Does Your School Utilize Paraprofessionals?

The article “Classroom Partners: How Paraprofessionals Can Support All Students to Meet New Standards” provided a succinct description for the term “paraprofessionals.” It states that teaching assistants, also referred to as paraprofessionals, provide support to groups of students or individual students.

In recent years, paraprofessionals have evolved from the role of clerical assistants to a much more collaborative position with the teacher, states another article “Working with the Paraprofessional in Your Classroom.” Overall, along with supervising students, teachers’ aides are dedicated to supporting teacher-directed instruction. And though often relied on for the support they provide for students with disabilities, paraprofessionals can also be of great benefit to all students like English language learners (ELLs).

The article “Teacher Tips: Effective Collaboration with ELL Paraprofessionals” says that paraprofessionals can work with ELL students in a variety of settings, like the mainstream classroom, the content classroom, and the ELL classroom either during class, before school, or after school one-on-one or in small groups.

According to the article, the ideal paraprofessional has most of the following characteristics:

• Enough of an understanding of both cultures of an ELL student;
• Patient;
• A working knowledge of classroom management, such as how to discipline students, how to motivate them, and how to reinforce what is being taught;
• Strong English-language skills and not just a little English but proficient in reading and writing;
• A positive attitude.

A paraprofessional with all these traits would be amazing, but it could challenging to find someone with all of these characteristics. Schools must also keep in mind to not hire solely based on a teaching assistant’s knowledge of ELLs’ native language. Strong English skills are far more important, states the article. Other useful strengths are a working knowledge of basic ELL principles and reading theory.

Along with schools effectively utilizing paraprofessionals in the classroom, it’s equally important that they use other available resources as well like the parent involvement programs offered by The Latino Family Literacy Project. For teachers, administrators, bilingual paraprofessionals and parent coordinators, the organization offers a 3.5 hour professional development, educator workshop training for the implementation of all its literacy and college awareness programs, providing a perfect fit for Hispanic parents for Title I and Title III parent involvement programs.

Since most programs are structured with the same format, candidates need to be trained only once to implement any of the age-specific programs, which also include a cultural competency overview for working with Hispanic ESL parents and a step-by-step method. Teachers can attend the half day program training at a workshop near them or via an online webinar. For more information, please contact The Latino Family Literacy Project.