the planning and organizing of trainings, workshops, and events designed for families of the CDC.
• Gives each child the attention needed to assure his/her best welfare including needs related to learning experiences, eating, toileting, sleeping, playing, health care and safety.
• Maintains accurate attendance reports and other center and child records.
• Assists in the preparation, implementation, and gathering of educational materials required to implement the program and curriculum as planned.
• Provides guidance and supervises JCC adult students from various programs including Early Childhood Education (ECE) practicum students by providing weekly updates and student evaluations as required.
• Collaborates with ECE and other program instructors, and remains available to all other ECE students that utilization of the laboratory classroom environments.
• Collaborates with the lead teacher to recommend children for referral as needed for specialized services to the Director of the Child Development Center.
• Maintains cleanliness classrooms, bathrooms, storage areas, kitchen, and playground in a neat and organized manner.
• Works as a team to ensure all licensing, health and sanitation and accreditation standards are met.
• Assist in preparations of daily meals, if needed while maintaining sanitation rules/regulations and the Child and Adult Food Care Program requirements.
• Maintain cleanliness of kitchen, classrooms, bathrooms and other assigned areas.
• Participates in professional development based on NC license rules and regulations and JCC staff evaluations and Professional Development plan.
• Collaborates with internal and external individuals, agencies and initiatives related to the Child Development Center or Early Care and Education field.
• Ability to exercise confidentiality, honesty, and consistent and sound judgments regarding the care of children, families, colleagues and adult college students.
• Ability to establish effective harmonious and collaborative relationships with a diverse population of children, families, staff, students and community.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Supervisory Responsibilities   

This job has no employee supervisory responsibilities, but would have direct supervision of children ages birth to five years of age and assist in supervision of classroom volunteers, visitors, students, etc

• Ability to exercise confidentiality, honesty, and consistent and sound judgments regarding the care of children, families, colleagues and adult college students.
• Ability to establish effective harmonious and collaborative relationships with a diverse population of children, families, staff, students and community.

Additional Information:

Language Skills 

• Ability to read and comprehend simple instructions, short correspondence, and memos.
• Ability to write simple correspondence.
• Ability to effectively present information in one-on-one and small group situations to customers, clients, and other employees of the organization.
• Ability to utilize a wide variety of data such as NC Child Care rules and regulations, accreditation guidelines, sanitation requirements, etc.
• Quality oral and written communication skills for modeling for children as well as communicating with outside agencies, students and families.
   

Mathematical Skills 

• Ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide in all units of measure, using whole numbers, common fractions, and decimals.
• Ability to compute rate, ratio, and percent and to draw and interpret bar graphs.
   

Reasoning Ability

• Ability to exercise judgment, decisiveness, and creativity required of situations involving the direction, implementation and planning of the classroom environment and activities and use a variety of behavior guidance strategies.
• Ability to apply common sense understanding to carry out detailed but uninvolved written or oral instructions.
• Ability to deal with problems involving a few concrete variables in standardized situations.
      

Computer Skills and Additional Tools

• Basic use of computers including word processing, typing, email,
• Utilizing and researching on the internet and attaching documents
• Experiences with online course delivery systems (such as Blackboard).
• Ability to operate children's electronic educational tools such as Smart Tables, computers and other similar electronic media as well
• Ability to operate additional office equipment such as fax, copier, and printer.

Physical Demands

• Ability speak and hear (with or without assistive devices)
• Ability to be mobile including standing for potentially long periods of time, walking, kneeling, crouching, stoop, reaching, crawling, getting up and down from the floor level, etc.
• Ability to lift/move up to 35 pounds
• This position is physically active and demanding and requires proper balance and fitness.
• Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision and ability to adjust focus.
• Employee must be able to obtain physician approval for physical and mental health upon employment and thereafter as needed or required.

Work Environment:  
The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

•  Typical work environment includes early care and education classroom settings and a group of children in the JCC Child Development Center on the main campus.
• Field trips and other external excursions may be required on alternative on-campus or off-campus locations.
• The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.