I could not have done my job without paraprofessionals. They were crucial in helping my classroom run and classroom success. Before we dive into this blog, I want to explain that I always had strong relationships with my paraprofessionals. I have never dealt with serious conflict issues, so I won’t be sharing advice in that area. Instead, I will share advice on how I trained and supported my team.
We will break this down into 4 main components: techniques to train, things to communicate, times to communicate, and tips to communicate. Whenever you get stuck, think of the T’s: Technique, Things, Times, and Tips. (Yes, same T as the home school communication and teamwork. I am trying to make it easy for you guys!)
Techniques
For techniques, we are going to look at techniques to train your paraprofessionals. Training paras is crucial-they cannot support our students if they don’t have training. Different classrooms will have different difficulties facing squeezing training in, but we will talk about 4 different ideas. Hopefully, you can make one of the 4 ideas work!
Throughout the Day: This might feel like you are going against what you should do, but don’t look at it like that. Look at it like going off routine for 15 minutes to make the routine run better the rest of the time. This one depends on the level of attention your students can give to a certain activity, but if your whole class can be engaged watching a video, using iPads or playing in the recess corner, give them a little bit of time to do it and train your staff.
It is very important to have everything mapped out. Have notes, paper, and guides ready to go. These meetings might have to abruptly stop, so you want to get through as much as you can quickly and be able to know where you stopped so you can pick up later.
Meetings Before and After School: Again, I had great relationships with my paraprofessionals. They were eager to learn and eager to support. I found that if I showed up to work with donuts and coffee for my team, they were willing to come to work 30 minutes early. We did this about once a quarter and it worked really well. It takes time laying the foundation but if you can, this can really work!
Just a quick note about spending money. This is something my husband and I discussed when I first started teaching, as our budget was a lot stricter back then. I didn’t want to frivolously spend money, but I also knew that time=money. What that means is if I could spend a little bit of money, and save myself a lot of time, it was well worth it. If a $15 Dunkin Donuts trip helped my staff feel more confident in their jobs, that would save me stress during the day and time after school. It was well worth putting into the budget.
Video Trainings: My last year I had a hard time squeezing training in with one of my paraprofessionals. She actually had a second job before and after school. She arrived at a student’s house at 6 am (when his parents left for work) and nannied him until it was time for him to get on the bus to school. She left right after school for a job in the after school program. I also could not orchestrate training in the middle of the day.
I turned to video training. I would film myself giving training on something (such as an IEP bin or fluency center) in an exact manner as I would train her if we were face to face. I couldn’t facilities actual training during the day, but I could give her 15 minutes in the hallway to watch my video. She could ask me follow up questions and it was the easiest way to get her trained. She also benefitted from written protocols that she could review, so I provided that as well!
Times to Communicate
When things are awesome: Paraprofessional work is underappreciated. Our paras are working hard, with complex needs, without the same training or degrees we get, with minimal pay. As I explained earlier, my para was having to hold down two outside jobs to help ends meet while kicking butt in my classroom (to give her a little extra praise, she actually took over my classroom when I left and is now the teacher of my former students!!)
When your paraprofessional does something awesome, handle a stressful situation with poise, come up with a great idea, or just genuinely makes a student happy, praise them! Let them know specifically what they did that was great. Most of us like to hear when we are doing a good job. If I could take 30 seconds out of my day to do this for my para, why wouldn’t I. By the way, I am pretty sure this paired with Dunkin contributed to why my team was willing to come to work early when I needed them to.
When something needs to be corrected: You might find that your paraprofessional needs support or correction. This is totally normal. We all make mistakes, or we don’t use strategies correctly. We might be over prompting or giving a response to a behavior that is opposite of the one we want to give. If you see this happening with your para, don’t be afraid to correct it.
The biggest thing is how you go about correcting it. We don’t want to make them feel bad about themselves. Usually, it was an honest mistake. One thing I did to help support this is let my paras know when I made a mistake. I wanted them to know that I was not perfect and I had to get correction as well. This helped me establish that I wasn’t micro-managing them or being controlling, I was genuinely trying to help everyone.
It can be helpful to learn the way your para prefers feedback. Some people want to know in the moment so they can better understand. For example, if someone is over-prompting you would tell them right away so they knew how to scale back. Other people can’t focus on your feedback and the student at the same time. They might prefer to have a conversation when they are not distracted so they can process and ask for clarification, if necessary. If you know which way your para prefers to get feedback, you can customize it to her needs which will help her be more successful.
