Early Head Start teacher job description template (duties, qualifications, schedule)

Every section of an Early Head Start teacher posting does one job: help a teacher who has worked with children under 36 months recognize the seat, and help one who has not screen themselves out.

An Early Head Start classroom runs under two rulebooks at once — the Head Start Program Performance Standards at 45 CFR 1302 that the Office of Head Start administers, and your state's child care licensing rule — so the posting has to speak to both: the federal credential floor, the classroom staffing rule your rooms operate under, and the state requirements enforced against your license.

The three sections below carry most of that weight, and the template further down assembles them into a posting you can publish.

Key duties and responsibilities

Write the duties the way an infant-toddler day actually runs — on the children's schedule as much as the clock's: arrival and greeting, feeding and diapering routines with the documentation your program assigns, floor-based play and sensory activity, language-rich one-to-one time, outdoor time, naps, and the pickup handoff to families.

A candidate can then set your day against rooms they have already worked, and your interview notes can point back to the same list.

Then the parts of the seat that make it an Early Head Start classroom: delivering the curriculum your program adopts and adapting it to children under 36 months, observing and documenting what each child does and sharing it with families, and the family-partnership process the Head Start standards require — the family partnership agreement staff and families build and review together — [conferences / home visits / daily updates, as your program schedules them].

Name the curriculum in the posting when you can, so candidates who already know it can say so in their application.

And the team line, which in Early Head Start is set by rule, not by preference: an Early Head Start class of children under 36 months runs, under the current standards, with two teachers and no more than eight children, or with three teachers and no more than nine — and each teacher is primarily responsible for no more than four children (45 CFR 1302.21(b)).

Say which of the teachers this seat is, what your program calls its lead, and how you assign each teacher's primary group.

The career-side guide to what an Early Head Start teacher is and does helps you draw that line before you write a word of the posting.

Minimum and preferred qualifications

Lead with the federal floor, because it is the one part of the minimum you do not fill in from a template.

Current Head Start rules require Early Head Start center-based teachers of infants and toddlers to have at minimum a CDA — the Child Development Associate credential awarded by the Council for Professional Recognition — or a comparable credential, plus training or coursework focused on infant and toddler development (45 CFR 1302.91(e)(1); Head Start Act section 645A(h)).

Keep the "or comparable" in the posting: applicants arrive with state certificates and degrees that may already clear that bar, and our research carries no federal list of the credentials that count as comparable — settle which ones clear the bar with your grantee and the Office of Head Start.

Under it, put the state line as a placeholder, the same way you would for any center posting: "meets [State]'s child care licensing requirements for [teacher title]", plus the background-check and pre-service training lines your state sets, with timing left to your state's process.

Your state child care licensing agency sets its own qualification requirements for the same classroom, so the placeholder is filled in by your state's rules, not this template.

The Head Start standards' own hiring sequence runs alongside: an interview, reference checks and a sex offender registry check, plus either a state/tribal or FBI fingerprint check, before hire — with the remaining check and the child abuse registry check completed within 90 days, no unsupervised access to children until checks are complete, and a full re-check every five years. Confirm before you post: Head Start staff rules are in active rulemaking in 2026 — on August 7, 2026, ACF proposed rescinding and replacing the entire Performance Standards (comments closed October 6, 2026).

The proposal would keep the statutory teacher qualifications, which include Early Head Start teachers, while dropping the regulatory ones for other staff roles and the standards' own background-check procedures — statutory requirements and state CCDBG-aligned background checks would still apply.

It would also bar programs from requiring or incentivizing postsecondary credits or credentials unless they show the education is necessary for the position.

None of it is final as of October 2026, so confirm the current qualification requirements with the Office of Head Start and your state child care licensing agency before they go into a posting.

Not every Early Head Start seat is this one.

The home-based option is a home visitor seat with its own schedule — one home visit per family per week lasting at least 90 minutes, at least 46 visits a year, plus at least 22 group socializations — and the two settings split the program: about 67% of funded Early Head Start services were center-based and about 28% home-based in the 2023-24 program year.

Post the seat you actually have, under the title the work carries.

The grantee-side rules for all three staff seats are on our Early Head Start teacher qualification requirements page.

Keep the preferred list honestly preferred.

An associate or bachelor's degree in early childhood education or child development, experience in an infant-toddler classroom, a second language relevant to the families you serve, and experience working under the Head Start Program Performance Standards all belong under "preferred" — and requiring a credential beyond what your grantee actually requires for the seat removes candidates the rule qualifies.

