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Atelierista
Location:
SOLFL | Miami, Florida
Start Date: August 17, 2026
Description, Responsibilities, & Duties
About SOLFL
SOLFL (pronounced “sohl-fuhl”) is a bold new movement in conscious education. Standing for Student of Life, for Life, SOLFL is building a network of learning communities that integrate Torah wisdom, ecology, impact entrepreneurship, and the performing and visual arts into a deeply holistic K–12 experience.
SOLFL\’s flagship campus—SOLFL Tree of Life—is located in Miami, Florida. The school operates a Montessori- and Reggio Emilia–inspired, Torah-centered curriculum where living classrooms, farm-based learning, and nature immersion replace conventional walls.
The school is in an exciting growth phase—expanding enrollment, developing its campus, and building the operational infrastructure to support its ambitious educational vision. SOLFL’s mission is oneness: the fact or state of being unified or whole, though comprised of many parts.
About the Role
SOLFL is seeking an experienced and deeply creative Reggio Emilia Atelierista to work across our K–8 community.
Inspired by the Reggio Emilia philosophy and the concept of the Hundred Languages of Children, the Atelierista will help students explore ideas through drawing, painting, sculpture, clay, construction, photography, textiles, natural materials, digital media, light, sound, and other forms of expression.
This is not a traditional art teacher position.
The Atelierista is a researcher, collaborator, provocateur, designer, documentarian, and creative partner who works alongside students and educators to deepen inquiry. The role connects artistic processes with science, mathematics, humanities, ecology, entrepreneurship, architecture, storytelling, and the broader life of the school.
The ideal candidate understands that the purpose of the atelier is not simply to produce beautiful objects—it is to make thinking visible.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead and cultivate the K–8 atelier as a dynamic laboratory for inquiry, experimentation, research, and creation.
- Work directly with students across K–8, adapting materials, provocations, techniques, and experiences to different developmental stages.
- Collaborate closely with classroom educators and specialists to integrate atelier practices into interdisciplinary and project-based learning.
- Translate student questions and classroom investigations into opportunities for making, designing, constructing, illustrating, modeling, and experimenting.
- Introduce students to a wide range of expressive languages, including drawing, painting, clay, sculpture, printmaking, collage, textiles, photography, digital media, construction, light and shadow, natural materials, and mixed media.
- Create intentional provocations that encourage students to observe closely, ask questions, take creative risks, test ideas, and develop their own theories.
- Support students through the full creative process—from initial exploration and ideation to prototyping, revision, refinement, and presentation.
- Help students develop sophisticated relationships with tools and materials while emphasizing craftsmanship, care, independence, and responsible use.
- Collaborate on major SOLFL interdisciplinary projects, exhibitions, installations, performances, environments, and community experiences.
- Bring an atelier perspective to investigations in areas such as ecology, architecture, engineering, storytelling, entrepreneurship, science, mathematics, and the natural world.
- Use the physical environment intentionally as a teaching tool, helping create beautiful, thoughtful, evolving spaces that reflect student thinking and invite further inquiry.
- Curate student work throughout the campus in ways that honor both the creative process and the ideas behind the work.
- Maintain an organized, inspiring, material-rich atelier where students can independently access and responsibly engage with tools and resources.
- Source, organize, reuse, and creatively repurpose natural, recycled, found, and traditional artistic materials.
- Pedagogical Documentation
Documentation is an essential part of this role.
The Atelierista will observe and document students\’ processes through photographs, notes, student dialogue, sketches, prototypes, artifacts, and other forms of evidence.
The Atelierista will:
- Make student thinking and learning visible through thoughtful pedagogical documentation.
- Capture not only finished products, but questions, mistakes, discoveries, revisions, conversations, and transformations that occur throughout the learning process.
- Collaborate with educators to analyze documentation and identify possibilities for extending student inquiry.
- Create documentation panels, exhibitions, installations, portfolios, and other forms of storytelling that communicate the depth of student learning to families and the wider community.
- Help develop a culture in which educators regularly observe, reflect upon, and respond to children\’s thinking.
- The Atelierista as Collaborator
At SOLFL, the Atelierista does not operate separately from the academic program.
The Atelierista will regularly collaborate with K–8 educators to ask:
- What are students investigating?
