There seems to be lots of interest on the web in information about paraeducators and our work with special needs kids.  Plenty is written about us by teachers, administrators, union professionals or college professors who’ve never actually done our jobs.   Not much out here is written by paraprofessionals ourselves.  That is a shame.

Sara and Richard Finegan

Some, even some of our coworkers, may have the impression that we are little more than day care workers in the public schools.  Most of us have been asked by a general ed teacher to leave the classroom (and the kids we are there to help) to go run some menial errand.  Many of us are not even consulted about or included in IEPs relating to the kids we work with, as if our observations or insights are of no consequence.

If we are going to be taken seriously, as professionals, we need to support efforts to make our jobs more professional.  Continuing education classes should be required for us, in my opinion.  Certification by the state might be appropriate where that is not already done. 

But I’ve drifted from my point:  We need to speak for ourselves.  We need to assert ourselves as intelligent, articulate professionals capable of worthwhile contribution to the discussion of our own jobs and role in the special education system.

With the expansion of full inclusion, where kids with special needs are distributed among the general ed population ad not segregated in special classes, more of us than ever before will be working in general ed classrooms without the constant presence of a special ed teacher.  Many of the general ed teachers will turn to us for guidance in dealing with issues relating to our kids.  If you’ve worked as a one-on-one to an included child you know this to be true.

We need to be prepared to step up to the plate.  Don’t wait for the general ed teacher to identify problems to you; bring things to his or her attention.  Suggest solutions or consultations with the special ed case manager.  Be an advocate for your kids.  Be an advocate for yourself as a knowledgeable coworker in the classroom, more than just a warm-bodied adult.

We contribute to this acceptance of us as professionals when we stop letting the conversation, both in the schools and on the web, be ABOUT us and start being WITH us.

We need to speak for ourselves. 

So here is my invitation to all paraeducators with something to say to the world:  contact me.  I have no desire to be a lonely voice in the wilderness of the internet .  I can see that appropriate posts get published and, more importantly, FOUND by search engines like Google, bing, Yahoo, AOL. Together we can be stronger.

If there is enough interest in this, I am considering setting  up a separate blog that can serve as a forum and sounding board for paraeducators.  What do you think?

I am cross-posting this on The Demanding Classroom and Readers With Autism.  Each blog already contains earlier posts for and about us as paraeducators.  You can look for the category “Paraeducators” on either blog to find my posts, which are mostly different on each site.

Before I talk about how to locate and create materials to facilitate inclusion in general education, it’s important to understand why we are doing it and what inclusion should look like.

Placing a child with learning disabilities or cognitive impairment into a general education class has two purposes: First, it promotes socialization and the skills necessary for any person to participate with his or her community in the daily activities of learning and working. Second, it allows that child to access grade-level standards with his or her general ed peers.

In any special day class, kids should also be accessing grade-level standards.  The difference is that in a general ed class, your students with IEPs will be working in a different kind of environment.   In many but not all cases the instruction and assignments are more in-depth and high-level.  (If you run a demanding special day classroom like mine, however, the work may actually be at the same level or even slightly higher.   In such a case, the difference will be in class size and pace, not work level.)

Until recently, most school districts had special education services and classrooms at a variety of levels.  In my district we had,  just a few years ago:  ILS (independent living skills) classrooms for kids with profound disabilities; PACE (adaptive curriculum) classrooms for kids with mild mental retardation and moderate-functioning autism; ED classrooms for students with mental illness and behavior issues; and yet another classroom for kids with mild-moderate learning disabilities.  We also had a Resource program for kids with IEPs who could still participate in the general education classroom; they were pulled out in small groups for guided instruction in targeted areas, but most of their time was spent with the general ed teacher.

Unless a parent demanded it, kids who had cognitive impairments or who were more than one or two grade levels below their peers were not part of the general education classroom, on the theory that they needed a smaller, more structured environment in which to learn.  As long as the instruction provided in those separate classrooms was rigorous, there weren’t many drawbacks to sheltering kids from the larger classrooms and there were many pluses.

Nowadays, in many districts, kids at all cognitive and learning levels are increasingly being placed in general education classrooms, with varying levels of support. Thus, in a general education classroom, you may have 26 gen ed students, some of whom are below grade level and some of whom are far above, and 10 students with IEPs, with any of a wide range of disabilities: ADHD and focus difficulties; mental retardation; autism; receptive/expressive language impairments; visual and working memory deficits; visual processing impairments; auditory processing difficulties.  Most of these kids will not be able to read at grade level and have problems with writing and math as well.