Given the August 2026 proposal's restriction on requiring or incentivizing credentials a program cannot show are necessary, keep every item above the floor a preference unless your program can point to a requirement.

Physical requirements and schedule

Describe the physical work as the job's own essential functions: lifting and carrying infants and toddlers and classroom materials, working down at floor level and moving up and down throughout the day, standing and walking for most of the shift, carrying a child while settling another, and outdoor playground supervision in the seasons your program goes outside.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, physical requirements in a job description should describe those essential functions, and the EEOC requires accommodation for applicants with disabilities unless it causes the employer significant difficulty or expense.

One line to leave out: a lifting weight written as a legal threshold.

No federal rule sets a lifting weight for childcare jobs, and no national licensing standard does either — a "must lift 40 pounds" figure is an employer's own practice, so if you state a number, present it as what the job itself demands rather than as a rule.

A second accommodation law reaches the same line: employers with 15 or more employees are covered by the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act — effective June 27, 2023, with the EEOC's regulation effective June 18, 2024 — which requires reasonable accommodation of known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth or related conditions.

The schedule section does more work here than in a private-center posting, because center-based Early Head Start programs must provide 1,380 annual hours of planned class operations (45 CFR 1302.21(c)(1)) — an annual commitment candidates need to see before they apply, not after.

State the days and shift hours, whether the seat runs full-year or a program year, and how coverage works with your two- or three-teacher team: brief teacher absences of up to five minutes and nap-time substitution by a staff member or trained volunteer are what the standards allow, so build coverage for everything longer.

Where your state's licensing rule is stricter than the federal numbers, the program must meet the stricter rule.

The August 2026 proposal would replace the federal ratio and group-size limits with state-established standards, so confirm those numbers with the Office of Head Start and your state child care licensing agency before you publish.

How to write the pay and benefits line

Write a range, not a shrug. "Competitive salary" and "depends on experience" hand the decision back to the candidate with nothing to decide on; a range with a real floor and a real top lets an infant-toddler teacher tell in seconds whether the job fits.

State the basis — hourly or salaried — and what moves a teacher up the range, such as years in the classroom, a degree, or taking the lead among your classroom's teachers.

A degree step is a credential incentive the August 2026 proposal would restrict unless the program shows the education is necessary for the position, so confirm the proposal's status before you build one in.

Benchmark the range before you write it, and benchmark against the right series: there is no BLS pay series for Early Head Start teachers — the title has no occupation of its own in federal wage data — so no wage figure should be presented as "Early Head Start pay." The nearest occupation, and the proxy series our salary page uses for this title, is childcare workers (SOC 39-9011), and it is a proxy: BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey for May 2025 puts that occupation's U.S. median at $16.82 an hour ($34,980 a year), with the 10th percentile at $11.66 and the 90th at $22.12 across all industries.

Setting matters inside that distribution: within private child care services (NAICS 6244), the childcare-worker median was $16.43 an hour.

Those are national figures, not your market; our Early Head Start teacher salary page shows the same proxy series as a labelled national benchmark.

The federal layer is real but in motion.

The 2024 Head Start rule requires programs, by August 1, 2031, to pay each Head Start teacher a salary at least comparable to public-school preschool teachers in the local district, adjusted for responsibilities, qualifications, experience and hours.

It also requires, by August 1, 2028, health care access, paid leave and short-term behavioral health services for full-time Head Start staff working 30 or more hours a week; agencies with 200 or fewer funded slots are exempt from the specific wage and benefit rules.

Treat both as current but not settled: on May 12, 2026, ACF proposed removing the Head Start wage and benefit requirements, the current standards stay in effect until a final rule is published, removal would take effect 60 days after a final rule, and no final rule had been published as of October 5, 2026.

Those rules name Head Start teachers and staff, so confirm what currently applies to your Early Head Start seats — and on what timeline — with the Office of Head Start before you commit to a multi-year scale or a benefits line in a posting.

