At LePort, we understand that excellent, motivated teachers are critical to delivering our unique program each and every day. We hire and develop Passionate Professionals to deliver the excellent education you have come to expect from LePort.
We have developed a clear approach to hiring: we don’t rely merely on teaching credentials, but instead hire to our own standards. Our preschool Montessori teachers have invested in a year-long training course offered by a national credential and accrediting association, such as the Association Montessori Internationale. All of our Montessori-credentialed teachers also have completed a Bachelors degree. For our elementary program, we select teachers with both deep subject matter expertise and genuine passion for their subjects, and then offer in-house training. All of our teachers are people who have demonstrated a love of working with children, and who are great individuals themselves—that is, honest, high-minded adults who can model upstanding character, and a passion for life.
To help our teachers and administrators meet our high standards, we extend our “prepared environment” approach to our staff: in contrast to many schools, where teachers are predominantly on their own in determining what to teach and how teach it, we provide systematic training, feedback and development to each staff member. We invest in training, sometimes for a number of years, before we expect teachers to take on a full class load. For example, in our Montessori program, we keep several additional trained teachers on staff who learn under the guidance of our head teachers and Heads of Schools until they are ready to take on a class of their own. In our elementary and junior high/middle school program, we often have teachers observe, assist other teachers, co-teach, and generally train for a period of time before we assign them classes to teach on their own. Our training never stops: teachers continue to observe other classes and have other teachers observe theirs; they have regular meetings with their department heads; they participate in regular development and training sessions attended by all of our academic staff.
Each of our campuses is led by a Head of School—an experienced, expert educator who directs the training programs, mentors and develops the teachers, and leads the implementation of our unique curriculum. The goal of our hiring, training and communications systems throughout is to enable each teacher to consistently offer his best to your child, so that the quality of your child’s education meets our high standards each and every day.
