From T3 2025 – June 21 2025 to July 3 2026

We are on the lookout for an amazing Primary/Early Childhood Teacher to join our Primary School’s teaching team in Hornsby NSW, starting from Term 3 in 2025 until the end of Term 2 in 2026. This is a maternity leave cover role, but as the school is growing in size each year, the position has the potential to transition to a permanent job in the year ahead.

This year marks our third year as a new school for primary school students, built within the re-imagined heritage listed home and gardens of Mount Errington – a quick walk from Hornsby’s centre and train station. We are a small, independent, co-educational school, co-located on the same site as our extended hours 3-5 year old preschool.

Our primary classes are intentionally mix-aged and limited to 25 students with 2 teachers per class. This choice, to offer high student:teacher ratios, reflects our commitment to work closely alongside our students, establishing relationships of significance with them (and them with each other) and ensures we are able to design learning with our students, in a way that draws from best practice nationally and internationally, and from both inquiry driven and more teacher directed approaches to curriculum and learning.

We intentionally resist compliance driven and non-thinking approaches to educating students in school. We are opposed to providing a program that is one-size fits all, and we intentionally avoid worksheets and pre-set programs that can be implemented without thought by teachers and are forced upon students. Instead, we see our school as a place of thinking, learning and meaningful connection - for adults and students, marked by collaboration, commitment and engagement.

At Blue Gum, we see all our students as competent, capable, creative, responsible, resourceful and resilient citizens of the present, with influence and responsibility in our school community. We recognise children as active and involved voices, and designers of curriculum. Our programs are couched in meaningful, real-life experiences and are characterised by depth and excellence across all the Key Learning Areas. Students are invited to develop deep understandings of concepts through cross-disciplinary research projects, whilst also building foundational skills in literacy and mathematics.

Equally, our school provides learning spaces for students that are intentionally designed to provoke wonder and invite thinking together. Our spaces carry traces of the students’ ongoing thinking, inviting relaunches into areas of inquiry, that often bring different perspectives into conversation with one another. We see learning ‘as a group’ as crucial, providing multiple opportunities every day for the students to bring their ideas together, so we can go deep in our understandings together.

Thinking together is something we expect of our educators as well as our students. We come together as a team regularly to think deeply about our work. We resist the notion of the school as a factory, instead we see school as a living, active and ever-changing community, where we learn together what it means to be more human! As such, we support students by recognising them as whole people, celebrating their strengths and challenges across the breadth of the human experience. We see difference as an opportunity (not a stumbling block) and as such design our experiences to bring out the importance of multiple perspectives with a humility that recognises others as essential to our own identities.

Would you like to explore working at Blue Gum Community School?

If so…

Do you love learning and want to work in a way that inspires others to do the same?

Are you keen to explore new ideas with students, as co‐researchers and co‐learners?

Committed to interactive, collaborative, authentic learning?

Adept at creating inviting, inspiring & challenging learning environments?

Value social/emotional learning as highly as academic and physical pursuits?

Willing to question your own thinking, as well as your students’ thinking?

Are you interested in working in an environment inspired and influenced by the practice and principles of the Reggio Emilia Educational Project?

Additional info about the way we work:

All classes are multi-aged, co-ed classes.

Primary it is 2 educators: 25 children.

We see the wider community as a classroom. Being outdoors in all-weather with the students, in the bush, in the garden, or in the local community is crucial to our work.

Blue Gum is not religion‐based, though families’ differing beliefs are respected.

Blue Gum’s ethos is grounded in the Australian tradition of ‘a fair go’ ‐ a strong commitment to social justice, especially the right of each student to feel valued; develop a sense of belonging; and be equipped with the essential academic and interpersonal skills for success and a meaningful life with others.

Who are we looking for?

Primary/EC Teacher – Full-Time Maternity Leave Cover from June 21, 2025

Consideration for applicants interested in part-time or casual work in our Primary School will also be considered.

How do I apply?

Please email your current CV with a covering letter to the Principal (details below). In your covering letter, let us know a bit about you and why you would like to explore working with us at Blue Gum in Hornsby. We would like to gain an understanding of your personal educational philosophy and what you would bring to the team at Blue Gum, from your letter.

Although not required, a knowledge of emergent/negotiated curriculum, inquiry and cross-disciplinary project work, and social constructivist approaches to learning, is desirable. If you have had previous experience supporting students’ engagement with real‐life projects, please let us know!

Ability to meet, but also critically question School Registration requirements, is essential.

Principal, Blue Gum Community School NSW

[email protected]

02 9138 2019

www.bluegum.nsw.edu.au