Company Profile

Company Description:

Upper & Lower Elementary Head Teacher Positions

Our mission at Touchstone is to cultivate a joyful learning community committed to creating a more innovative, just, and sustainable world. Touchstone seeks a full-time early childhood or lower elementary teacher for the 2024-25 school year. This individual is a reflective, life-long learner passionate about play-based, place-based, and thematic or project-based learning. This person profoundly respects childhood and is committed to progressive education, anti-racist and anti-bias learning environments, eco-literacy, emergent and integrated curriculum, and nature-based education.

Touchstone Community School is a co-educational independent day school that enrolls approximately 70-90 students, ages 2.9 through 8th grade. It is located in Grafton, MA, with a five-acre island in Upton. Touchstone offers a progressive, hands-on environment where a natural pace of development is respected, and play, community, integrated curriculum, and social justice activism are emphasized. 

Skills, Qualifications, Responsibilities

• Possession of an undergraduate degree, at minimum, and well-grounded in progressive education.

• Committed to anti-bias, anti-racist, and anti-homophobic education

• Knowledgeable and appreciative of the developmental needs of early childhood and early elementary students and dedicated to supporting students’ individual social and emotional development

• Great willingness to utilize Responsive Classroom and Collaborative Problem Solving

• Experience with a multi-sensory reading, writing, and spelling approach, such as Orton Gillingham and UFLI Foundations, and facilitating reading and writing workshops.

• Experience teaching a constructivist approach to mathematics focused on conceptual understanding

• Dedicated to collaborating with colleagues and partnering with parents

• Passionate about outdoor-based education and eco-literacy

• Excited to incorporate farming into classroom studies (Touchstone has goats and chickens)

• Facility with developing messy, thematic learning experiences for children

• Familiarity with using design thinking strategies for building empathyTouchstone welcomes candidates who will add to the diversity of our community and who have demonstrated a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in their teaching and learning.

Touchstone Community School is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate based on race, color, religion, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, sex, disabilities, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, family composition, or any other status protected by applicable law in the administration of its employment. Research shows that people from marginalized groups are less likely to apply for a position if they feel that they do not meet all of our qualifications listed. We would like to hear from you if you are passionate about progressive education and meet many, but not all, of these qualifications.