Definition: Assistant Educator Job Description

What are the missions of an educational assistant? What training to follow to exercise this profession? What are his outlets and his salary? The answers are provided to you by this job description of early childhood educator.

Teacher assistance profession

Early childhood specialist, duties of an educational assistant are practiced at three levels: education, prevention and coordination.

Discover the profession in detail: mission, training, recruitment, retraining.

What is an educational assistant?

Also called early childhood educator aide or ECE aide, the assistant educator (or assistant educator) accomplishes many missions of supervision and animation.

Its objective is to promote the development of children by stimulating their intellectual, emotional and artistic potential.

Working in concert with educators and teachers, he/she may be entrusted with different missions depending on the establishment in which he/she works.

The educational assistant acts as a link between the students and the various stakeholders in an establishment: teachers, childcare centers, nurses, social workers, guidance counselors and psychologists, etc.

Missions of EPE aid

In an early childhood structure:

• Welcome families
• Take care of the children
• Organize entertainment and educational activities for children
• Facilitate activities for young children: telling stories, singing songs to them, and making them sing
• Prepare materials for manual activities (DIY, drawing, etc.)
• Support them in their adaptation to community life and in their learning of social life
• Help them dress and undress during naps and recess
• Help the little ones to go to the bathroom
• Participate in the administration of meals
• Ensure their hygiene by ensuring in particular that they wash their hands properly
• Participate in the storage and maintenance of equipment and premises
• Write observations about children and share them with colleagues and superiors
• Participate in team meetings and present their comments on the progress made by the children or the difficulties encountered
• Bring his work of reflection for the writing of the educational project of the establishment where he works
• …

In a school establishment (especially primary and secondary):

• Supervise students during interclasses, in study but also when entering and leaving the establishment
• Lead and supervise school outings, activities (cultural, sporting or artistic) and computer workshops…

Coach, tutor and even facilitator, the educational assistant is an essential local actor in the life of a school.

In libraries or documentation centers:

• Welcome the students
• Manage documentary collections
• Prepare thematic events

In socio-medical homes:

• Take charge of individual support for disabled children, in particular for trips on public transport
• Awaken, develop and help maintain the autonomy of the children under his supervision
• Take part in the associative project and the school project

Where does the early childhood educator work?

As we have just seen, the educational assistant can work in all structures linked to the educational world from the youngest to the oldest, namely in a crèche, a daycare center, a nursery or primary school, a college or a high school…

He can also practice in a socio-educational or socio-medical home as well as in an associative and private structure.

Finally, the ECE assistant can also work more rarely in a company or a hospital.

Qualifications required to become an educational assistant

To exercise the profession of educational assistant, a taste for work in contact with children is essential but is not sufficient.

Several qualities are necessary:

• Patience
• Good physical condition
• Listening skills
• Availablity
• Adaptability
• Versatility
• Courtesy
• Diplomacy
• Sense of teamwork

Training to become an educational assistant

Initial training

The ECE assistance profession is accessible with a CAP early childhood, now called CAP Accompanying Educational Early Childhood (CAP AEPE).

Continuing education

As part of a professional retraining, it is possible to become an educational assistant through continuing training by preparing for the CAP AEPE.

Possible evolutions of the educational assistant

The function of assistant educator cannot be considered as a long-term profession.

It is rather an activity that one exercises on the short term during studies and/or training in this sector of activity such as for example that of educator of young children.

Salary of an educational assistant

An early childhood educator’s aide earns the minimum wage.