- What questions are emerging?
- How might materials help students think differently?
- How can students represent an idea they cannot yet express through words?
- What can we build, test, observe, dismantle, redesign, or create?
The Atelierista will participate in planning conversations with educators and help shape interdisciplinary learning experiences from their earliest stages.
Minimum Qualifications/Requirements
We are looking for someone who:
- Has 3–5+ years of experience working with children in an atelier, studio, progressive school, Reggio-inspired environment, or similarly inquiry-driven educational setting.
- Has meaningful knowledge of the Reggio Emilia approach, including the Hundred Languages of Children, pedagogical documentation, emergent curriculum, environment as the third teacher, and the image of the child as capable and competent.
- Has a background in fine arts, design, architecture, art education, studio practice, or a related creative discipline.
- Understands the difference between teaching students to reproduce a predetermined product and creating conditions for authentic exploration.
- Is highly skilled with materials and excited to continually investigate new media, processes, tools, and technologies.
- Has experience collaborating with classroom teachers and integrating creative practice into academic learning.
- Is comfortable working across a broad K–8 developmental range.
- Values process over perfection and knows how to support children without taking ownership of their ideas.
- Is deeply observant and capable of listening to children\’s ideas, questions, theories, and conversations.
- Is comfortable with ambiguity and sees unexpected outcomes as opportunities for deeper investigation.
- Can balance freedom and experimentation with strong systems for materials, tools, safety, organization, and care of shared spaces.
- Is excited by nature, sustainability, architecture, design, making, and real-world learning.
- Is a generous collaborator who wants to build alongside educators rather than work in isolation.
Qualifications
- Bachelor\’s or Master\’s degree in Fine Arts, Art Education, Design, Architecture, Education, or a related field.
- 3–5+ years of relevant teaching, atelier, studio, or educational experience.
- Previous experience in a Reggio Emilia or Reggio-inspired school strongly preferred.
- Experience with pedagogical documentation and project-based or inquiry-based learning.
- Strong portfolio demonstrating personal creative practice and/or meaningful creative work developed with children.
- Excellent communication, collaboration, and organizational skills.
- Experience working across multiple artistic and fabrication media is highly valued.
What Success Looks Like
A successful Atelierista at SOLFL will create an environment where a kindergartener\’s drawing, a fourth grader\’s clay model, and an eighth grader\’s architectural prototype are understood as different forms of the same thing:
- thinking made visible.
- Students will see the atelier not simply as the place where they \”do art,\” but as a place where they go to investigate an idea, solve a problem, communicate something important, experiment with materials, and bring something that previously existed only in their imagination into the physical world.
- The Atelierista will help build a culture in which creativity is not treated as a separate subject, but as a fundamental way of learning.
About You
- You believe children are capable of extraordinary depth when adults create the conditions for it.
- You notice the question behind the drawing.
- You care as much about the discarded prototype as the finished piece.
- You can transform cardboard, wire, clay, light, leaves, photographs, fabric, or found objects into invitations for investigation.
- You are equally comfortable sitting on the floor experimenting with materials alongside a six-year-old and collaborating with middle school educators on a semester-long interdisciplinary project.
- Most importantly, you see the atelier as a place where art, science, nature, design, imagination, and human curiosity meet.
If that sounds like you, we would love to meet you.
Salary & Benefits
55k – 75k
Application Procedures
Send resume to viviana@solfl.com
Program Description
SOLFL (pronounced “sohl-fuhl”) is a bold new movement in conscious education. Standing for Student of Life, for Life, SOLFL is building a network of learning communities that integrate Torah wisdom, ecology, impact entrepreneurship, and the performing and visual arts into a deeply holistic K–12 experience.
SOLFL\’s flagship campus—SOLFL Tree of Life—is located in Miami, Florida. The school operates a Montessori- and Reggio Emilia–inspired, Torah-centered curriculum where living classrooms, farm-based learning, and nature immersion replace conventional walls.
The school is in an exciting growth phase—expanding enrollment, developing its campus, and building the operational infrastructure to support its ambitious educational vision. SOLFL’s mission is oneness: the fact or state of being unified or whole, though comprised of many parts.
Contact Info
Viviana Castellisi
Head of Learning
viviana@solfl.com