Update 31^st March 2008. All vacancies have been filled.

PRIMARY VACANCIES

For the 2008-2009 Academic Year there are currently two vacancies in the Primary and Pre-School sections of the School. We are looking for a KS2 class teacher and an Academic Director/PYP Co-ordinator to join the Senior Management Team, working across Pre-School, KS1 and KS2.

The KS2 teacher will probably be working in 3^rd Grade (Year 4) and will be responsible for the English side of the programme for two classes of 25 children each. The successful candidate will work closely with their Mexican counterpart in the planning and organisation of programmes of inquiry for this year group as well as teaching “stand-alone” subjects such as Mathematics and English. There are 20 contact hours a week with the students plus two additional hours of dedicated collaborative planning time when grade teachers work with the PYP coordinator and other subject specialists.

The Academic Director will ideally be an experienced PYP Coordinator, and will join the Senior Management Team on the Primary and Pre-School site. This person will need to be flexible and adaptable to change as well as sensitive towards cultural and organisational differences in order to fit into, and complement a well established management team. The successful candidate will be responsible for building on the School’s introduction and development of PYP programmes, and would be expected to provide leadership and guidance for all members of staff, as well as for members of the wider school community. As well as the responsibilities associated with the PYP co-ordination, the successful candidate will be expected to contribute towards the general management of the School, assisting the Heads of Pre-School and Primary, as well as working closely with the School’s Director of Studies in all curricular and professional development matters. The person appointed to this position will be accountable to the Primary and Pre-School Site Director on a day to day basis. PYP knowledge and experience is essential to this position and the successful candidate, if not initially able to communicate in Spanish, would need to develop a functional level of communicative Spanish within the first six months in post (free classes are provided by the School). For more information about this post please see the Academic Director/PYP Co-ordinator Job Description.

GENERAL INFORMATION

The Primary school caters for boys and girls from 3 to 12 years of age. There are approximately 430 pupils on the Primary and Pre-School site – 250 students in the Primary section and another 180 in the Pre-School section. Each grade is made up of two classes with 25 students in each, except the first grade of Pre-School, where we have 3 smaller groups of 15 children each.

In the Kindergarten section most teaching is in English although children do also receive some formal instruction in Spanish. Our principal goals are to give the children as firm a language foundation as possible in order to prepare them for a bilingual, multi-cultural education programme. The school day for students in this part of the school is from 8.00am (KIII and Pre-First) or 8:30am (KI and KII) to 1.00pm with optional extension activities from 1:00 to 2:00pm.

In the Primary section of the school (1^st to 5^th Grade - equivalent to Years 2 to 6 in the UK), groups are organised so that each class has two teachers – one native English speaker, who covers English, Maths and Science and one Mexican teacher, who covers those parts of the Mexican programme which must be given in Spanish. Much of the curriculum is integrated into the Programme of Inquiry, with both teachers contributing to each inquiry. Both teachers work with both classes in their year group, with Art, Computing, PSHE, PE and Music being given by “floating” specialist teachers. The day for Primary students is from 8:00am to 2:00pm.

Teachers from KI to Pre-First (the first four years of School) liaise closely with the Head of Pre-School whilst those in the remaining five Primary grades liaise with the Head of Primary. Both of these sections and section leaders work closely with the Academic Director/PYP Co-ordinator and all report to the Site Manager, who is responsible to the School’s Headteacher for the day-to-day running of the site. There are weekly staff meetings and Grade Team planning meetings plus occasional after school meetings to look at more general issues of school development.

The School uses the Oxford Reading Tree programme together with a variety of other English teaching resources (including Faces and Domino) and over recent years has invested a considerable amount of money in building up the School’s central and class library resources. The Mathematics programme is based on the National Numeracy Strategy and we are in the process of incorporating more investigative and problem-solving activities into Mathematics teaching.

Although most students have a reasonable command of English, for the vast majority it is their second language and consequently teachers have to make allowances for this in their planning and preparation. Whilst we are not strictly teachers of English as a second language we do use ESL techniques and resources and are currently revising this aspect of the curriculum.

The programmes in the Primary school have traditionally been built around topic webs, with a central scientific theme for each term, although we are currently introducing the International Baccalaureate PYP programme (we are a candidate school seeking accreditation this February, 2008), which means that the curriculum has been reviewed to include the units of inquiry that form the central element of PYP. We are looking for teachers who are able to integrate different areas of the curriculum through inquiry based learning and adapt the content and organisation of their programmes to suit the differing needs and abilities of their students, and the requirements of the Mexican education system and the PYP programme.

The introduction of the International Baccalaureate programmes makes this an exciting time to be part of the school and all teachers will have the opportunity to gain valuable experience and training for the development of a career in international education. In particular, the need for collaborative planning has increased dramatically and the joint planning sessions between overseas and local teachers within each grade are considered to be a critical element of the job, which means that we are looking for teachers who are genuinely committed to teamwork and are willing to overcome the language and cultural barriers that make this process more challenging.

There are curriculum co-ordinators for Maths, Science, English, Spanish, and PSHE as well as the subject specialists mentioned above, and we have a Learning Support Department and an Inclusion policy through which 10 students with intellectual, and one with physical, disabilities have been integrated into the school community.

Our computing facilities consist of a computing centre in the library with two small research laboratories of six computers, which are used for independent research and investigation. The school policy is to equip all classrooms with their own fixed data projector and interactive whiteboard in the medium term and we will start working towards this with the introduction of some data projectors this year. Teachers are encouraged to incorporate computing whenever appropriate into their classroom activities.

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