Pre-K teacher job description template (duties, qualifications, schedule)

A pre-K teacher posting competes for a specific kind of candidate: someone who can run a school-readiness room and is comparing your seat against other centers, preschools and the public pre-K side of the market at the same time.

The three sections below do the sorting — duties, qualifications, physical demands and schedule — and the template further down assembles them into a posting you can publish.

Write them against the seat you actually have, and the candidates who fit will recognize it.

Key duties and responsibilities

Write the duties in the order the pre-K day actually runs: arrival and table time, the large-group opening, small-group and center rotations, outdoor play, lunch, rest or quiet time, an afternoon block, and the departure handoff to families.

Candidates compare that sequence against rooms they have already run.

A generic list — "supervise children," "plan activities" — tells them nothing except that the job has not been written down.

Then name what distinguishes the pre-K room from the rooms below it: kindergarten readiness delivered through play.

Early literacy and name writing, counting and number sense, fine-motor work, following multi-step directions and self-help routines are the work; the curriculum your program uses is the vehicle.

Name the curriculum in the posting — the line tells a candidate whether they already know your curricula and assessment tools from a previous room or would be learning new ones.

Close with the responsibilities that surround the activity plan: active supervision indoors and outdoors, observing and documenting what children do, family communication — daily updates, conferences, and in a pre-K seat the kindergarten-transition conversations — keeping the room clean and safe, and, where the room has one, directing an assistant teacher or aide through the day.

If the seat plans the week, owns the assessments and directs the assistant, write it as a lead pre-K teacher posting; if it supports someone who does, post the assistant seat.

A pool that applied to the wrong seat costs you screening time.

Minimum and preferred qualifications

Build the minimums from your state's rule rather than from a template.

Where your state child care licensing agency sets qualification requirements for the teacher or lead teacher seat — education, experience, minimum age, pre-service or orientation training, the background check — it enforces them against your license, and what it sets differs from state to state.

Phrase the line the way the rule works: "meets [State]'s child care licensing requirements for [pre-K teacher / lead pre-K teacher]".

The wording holds wherever your center operates, and it points candidates at the same rule you checked.

If your pre-K room operates under a named state or district pre-K program, that program's own criteria go in the required list too — that is what a search like "NC pre-K teacher job description" is really asking for, and the fill-in has to come from the program's current requirements, because program criteria differ from state to state and program to program.

List the background check and any required training as conditions of employment, with the timing left to your state's process: "completion of [State]'s required background checks" and "[State]'s required pre-service or orientation training, on your state's timeline." Confirm before you post: the qualification, training and background-check requirements for the title and age band you are hiring are set and enforced by your state child care licensing agency — and by the pre-K program, where one governs your room — and they change, so confirm them with each before they go into a posting.

Keep the preferred list honestly preferred.

A CDA credential, ECE credits or an early childhood degree belong under "preferred" unless your state's rule for the title — or the pre-K program your room operates under — actually requires them.

Listing a requirement your state does not impose removes candidates who qualify under the rule you are licensed against.

Physical requirements and schedule

Describe the physical work as the job's own essential functions: lifting and carrying children and classroom materials, getting down to the children's level and back up throughout the day, standing and walking for most of the shift, playground supervision in the seasons your program goes outside, and the clean-and-reset the room needs at day's end.

Toileting help belongs on the list only if your pre-K room actually includes it — write the line your room lives with.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the physical requirements in a job description should describe those essential functions, and the EEOC requires accommodation for applicants with disabilities unless the accommodation 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 state the job's demands as the job's demands.

A second accommodation law reaches the same paragraph: 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 is where pre-K hires fall apart late in the process, because the program day and the shift you actually need covered are two different numbers.

Post both: the pre-K day, the full shift, extended-care coverage before or after if your program runs it, how opening and closing rotate, and where a floater absorbs breaks.

State whether the calendar runs year-round or on a school year; a teacher leaving a year-round seat for a school-year one needs to know before the interview, not at the offer.