Without structure and support, many of these students will struggle with sensory input.   For them, the noise level and activity associated with large-group settings will be profoundly difficult to handle.

Frustration with the materials and the work may lead some kids to shut down or act out and disrupt the classroom. Kids who don’t process what you are saying very quickly may miss entire chunks of instruction and directions and thus have no idea what to do when independent work time rolls around.

Our job as special educators is to provide the structure, support, and differentiated learning activities that will reduce those struggles in the general ed classroom.  It’s a complex process and one that requires a lot of thought and ongoing monitoring in order to be successful.  If we don’t plan purposefully, or if we don’t supervise the support provided by our aides when we aren’t able to be present, there’s a danger that our students will be relegated to the corner of the classroom with work that is too easy or without meaning.

Here’s what inclusion is:

It is the provision of differentiated instruction and learning activities that accommodate a child’s special learning needs within the general education classroom. The learning and the work are purposeful, meaningful, and serve to teach the child new information and skills.

Here’s what inclusion is not:

It is not separate activities for students with special needs; sponge work and other busywork that serve only to keep a child occupied instead of accessing the curriculum directly; minimal standards and expectations with high praise for accomplishing the mundane. In short, it is not babysitting.

There is babysitting in the general education classroom, and then there’s inclusion.

• Babysitting is having a child play with blocks while everyone else working on place value and numbers to a billion.
• Babysitting is having a child spend an hour coloring pictures of the a tipi while everyone else is learning about the Native American houses.
• Babysitting is writing vocabulary words on a piece of paper and having the child go over them with highlighter every day while the other students are writing paragraphs about the water cycle.
• Babysitting is having a student draw a picture of a snowman while the teacher does a mini-lesson about weather.
• Babysitting is placing a child at a listening center to listen to nursery rhyme songs while the rest of the class is learning about the genre of fairytales.

True inclusion would look like this:

• During math, while others are working on the standard and word forms of numbers to a billion, other kids are working on numbers to a hundred or a thousand. Still others may be using manipulatives to represent numbers in the tens and hundreds. When they’re done, perhaps they are playing a math vocabulary game where they have to read a number word and match it to a digit.
• After reading an easy book or chart about Native American housing, some kids are using sorting cards to match the names of the houses to the pictures. Others might be making a booklet about the different kinds of houses using pictures they’ve drawn or cut-outs the teacher provides. Still others might be pasting small pictures of the types of houses on a map showing the different regions of North America. (For example, a hogan goes in the desert Southwest, whereas a chickee goes in the Southeast.)
• While some kids are drawing the water cycle on poster board, some kids are using a word bank and labeling the different segments of the cycle on a worksheet. Others might be listening to an aide or peer read a story about a rain drop.
• After listening to a mini-lesson about types of weather, some kids are either playing a Memory game with sorting cards (matching photos of weather to the names) or are writing sentences about each of the new vocabulary words. (Ex: A blizzard is a big snow storm. A hurricane has lots of wind and rain.)
• During a unit on the fairy tale genre, some kids are listening to Hans Christian Andersen stories on tape, and others are reading books. Some kids are writing reports on fairy tales, and others are identifying the different elements of a fairy tale in stories they’ve read, using a chart prepared by the teacher. Still others might be looking at a laminated illustration from a well-known fairy tale with an aide, who is asking them to point to various items in the picture.

Inclusion is not about keeping the kids busy and quiet. It’s about giving them opportunities to use the vocabulary and practice new skills related to whatever you are teaching.

It’s not about enabling them to continue to operate with limited skill sets; it’s about guiding them forward, onward, and upward within the context of their current levels.

It’s not about having higher-level students help them; it’s about letting them experience the curriculum with higher level students.

It’s a new responsibility for many general ed teachers, and a terrifying thing for us special ed teachers, whose natural instinct is often to keep our students sheltered from the large-group learning environment, where they may get lost or overwhelmed.

The key is careful and purposeful planning, with constant monitoring and ongoing assessment to determine next steps. Much of this is done by special educators, in addition to the work we are already doing.

Having special needs in the classroom doesn’t mean that you lack the ability to learn; it means that you learn differently.   It’s not about how smart a child is; it’s about how he or she is smart.

For years, educators and parents believed that students with cognitive impairments and other moderate-severe disabilities were not well-served by inclusion in general education classes.  It was a natural extension of this philosophy to decide that these children also couldn’t follow the general education curriculum.    At first glance, this makes sense; it is only when one pauses to look more carefully that one sees the distortions.