In eight states, the pay line is not optional for covered employers. Our research verified pay-disclosure laws in eight states, each attached to the job posting itself and set in the state's own law:

• California — employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale for a position in any job posting (Labor Code 432.3).
• Colorado — the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act requires employers to disclose compensation in all job postings and notices, internal and public, including benefits information.
• New York — Labor Law 194-b requires businesses with four or more employees to list compensation ranges in postings for jobs, promotions and transfers.
• Washington — employers with 15 or more employees must disclose the wage scale or salary range and a general description of benefits in each job posting (RCW 49.58.110).
• Illinois — employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale and benefits in any specific job posting; a hyperlink to a public page with that information satisfies the rule (820 ILCS 112/10(b-25)).
• Minnesota — employers with 30 or more employees in Minnesota must include a good-faith salary range in job postings (Minn. Stat. 181.173).
• Massachusetts — since October 29, 2025, employers with 25 or more employees must disclose wage ranges in job postings.
• Vermont — employers with five or more employees must include the compensation or range of compensation in any advertisement of a Vermont job opening.

Secondary trackers report more states adding posting rules, including some with 2026 and 2027 effective dates; our research did not confirm those against the state sources, so treat any state outside the eight above as unconfirmed and check before you post without a range. Confirm before you post: pay-disclosure laws carry their own definitions and employer-size thresholds — Colorado's applies regardless of size — and they change, so check the current rule with the state agency that administers it before the posting goes up.

Some of the eight also reach the benefits line — Washington asks for a general description of benefits, Illinois for pay scale and benefits, and Colorado's disclosure covers benefits information.

Take classification and overtime questions for salaried teachers to the Department of Labor or your employment counsel.

Mistakes that shrink your applicant pool

The template can be airtight and the wording around it can still cost you candidates.

Check each of these before the posting goes live.

• Wording that signals a protected-trait preference. Under the laws the EEOC enforces, a job ad that shows a preference based on a protected trait is illegal — the EEOC's own examples are an ad seeking "females" or "recent college graduates," which may discourage men and people over 40 from applying. Postings that ask for "young, energetic" teachers or an all-female infant room are exactly that pattern. Describe the job — the classroom, the duties, the schedule — and leave age, sex and every other protected trait out of the ad.
• No pay line. In California, Colorado, New York, Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Vermont, the law makes pay disclosure — and, in Washington, Illinois and Colorado at least, the benefits description — part of what a covered employer's posting must carry; every state but Colorado covers only employers at or above its own size threshold. Elsewhere, and below those thresholds, an empty pay line asks candidates to apply blind, while the posting next to yours that states one lets them self-sort on the spot.
• A lifting threshold written as a legal rule. No federal rule or national licensing standard sets a lifting weight for childcare jobs; a number in your posting is your program's own practice. State the job's actual demands instead, and keep the ADA's accommodation obligation in view — and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act's, for employers with 15 or more employees.
• A preschool template with the infant-toddler layer missing. An Early Head Start posting copied from a preschool-age Head Start or private-center template omits the parts that tell qualified candidates this is their seat: the CDA-plus-infant-toddler-coursework floor, the two- or three-teacher classroom of children under 36 months with each teacher primarily responsible for no more than four, the 1,380 annual hours behind the calendar line, and the family-partnership process the standards require. When you copy a preschool template, put those lines back in so the posting says what the seat is.
• Credential inflation or the wrong seat. A posting that demands a bachelor's where the floor is the CDA route screens out qualified infant-toddler teachers — put the degree under "preferred" unless your program can point to a requirement, and check the August 2026 proposal's status, which would restrict requiring or incentivizing credentials a program cannot show are necessary. The mirror error: posting the home-based home-visitor seat — its own schedule of weekly 90-minute visits and group socializations — under a center-teacher title, which misdescribes the job to the exact candidates you need.
• Vague duties. "Patient and loving" describes every applicant in the pool. The duties list — the infant-toddler day in its own order, with the curriculum, the documentation and the family-partnership work named — is what lets a candidate tell whether they have already done this job.

After you post, run the posting like a live process.

Answer every application, including the declines — a posting that goes quiet can teach candidates to skip your next one — and refresh or re-post when a listing ages.

Read your own ad from the other side before it goes up: browse Early Head Start teacher jobs to see how it reads next to the postings around it, and compare your wording against other childcare job ad examples before you publish.

From there the work is screening and interviewing, and the full process — the seat, the qualifications, the pay, the checks and the terms that keep a teacher — is our guide to how to hire an Early Head Start teacher.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. The Head Start Program Performance Standards are administered by the Office of Head Start and sit under active 2026 rulemaking; qualification, classroom-staffing and pay rules change — confirm the current requirements with the Office of Head Start and your state child care licensing agency, and wage-and-hour questions with the Department of Labor or your employment counsel.