How to write the pay and benefits line

A range is what a usable pay line is made of. "Competitive salary" and "depends on experience" leave the candidate doing the math with your information missing; a range with a real floor and a real top answers the fit question in seconds.

Say whether the pay is hourly or salaried, and what moves a teacher up the range — experience, a credential such as the CDA, or taking the lead seat rather than a support one.

Benchmark before you write the range.

In BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey for May 2025, preschool teachers except special education (SOC 25-2011) — the category our pre-K teacher salary tables use — earned a U.S. median of $18.34 per hour ($38,140 per year), with the 10th-to-90th-percentile spread running $13.94 to $29.52 per hour.

Setting matters as much as geography: inside private child care services (NAICS 6244), the median for preschool teachers was $17.72 per hour, while preschool teachers in elementary and secondary schools — the public pre-K side of the market — had a May 2025 median of $27.29 per hour ($56,750 a year).

Those are national medians, not your market; the salary tables price the same category for your state.

Pay disclosure is part of the posting itself in the eight states our research verified. Each is 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 compensation disclosure in all job postings and notices, internal and public, and it reaches benefits information; it applies regardless of employer size.
• 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 carrying 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 compensation or a range of compensation in any advertisement of a Vermont job opening.

Trackers report more states adding posting rules, some with 2026 and 2027 effective dates; our research did not confirm those against the state sources, so treat every state outside the eight above as unconfirmed and check before you post without a range.

The laws also reach further than the number: Washington asks for a general description of benefits, Illinois for pay scale and benefits, and Colorado's disclosure covers benefits information — so write the benefits section of your posting before it goes up, not after. Confirm before you post: pay-disclosure laws carry their own definitions, benefits scope and employer-size thresholds, and they change — check the current rule with the state agency that administers it before you rely on any summary here.

Mistakes that shrink your applicant pool

The template can be sound and the posting can still underperform on wording.

Check these before it goes live.

• Wording that signals a protected-trait preference. The laws the EEOC enforces bar employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation and transgender status), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information — and 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. Pre-K postings that ask for a "young, energetic" teacher or an all-female room are that exact pattern. Describe the room, the duties and the schedule, and leave who the person is out of it.
• No pay line. In the eight states above, pay disclosure is part of what a covered employer's posting must carry — the benefits description too, at least in Washington, Illinois and Colorado. Elsewhere — and below those states' size thresholds — an empty pay line makes the candidate guess with your information missing, while the posting beside yours that states a range lets them sort themselves in on the spot.
• A lifting threshold written as a rule. No federal rule or national licensing standard sets a lifting weight for childcare jobs; a number in your posting is your center's own practice. Write the job's actual demands, and keep both accommodation laws in view — the ADA's, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act's for employers with 15 or more employees.
• Another state's — or another program's — requirements. Qualification minimums are set state by state, and a named pre-K program can add its own on top. A template filled in from another state's rules misstates yours; keep the [State] placeholders until you have filled them from your licensing agency's rule and the program's current criteria.
• Credential inflation. A CDA or degree requirement your state does not impose cuts candidates who qualify under the rule you are actually licensed against. Put it under preferred unless your state's rule or your pre-K program genuinely requires it.
• Vague duties. "Must love children" fits every applicant in the pool. The duties list, written in the order the pre-K day runs, is what tells a candidate whether they have already done this job.
• Titles nobody types. Post the seat under the words candidates search — "pre-K teacher," "lead pre-K teacher" — not an internal level name or a program acronym only your staff uses. The setting (center, preschool, state pre-K classroom) belongs in the body, where it reads as information rather than doing the title's job.

After the posting goes up, run it like a live process.

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

Read the ad from the candidate's side before it publishes: browse pre-K teacher jobs to see how it reads next to the postings around it.

From there the work is screening and interviewing, and the full process — the seat, the qualifications, the pay, recruiting and the terms that keep a teacher — is our guide to how to hire a pre-K teacher.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Job-ad and accommodation rules come from the EEOC, pay-disclosure rules from the state agencies that administer them, and staff qualification rules from your state child care licensing agency — confirm the current rules with each before you post.