Para Support

Posted on April 16, 2008

Sorry this is late, the flu or whatever the sickness going around is, has struck my house with a fury!!!

I am very excited because our school is going to be part of a consultation piece with Michael Giangreco and his Project Evolve. We are basically going to look at how to better utuilize our paras. I think that the special educators, the regular education teachers, as well as the administration see this as helpful. However the paras see this as the death of them. They see this a a threat to thier jobs.. Administration has told them that this doeesn't mean that they are going to be cut and have asssured them this is just a way to use their strengths.
I am very frustrated with how to help them see this.

I am also getting frustrated because many of my 1:1 paras are mad at me because I am giving their students some independence. They feel that they should be with them all the time. I argue that they need to eat lunch with their peers or go to chorus and just sing (before I did this I took in account everyone's needs). These students have the right to be teenagers too; they don't always want an adult around! I guess it goes to the piece of over relaince. How do we stress that our students also need to experience things themselves?