It’s certainly true that a child with cognitive impairments, who can’t read independently cannot read the science textbook and keep a science notebook like his or her gen ed peers.   There’s no doubt that a child who has limited verbal capacity can’t write a five-paragraph essay about the Sioux Indians, or read and understand the Mayflower Compact.

But that doesn’t mean that the kids aren’t able to learn about and demonstrate their understanding of Native American daily life or the Pilgrims’ ordeal in the New World.   You don’t have to be able to read to access text.  You don’t have to be able to write to show what you know.

This year my class had the gift of accepting a fourth grader with autism and mild cognitive impairment into our five-six combo class.  Jack (name changed to protect the fabulous and amazing) had no  choice but to learn about Ancient Greece and Rome with us.  To be sure, he couldn’t use the text book the way the others could, and he didn’t have the ability to make connections between the Greek and Roman forms of government and the current U.S. political system.

• But he could, and did, read fables and do a report on them.  He could, and did, handle the tallying of votes as we explored democracy.
• He could, and did, learn all about the different Greek gods and goddesses and served as the go-to expert when we played Jeopardy!
• He could, and did,  learn 25 vocabulary words related to the units of study.
• He could, and did, create a power point presentation about Harry Potter (ok, not related to social studies or science, but still!)

There’s an ongoing debate, albeit a quiet one, about whether someone like Jack really would be better off learning about Ancient History when he might be, instead, learning independent living skills and the kind of reading and writing he will have to do as an adult.   I confess that I don’t know.  What I do know is that I have never been able to determine what a child’s capacity actually is, and thus have not been privy to knowing what he or she will be able to do as an adult.    Jack came to me unable to do anything independently and very averse to trying difficult things.  By the end of the year, he was actively engaged with other kids in the class, participating in all of our lessons, and doing things nobody had thought he could.

All it took, besides my amazing aide Tamara, was a little planning time.  OK, a lot of planning time.

And there’s the rub: preparing materials and activities for kids with moderate-severe disabilities to access the gen ed curriculum is extremely time-consuming.   As far as I know, there aren’t pre-built units available on the market to use; you must be creative and innovative.

This kind of instruction can be provided in both special ed and general ed classrooms.  If you are designing it for a general ed classroom then it also has to be structured around the gen ed teacher’s time-frame, teaching style and structure, and areas of emphasis.   I suppose you can develop a generic set of tasks and materials, but if we’re serious about teaching every child at his or her level, then we need to provide our kids with special needs with work that makes sense.

And once you’ve created a resource bank to use, you can’t stop there.  You must constantly be building upon it, adding to it, revising, and customizing it to fit the needs of each child.

The task may seem daunting.  For some, it may appear to be an impossible responsibility.   But I think that, if we understand the proper methodology to use, we can, slowly but surely, create for our students and our gen ed colleagues a workable system that allows all of us to engage in the job of teaching in new and exciting ways.

I’ve spent my free time during the last month preparing learning activities for students along a wide spectrum of disabilities in third, fourth and fifth grade science and social studies.

I had a lot of free time, as I had not one, but two student teachers, who basically took over my classroom.  The job of a master teacher like me is to monitor and support, and since my tendency is to want to jump in a lot, I keep myself from doing so by working on related tasks.  More about the tasks I chose later.

Two things have rocked my world as a teacher this spring:

1. My school has lost one special education position, and despite my rather extensive years at the district, I’m junior in seniority at my school, so I get to go.
2. My school administrator has opted to take our school three giant steps in the direction of full inclusion by eliminating our Special Day Classes, so all of our kiddos are now going to be mainstreamed next year.

I’ve had several months to adjust to the fact that I am going to be at another school next year and to organize and sort my “stuff” preparatory to packing.  I’ve also had several months to listen to my general ed colleagues, hear the worry in their voices as they wonder how to accommodate kids with profound learning disabilities in their classrooms with less special education support, and to decide what to do about that.

What I’ve done is to create unit-by-unit resource bins and binders for our third, fourth and fifth grade science and social studies classes that contain activities and learning materials from the very lowest, pre-K level up to the third-grade level.    Gen ed and special ed staff can easily pull what they need to support everyone from the barely-verbal fifth grader with a four-year-old intellect to the fourth grader with autism and hyperactivity who becomes overwhelmed by words and activity around him.

