Pre-K-3rd Grade Studio Art Teacher

OPPORTUNITY       Join the vibrant communities at our Waller and Oak campuses as our Pre-K – 3 Studio Art teacher. Help us to ignite passion and joy for the studio art in our young students. Work closely with a highly collaborative Arts Team on the implementation of our Arts Vision (see below). Become part of a team striving to be the world’s most innovative, inspiring, and influential Chinese English dual-language immersion school.

OUR IDEAL CANDIDATE

The ideal candidate finds resonance with CAIS’s mission to Embrace Chinese, Become your Best Self, and Create your Place in the World. CAIS aims to empower independent, effective, and inspired learners. The arts are essential to a CAIS education as a foundation for critical thinking, collaboration, wonder, and creativity. The candidate will enter an environment that values social emotional learning alongside skills development. The school supports its Studio Art faculty by giving them the freedom to design projects and curriculum that they feel best support the students’ growth as artists and individuals.

CAIS offers a dynamic dual culture setting, in which faculty are immersed in a culture of language learners. We look for a candidate who will embrace CAIS’s work to create an equitable, inclusive environment where all faculty, students, and families are supported in their individual identities. We welcome all applicants who aim to actively support and participate in our diverse and inclusive community. Mandarin language capacity is a plus.

ABOUT THE ARTS AT CAIS

The Arts at CAIS (Music, Dance, Visual Art, Design) are a mission-vital component of our overall curriculum. Arts provide the CAIS community with an avenue to Embrace Chinese, Become Their Best Self, and Create Their Place in the World. Through instruction in the arts, curricular integration, collaboration, and community engagement, the Arts program empowers students to develop skills, take risks, make meaning, and enact change.

The Arts at CAIS values Chinese as a lens to explore multiple perspectives, and engages the community through a pedagogy that is experiential and collaborative. The Arts inspire the CAIS community to creatively and critically investigate and respond to the complexity of and exchange between culture and identity, process and product, and the dynamic exchange between contemporary and traditional art forms.

BENEFITS       The CAIS Board of Trustees and administration are expressly dedicated to ensuring that CAIS is a great place work. As a critical component of our Strategic Vision, the school has committed to attracting, developing, retaining, and rewarding top-tier faculty and excellent educators with a benefits package including:

• Transparent salary scale benchmarked to the Bay Area’s competitive standards
• Robust opportunities for professional development, support, and growth
• Comprehensive insurance package (covering 100% of premiums for individual employee)
• Numerous opportunities to participate in international travel
• Commuting cost assistance
• Consideration for cost of relocation
• Down payment assistance for home purchase
• Below-Market Rental process assistance
• Realtor services provided for rental search

ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor degree or higher
• Studio art teaching experience with demonstrated success
• Artistic expertise
• Early childhood teaching experience and interest in working with young children
• Ability to work collaboratively
• Strong classroom management skills and a positive discipline approach to guiding student behavior
• Interest in arts integration
• Interest and experience in design, making and tinkering
• Commitment to meeting the needs of individual learners and promoting social and emotional development
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
• Dedication to equity and inclusion and ability to work with individuals from diverse backgrounds
• Commitment to school mission, policies, and initiatives

ESSENTIAL DUTIES

Position responsibilities include (but are not limited to):

• Facilitate exploratory, engaging, and age appropriate experiences in the arts, building artistic skills in every student while they create, collaborate, and develop personal expression
• Help our youngest students to develop enthusiasm and interest in art and creative expression
• Develop learning experiences that meet the students’ varying needs and interests
• Demonstrate teaching excellence, a growth mindset, professionalism, and
• Support the educational program by challenging, supporting, and engaging
• Successfully teach all assigned classes in accordance with grade appropriate best
• Encompass a positive discipline approach in guiding student behavior.
• Develop a positive intellectual, emotional, and social environment within the classroom and a class community in which all children feel valued and a sense of
• Actively support and collaborate on school initiatives, such as events and committee
• Work collaboratively and maintain standards of respect, courtesy, and mutual consideration with the school community, including students, staff, and
• Communicate effectively, promptly, and proactively with families.
• Prepare grades and progress reports according to school procedures.

VALUED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Attend faculty and division meetings including required meetings/events before the beginning of the school year and during the term of

We value, but do not require, the following attributes:

• Teaching credential, Master’s in Education (M.Ed.), or equivalent
• Early childhood education coursework or credential
• Proficiency and/or interest in Mandarin language
• Personal experience with second language acquisition

ABOUT CAIS       As the nation’s first dual language Chinese and English Pre-K through 8th grade school, CAIS works continuously to maintain our role as a leader in immersion education. At CAIS we value honest

self-assessment, thoughtful self-reflection, intentional planning and focused implementation. We are known as an ambitious school, and in recent years we have introduced and implemented a number of significant initiatives in the areas of overseas programing, student support services, systematic assessment in Chinese, Reading and Writing Workshop across languages, educational technology, integrated curriculum units across subjects and languages, the arts, diversity equity and inclusion, and daily scheduled team collaboration time as a part of a professional learning community, to name a few.

Our three campuses are located in the heart of San Francisco and accessible by public transportation in San Francisco. The lively neighborhood echoes the school’s vital energy and provides ready access to cultural treasures such as the Asian Art Museum, SF Jazz, the San Francisco Symphony and more.

For more information, visit https://www.cais.org/about-us/employment

TO APPLY       CAIS’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is central to our mission. People of color and LGBT candidates are strongly encouraged to apply. Email cover letter, resume, and list of references to jobs@cais.org. In subject line please indicate “Studio Art Teacher” Please no calls.