Job
Manglares Discovery School Playa Venao, Panama License required
Ongoing
Featured Job
Elementary Teacher (Inquiry) - Driven Nature School
Manglares Discovery School
Playa Venao, Panama
Negotiable for right candidate
Negotiable for right candidate
Start December 2024
10 months
1
- Elementary
- Licensed Teacher, Director/Principal
- Bachelor
- 2 years of teaching experience
- Education, Psychology, or related field
- Teaching Credential/License
Qualifications:
- Teaching license not required but relevant educational training or classroom experience is required
- Some experience with positive classroom management styles and/or constructivist learning theories
- Some experience with project-based curriculum or inquiry learning
International travel medical insurance.
We are looking for adventurous, fun, and creative teachers to join us!
Manglares Discovery School is a private micro-school in its sixth year, set on a secluded, natural jungle campus. Our students range from age 3 to age 12, and the school serves the nearby beach/surf community of Playa Venao. Our school is focused on developing the whole child; academic as well as social and emotional well-being.
We started with a single, early-education classroom, but have since expanded into elementary grades. Our early education started with a Reggio Emilia-inspired curriculum, and our goal is to permeate this philosophy of the project-based approach through all of our grade levels. We are now looking for a lead teacher to bring the child-led, inquiry-driven spirit into an elementary grade, Grade 3.
The area offers much potential in terms of inquiry extensions. For example, the campus is home to a waterfall; we get almost daily visits from three species of monkeys and other birds and animals. The local community has various interesting cultural traditions. Our student-teacher ratio is approximately 10-15 students to a teacher.
The candidate(s) must be open-minded and willing to adapt and incorporate various learning tools, pay attention to the student's learning needs & interests, lead discussions, inspire collaboration and reflection, and model a love of learning. The classroom will be a hybrid model mixing digital learning and longer projects. The candidate(s) must have classroom experience.
If you believe in developing the whole child, love working with children, believe that life is an adventure, love nature, believe in the hidden potential of children, and want to try working at a growing school in a tropical location, this position might be a great fit for you!
The position requires relocation to rural Panama. Playa Venao is often regarded as the surfing capital of Panama with consistent year-round waves. The candidate(s) must be willing to adjust to a new environment & culture (a slower pace of life) and enjoy nature (or learn to embrace it).
Our Philosophy
We believe that every child wants to and can learn.
When children find meaning in learning, they are motivated and challenged, and take ownership of their learning.
We value every child as an individual. Our children have diverse learning needs and bring with them a wide range of experiences, beliefs, knowledge, and skills. We adapt our teaching pace, approaches, and assessment practices to be effective and appropriate for where the child is in development.
We believe that learning takes place in caring and safe environments. We cultivate positive teacher-student and peer relationships so that there is a culture of care and mutual respect in our classrooms, where children learn to appreciate diversity. They are encouraged to take risks, learn from their mistakes and one another, and be confident in expressing their views.
Learning takes place individually and collaboratively, as children construct and co-construct meaning from knowledge and experiences. We guide learners to activate prior knowledge and assimilate and accommodate new knowledge through exploration and interaction with others. This allows them to build a strong foundation of knowledge by connecting new ideas and experiences with what they already know, thus facilitating the understanding of concepts and the application of what they have learned to different contexts.
We believe in developing thinking skills and dispositions in our learners. To do this, we guide them to construct, interpret, and evaluate knowledge from different perspectives. We help learners understand that by thinking about their thinking, they can monitor, assess, and improve their learning.
Assessment is integral to the learning process and helps children become self-directed learners. As such, we design assessments with clarity of purpose, to provide our learners and us with feedback to address learning gaps and improve teaching practices.
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