The first thing I did was to look at the grade-level standards and pull strands that I thought kids at every level could access.  I delved into my own resource bank and our school’s book room and pulled books at every level that related in some way to each of the standards.   I located materials on the internet that pertain to the standards and downloaded them.  And what I couldn’t find, I wrote myself.

At the end of the my final day at the school, I had created boxes of books, sorting cards, stories, readers theater scripts, and art projects for each of the science and social studies units.    Each box has a binder containing a variety of materials and lesson ideas, plus coloring pages and other things for kids to do with support or on their own.

My hope is that the easily-accessible materials will allow kids to stay in the gen ed classroom with modified assignments and materials instead of becoming so frustrated that they need to leave.  My other hope is that my gen ed colleagues will have less stress as they begin this new phase of inclusion and that they will see, as they implement the lessons and pull activities and books to use, how they can continue the planning and gathering work in future years.

In the next few posts on The Demanding Classroom, I will talk about the work involved in preparing for inclusion and the tasks that gen ed and special ed staff face as we support all of our kids to learn grade level, standards-based curriculum.

Paraeducators–classroom aides in special education, including one-on-one aides–can do any number of things to help a child.  But a recent Google search I ran across got me thinking in terms of 10 (not to be confused a David Letterman Top Ten List).  All of this needs to be coordinated with your teachers of course, but here are my suggestions:

1. Never underestimate the child’s abilities. I like to observe a  new student for a couple of days before I read his or her IEP so I can see how he or she  compares to the other students, what the child’s behavior is like, etc, before I see what others have observed.   Be sure to read the “Present Levels of Performance” in the IEP so you know what they can already do.  Do not assume a child can’t do something just because he or she is in special education or is identified with autism or a “learning disability.”

2. Focus on the child’s strengths, not on the child’s deficits. Is he a visual learner?  Kinesthetic?  Does she type well?  Is he crazy about animals?  Does she love Harry Potter?  Find out as much as you can about the children’s areas of interest and strength and use these in creative ways to help them succeed at tasks or in subjects where they may have difficulty.

3. Build the child’s confidence. You do this not with false praise but with an honest appraisal of his or her strengths and successes, acknowledgement of areas in which the child can improve, and by giving him or her opportunities to practice new skills not yet mastered.

4. Allow the child to make mistakes.  We are quick to tell kids they learn from their mistakes and just as quick to not allow them to make them. It is tempting for an aide, especially a one-on-one, to correct the child’s work on the spot.  Don’t edit the child’s assignments for him.  It does NOT reflect poorly on you as an aide if the child’s work is imperfect.  It does reflect poorly on you if the child’s work is actually your work.

5. Gradually remove supports (the level of  assistance you provide a child).  Do not get stuck providing a certain level of support because it is comfortable for you and the child.  If you help with word processing, make the child take over more of that task.  If you reduce the assigned math homework, gradually increase the amount the child is expected to do.  I don’t throw the term lazy around carelessly, but I know (when I was new at this) that I have caused at least one child to become lazy because it was easier for me to do some things than deal with his unwillingness to do them himself.

6. Help the child get and stay organized. If you’re like me, you may first have to get organized yourself.  Make sure the older children use a calendar (agenda, planner) to keep track of assignments.  Color code folders to keep track of homework in different subject areas.  Whatever it takes.  But always coordinate with parents because no organization will work for long if it isn’t reinforced both at home and at school.

7. Don’t do for the child what his or her classmates routinely do for themselves.  Assuming no physical impediment, of course, make the child take responsibility for having daily supplies, following classroom routines, turning in homework, etc.  If the child depends on you for these things, you have failed.

8. Give the child responsibility for composing any writing assignment.  Writing is a two-step process: (1) putting thought into words–composing–and (2) putting words into text–typing or handwriting.  If a student cannot or will not handwrite or word process, it may be permissible to have the child dictate to you.  In that case, take down what he or she dictates word for word.  Ask where to put in punctuation.  Don’t correct as you go.  Let the child read what was dictated and make his or her own revisions.  Only then would I suggest any corrections or improvements.  Gradually remove this level of support.

9. Allow the child to interact with peers, even if those interactions aren’t always positive.  Some of our kids will have social interaction issues and do poorly in partner or group work.  If we work with them one-on-one we will want to minimize their friction with other students.  We should resist the temptation to step in and mediate all disputes or difficulties.  Let them learn from working through these problems.

