Example Career: Preschool Teachers

Career Description

Instruct preschool-aged students, following curricula or lesson plans, in activities designed to promote social, physical, and intellectual growth.

What Job Titles Preschool Teachers Might Have

• Montessori Preschool Teacher
• Pre-Kindergarten Teacher (Pre-K Teacher)
• Teacher
• Toddler Teacher

What Preschool Teachers Do

• Teach basic skills, such as color, shape, number and letter recognition, personal hygiene, and social skills.
• Establish and enforce rules for behavior and procedures for maintaining order.
• Adapt teaching methods and instructional materials to meet students' varying needs and interests.
• Provide a variety of materials and resources for children to explore, manipulate, and use, both in learning activities and in imaginative play.
• Serve meals and snacks in accordance with nutritional guidelines.
• Attend to children's basic needs by feeding them, dressing them, and changing their diapers.
• Meet with parents and guardians to discuss their children's progress and needs, determine their priorities for their children, and suggest ways that they can promote learning and development.
• Organize and lead activities designed to promote physical, mental, and social development, such as games, arts and crafts, music, storytelling, and field trips.
• Identify children showing signs of emotional, developmental, or health-related problems and discuss them with supervisors, parents or guardians, and child development specialists.
• Maintain accurate and complete student records as required by laws, district policies, and administrative regulations.
• Assimilate arriving children to the school environment by greeting them, helping them remove outerwear, and selecting activities of interest to them.
• Observe and evaluate children's performance, behavior, social development, and physical health.
• Prepare materials and classrooms for class activities.
• Read books to entire classes or to small groups.
• Establish clear objectives for all lessons, units, and projects and communicate those objectives to children.
• Arrange indoor and outdoor space to facilitate creative play, motor-skill activities, and safety.
• Teach proper eating habits and personal hygiene.
• Demonstrate activities to children.
• Plan and conduct activities for a balanced program of instruction, demonstration, and work time that provides students with opportunities to observe, question, and investigate.
• Enforce all administration policies and rules governing students.
• Prepare and implement remedial programs for students requiring extra help.
• Confer with other staff members to plan and schedule lessons promoting learning, following approved curricula.
• Attend professional meetings, educational conferences, and teacher training workshops to maintain and improve professional competence.
• Organize and label materials and display students' work in a manner appropriate for their ages and perceptual skills.
• Prepare reports on students and activities as required by administration.
• Collaborate with other teachers and administrators in the development, evaluation, and revision of preschool programs.
• Plan and supervise class projects, field trips, visits by guests, or other experiential activities and guide students in learning from those activities.
• Meet with other professionals to discuss individual students' needs and progress.
• Select, store, order, issue, and inventory classroom equipment, materials, and supplies.
• Supervise, evaluate, and plan assignments for teacher assistants and volunteers.
• Administer tests to help determine children's developmental levels, needs, and potential.
• Attend staff meetings and serve on committees as required.
• Provide students with disabilities with assistive devices, supportive technology, and assistance accessing facilities, such as restrooms.
• Perform administrative duties, such as hall and cafeteria monitoring and bus loading and unloading.

What Preschool Teachers Should Be Good At

• Oral Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
• Oral Comprehension - The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
• Problem Sensitivity - The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.
• Speech Clarity - The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
• Speech Recognition - The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
• Information Ordering - The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
• Written Comprehension - The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
• Fluency of Ideas - The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
• Deductive Reasoning - The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.

What Preschool Teachers Need to Learn

• Customer and Personal Service - Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
• Education and Training - Knowledge of principles and methods for curriculum and training design, teaching and instruction for individuals and groups, and the measurement of training effects.
• English Language - Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
• Psychology - Knowledge of human behavior and performance; individual differences in ability, personality, and interests; learning and motivation; psychological research methods; and the assessment and treatment of behavioral and affective disorders.
• Public Safety and Security - Knowledge of relevant equipment, policies, procedures, and strategies to promote effective local, state, or national security operations for the protection of people, data, property, and institutions.