A larger project I just started is to find out whether paraprofessionals in our district feel they have sufficient training. The project proposal was approved and today I began the first phase. I completed five, 10 minute interviews with ID, ED, and LD paras. I had specific questions to ask that would help frame the larger future survey that will go out to the district.
Our school district is known for its great school and great teachers. However, paraprofessionals are left to fend for themselves to learn more about their job. The two ID paras expressed that they have only received information regarding the student they work with and his/her disability. The ID paras have a desire to learn about other disabilities but there is no other training provided. The two ED paras expressed that the students they work with bring an immense amount of baggage into the classroom that the para ends up triaging the students home life filled full of trauma, abuse and neglect, that their students are not able to focus on academics. Many of their students are labeled as homeless. All the paras expressed that the most favored training mode was having a guest speaker come that has real life knowledge of situations their kids are experiencing. These issues vary from medical to sexual abuse. They want to be able to learn and ask the speaker specific questions. One para expressed in seven years she only received a paper module training, at the beginning of her employment, and CPI training. The last question I asked the paras was whether they would consider a teaching profession. Only 2 out of 5 expressed they would. One of the two paras was not interested in a special education degree, but preferred an elementary teacher license. The reason the three gave for their firm no was they saw SPED teachers as overworked and underpaid. I am hoping to conduct a few more short interviews before moving into the next phase, which is producing a longer, electronic survey to disseminate to all paras in the school district. The results of the longer survey are two-fold, first to reveal what mode of training paras have received and what kind they would most like to in the future, and secondly, to provide my university with reason to look into offering a SPED program that would bridge the gap for paras already in the SPED field to attain a teaching license.
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AuthorSpecial Education major in a university teaching program. Substitute teacher, previous homeschool mom, wife. Archives
September 2019
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