10. Do not get into a power struggle with a child.  Back off.  Don’t threaten consequences you aren’t prepared to impose.  Keep your composure.  (Remember why you do this.  These kids are great!)

Remember your role is to help the child become independent.  When the child no longer needs you, you have succeeded!

         What are the qualifications of a good special education paraeducator, especially one working with children on the autism spectrum?

         Abby Twyman has a masters in education and publishes a blog called Autism Community.  She wrote a few months ago about her experiences in hiring a new paraeducator for her classroom:

http://www.autism-community.com/paraeducator-qualifications/

         Here’s Abby’s bottom line:  education, experience, motivation, and creativity are good qualities in a para, but are not sufficient…

…the person also must have HIGH expectations of children with autism no matter how impacted they seem to be, they must be SELF-ASSURED and assert themselves with the child in a kind and caring way, they must be overly ORGANIZED and have a plan before working with a child, and they must know how to ADJUST to the ever-changing demands of children with autism and public school.

         I could not agree more.  You should expect  the child to achieve just as much (if not more) as the child beside him who does not have autism .  You must be self assured in dealing with the child (who will quickly recognize any uncertainty or inconsistency).  You must also be self assured in dealing with other adults in the classroom, including the teacher(s).  You should be organized and help the child to become organized.  And you should be able to adjust, on the fly, in the heat of battle as it were, because the world of a child with autism is dynamic and ever-changing.

         I am a para-educator; specifically, a Spec Ed Tech; a special education classroom aide whose job exists only because of a legal document (the Individualized Education Plan or IEP) that says one or more special education students in the classes to which I am assigned need additional classroom support. 

         That is, they need more help than can be provided by the classroom teacher alone.

         In my particular case, I “shadow” one student to all his classes.  He’s in general education 100% of the time, because his difficulties are not academic.

         We used to be called one-on-one aides but our school district, in its infinite wisdom, declared “There are no more one-on-one aides!”  This was loudly announced in a large public meeting of para-educators I attended two years ago, even while I was assigned full time to one student, which continued until the end of that year. 

          For most of last year, I was again assigned full time to one student.  So far this year I have been assigned full time to one student.  And the person who loudly declared in a public meeting of para-educators that “There are no more one-on-one aides!” is still working as some mid-level administrator for the same school district. 

         Go figure.  She doesn’t even know what the hell is going on in the classrooms of the schools she administers. But she knows the party line!  Bet she’s a Republican. (Did I just say that?  Sorry.)

So anyway, where was I.  Oh, yes…

         I don’t really care what they call me.  Or whether the principal of the school I’m assigned to even recognizes me as a member of his or her staff.  (I’m convinced more than one thought I was a substitute teacher which is why they kept seeing me on campus.)

         Now in my seventh year, at my fifth school and almost all in general ed classes, I pretty much operate under the radar, usually reporting infrequently to one vice principal (we have three in our high schools) and otherwise being left to fend for myself.

         I learned early that the very last person from whom to seek advice about what your role is as a para-educator in the general education classroom is the general education teacher.  They will frequently think:

• You’re there to make their copies.
• You’re there to accompany kids to the office when they give them a referral for some misbehavior.
• You’re there to take attendance.
• You’re there to post grades.
• You’re there to keep the “special ed kids” quiet so they can teach the other students.

         While this is not a universal attitude by far, it is certainly common.  Here’s my advice if you are new to this and don’t exactly know what you should be doing: 

1)  Never forget that you only have a job because a certain kid (or kids) in that classroom have IEPs.  Get copies of the IEPs  to learn precisely what additional supports which children need.  If they aren’t routinely provided to you, insist on them.  You cannot do your job if you don’t know what particular support you are supposed to provide to each child.

2)  Once you have identified those kids with IEPs and what they need, then you proceed to help any kid in that class who needs help.  You do not unnecessarily segregate your kids from the rest of the class and single them out (unnecessarily) from everyone else.  Ideally, the kids without IEPs should not know who you are there to help, or perhaps even why you are there at all.

3)  Remember that you are not the teacher’s personal assistant.  Sometimes easier said than done, but if a general ed teacher is treating you like a “girl Friday,” then you should contact your supervisor and express your concerns, always in terms of what you are not able to do for your kids because of what you are being asked to do for the teacher.

         We may not be certificated, but we are professionals with a legal role to play (much like the speech pathologist or the occupational therapist) determined by the students’ IEPs. 

         We deserve to be treated as co-workers in the classroom, not as go-fers.