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Corey Vesper, Early Childhood and lower elementary school teacher


  • I've been an educator for 5 years both in New Zealand and Saudi Arabia.

  • I am fully registered as a New Zealand teacher (registration number 356236) and have been awarded QTS from the UK (reference number 2081114).

  • In 2019-2020, I was the team leader for the Pre-kindergarten (PK4) section at The American International School of Jeddah.

  • I've worked with the NZ Early Childhood curriculum (Te Whāriki) and American International Schools curriculum (AERO).

  • I am part of a teaching couple and have two children who will both be in middle school in the year 22/23. My wife Suzie has worked for 25 years in education and also has a teaching portfolio

Teaching Philosophy and practice

After five years as a stay at home dad, I became a qualified early childhood teacher in 2016. By supporting my own children’s learning, I discovered a real sense of joy and excitement in this vocation. During this time, I came to realise the importance of relationships and belonging within learning communities and how they impact children’s development. As a beginning teacher, this was at the forefront of my practice and has since become a big part of my teaching philosophy. I believe that no matter where you teach or what you teach, relationships come first. Children must feel acknowledged, respected, and known if we are to successfully support their learning. During my training and teaching in New Zealand, it was noted that I have a calm and patient manner that children respond well to and this has continued within my international teaching. Moving from a small preschool to a large international elementary school was daunting at first but I quickly realised that no matter where you are in the world, children are children. I believe that the classroom should be a place where children feel welcomed and encouraged to try new things and continue to learn and grow. Using my experiences from the Reggio Emilia inspired centre in New Zealand, I was able to create a space of exploration for children. Through questioning and observations, the classroom became a place that reflected children’s interests and encouraged further learning. Alongside early math and literacy, we investigated a wide range of topics and it was the children’s wonderings that led the direction of the learning.


In 2019, I became team leader and was responsible for leading planning meetings, supporting colleagues, and attending management meetings. I drew on my organisational and people management skills to ensure that our curriculum was mapped out for the year and that we kept to that timeline. It was also important to me that as we planned lessons, we kept the essential knowledge and understandings we wanted our students to know at the core of any activities. In this way, we could ensure that the desired learning would be achieved. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, we moved to a virtual learning system and I worked hard with my team to create engaging, meaningful activities that students could do at home with support. It was a huge change, however, as a team we adapted well and had a very positive final term. Since August 2020, I have been teaching kindergarten virtually and I have thoroughly enjoyed this. I spend many hours creating lessons, videos, and activities for both synchronous and asynchronous learning and have adapted well to this style of teaching. Mathematics has mostly been taught asynchronously and it is my videos that are used by the entire kindergarten team. I also support student literacy through reading and writing workshops and have utilised Zoom meetings to work on phonic and word study programmes.


I am a hardworking team member who can think on my feet and adapt quickly which is a necessary skill when working with children in the current educational environment. I have an excellent grounding in the New Zealand Early Childhood Curriculum and the American AERO standards-based learning system. Finally, I also feel I have strong communication skills and the confidence to build positive and reciprocal relationships with family which is vital if we are to work in partnership to foster children's learning.

Contact email: coreyvesper@gmail.com Contact phone number: +966 56 1307245