Atelierista & IB Curriculum Developer

Company Description

La Scuola International School is the only Reggio Emilia inspired, International Baccalaureate (Early, Primary and Middle Years) and Italian Language Immersion school in the world. Teachers are researchers and are supported with robust Professional Development opportunities throughout the year.

Learning is a part of everything that we do, not just what happens in the classroom. While our school experience is rooted in highly regarded curricula, the magic of La Scuola is more than what we teach. It is how we teach and learn, which is truly a way of living, thinking, and interacting with the world. To learn more, please visit us cuolasf.org.

Founded: 2002
Number of students: 465
Locations:
San Francisco and Silicon Valley

La Scuola International School is an independent non-profit school accredited by NAIS, CAIS, WASC and CIS and is one of two Italian schools recognized by the Italian government in the United States.

La Scuola International seeks experienced and passionate Atelierista for the upcoming school year. The Atelierista is a teacher with an artistic background, responsible for the design and development of learning environments for children, the upkeep of the atelier, the execution of projects and research, and the documentation to make children's learning processes visible. The Atelierista brings deep expertise in visual arts, materials, and creative processes to support children’s learning through inquiry, expression, and research.

Grounded in the principles of the Reggio Emilia approach, the Atelierista collaborates closely with teachers to design environments, provocations, and long-term investigations that honor children’s theories, 100 languages, and ways of knowing. They hold a high image of the child and are experts in documentation. The Atelierista is not a “specialist” teacher, but a co-researcher and collaborator who supports the integration of aesthetic, symbolic, and material exploration throughout the curriculum.

• Design, curate, and maintain the atelier and other creative learning spaces across campus
• Select and organize open-ended, high-quality materials that invite intentional exploration, transformation, and sustained inquiry
• Collaborate on classroom environment design to ensure spaces function as a “third teacher”

• Partner with classroom teachers to co-plan, co-research, and reflect on long-term projects, learning outcomes, units of inquiry and emergent curriculum
• Support educators in deepening their use of materials, visual languages, and documentation as tools for learning
• Participate in pedagogical meetings, reflective practice, and professional learning communities

• Collaborate with pedagogical leadership and teaching teams to integrate Reggio-inspired inquiry, documentation, and visual languages within the IB framework
• Support the design and refinement of Units of Inquiry through material exploration, conceptual provocations, and project-based research
• Align documentation and assessment practices with IB learning goals and Approaches to Learning
• Contribute to curriculum mapping and reflection to ensure coherence between emergent curriculum and IB standards

• Work directly with children individually, in small groups, and in project work to support investigation, expression, and meaning-making
• Observe children closely to identify emerging interests, hypotheses, and symbolic languages
• Respect children as capable protagonists in their own learning, supporting—not directing—their creative processes

• Collaborate with teachers on pedagogical documentation that makes learning visible
• Use documentation as a reflective and interpretive tool to inform curriculum development
• Contribute to school-wide exhibitions, displays, and publications that communicate learning to families and the broader community
• Work with staff to interpret and document children’s work to encourage student reflection on their own learning and to understand the learning strategies children use
• Guide integration of exploration…