As former special education teachers who relied heavily on support from paraprofessionals, we were thrilled to see recent news out of Washington, that the state now requires all paraprofessional to participate in a 3-day training program that heavily emphasizes instruction for ELLs and SPED students. They are the first state in the nation to require training for paraprofessionals- a role that is often instrumental particularly in Special Education. Incredibly, paraprofessional deliver roughly two-thirds of instructional time in special education classrooms and yet, they receive very little training or support. AND are paid half the salary of certified teachers.
While we hope more states follow Washington’s lead, we also firmly believe that schools should not wait for mandates from above to take action on improving supports for paraprofessionals. In fact, some EdMod schools are finding ways to support paraprofessionals with our app’s job-embedded communication and PD features. Here are three quick tips from the field:
- View snapshot data for every student – Provide paraprofessionals with access to EdMod so that they can view useful information about students and their disabilities in the What Every Teacher Needs to Know section.
- Collaborate and share wins and challenges – Encourage paraprofessionals to use the Team Board to leave notes about students’ wins or challenges, as well as add notes for support and strategies that work. This engagement will increase collaboration with other paras or teachers in the building about how to best support individual students.
- Get real-time instructional support – Encourage paraprofessional to access EdMod’s Strategies tab to see which strategies have been tagged to individual students and view the toolkits on each strategy to learn more about how to use them effectively in the classroom.