General Check Ins–Don’t wait for your para to come to you and tell you that something is wrong. Some of your paras will be confident in expressing concerns. Others might worry about being a “problem” and not tell you what is going on. Those are the ones I was worried about. I didn’t want to wait for my para to finally come to tell me she was struggling to support in inclusion. I wanted to make sure I had an open space for her to come to me on a regular basis.
You can just pose the question “is everything working well” but you might find that elicits no real response. Try asking specific questions like: We are all working on avoiding giving attention to the behavior of Adam, are you finding that feasible to do? or I know you are truing to take data on Alex’s goals while supporting him in math, is that manageable? Or do you have any concerns about how to work with or support Sandy with her AAC device? Look for things you know might be a struggle and ask specific questions to open the dialogue.
Things
IEP Goals and Accommodations – Your para is there to help you implement the IEP. She cannot do that if she has no idea what goals and accommodations students are working on. I always had my IEPS readily available for papas to review, but I also know that reading IEPS if you are not already familiar with them is tough.
I liked to make my students programming guides to support the paras. With the programming guide, I would summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the student, spell out the goals in simpler language, and have examples of how the accommodations could be used. That allowed my paras to better understand exactly how to support the students. This also includes taking data on IEP goals-listen to the data podcast for more information on that!
FBAs and BIPs: If you have students with Behavior Plans, your paraprofessionals NEED to be trained on those behavior plans. As we covered in the functions of behavior podcast, we need to know the functions of behavior and make sure our response isn’t making the behavior happen more. For example, if the behavior is maintained by attention, we don’t want to be giving attention. This includes your paras!
But before we just tell paras not to give attention, we want them to understand why. It might feel really counterproductive to your para if you are limiting how they can respond to behavior. By taking time to explain the FBA and BIP, how you determined the function of behavior, how you determined the intervention, how to facilitate the intervention, and other basics, your para will be better equipped to implement the plan.
Academic Support and Inclusion- Do your paras know what you are going to work on during the school day? Do they know the upcoming science unit or math concept? Or do they walk through the door having no idea what is going on? If the answer is the latter, change that! It can be as simple as giving the monthly viewpoint from your curriculum map ( we talked about that in the scheduled podcast!)
When it comes to inclusion, give them specific examples on how they can support in the classroom. If you are not sure, go to inclusion yourself to figure it out. Work to make a communication flow between the general education teacher and para so they can get support. Don’t hand them a clipboard, send them to 4th grade math with two students and say GOOD LUCK!! Give them support to make it work.
Tips for Communication
Be confident-We want our paras to feel confident, and if we showcase confidence that will help. When we are giving support, giving training, intervening on behavior and training, we want our paras to feel like we know what we are talking about. Be organized, have handouts, and facilitate the conversation in a positive and proactive manner.
Be respectful-Our paras have their own expertise and knowledge that they bring to the table. They might not have teaching degrees, but that should not discredit the training and other avenues that have learned from. They are sitting on the other side of the table from you, treat them as such.
Be Open- Yout paraprofessionals are spending a LOT of time with students and they might have insights that you don’t. My paras knew what was going on inclusion more than I did and they might have a suggestion that could turn into accommodation down the line. Again, they might have the degree but they can still make suggestions. This is no different than the collaboration podcast. Just like you might know “OT language” but can still give the OT an idea, the paraprofessional might not know your “lingo” but can still give an idea.
Be sure to go into your TpT folder and download today’s freebies. You will get a handout that summarizes everything in this blog and a brainstorming sheet. We will brainstorm 4 things on the sheet. The first one is something you want to train your paras on. Maybe you want to train them on behavior, or promoting, or AAC devices. Think about your upcoming class and choose one area that you can already start training on.
The second area is delegation. As we have talked about all week long, paras can be in charge of different parts of the day. Maybe they can run IEP bins or a fluency center. Maybe they can plan out rafts or run the morning calendar. Brainstorm one thing you can delegate and it will help you so much when the school year gets rolling!
The third area is appreciation. We want to make sure that they feel appreciated! Maybe we can plan to pick up coffee one day. Maybe we can give them an extra 5 minutes at lunch. Maybe we will just plan 3 specific things to compliment on. Whatever it is, this is important to do. Make a plan for it!
The last area is support. We can plan one way to offer continuous support. This ties into the freebie: A get to know your paras sheet. Learn how your paras are best supported and use that information to support them!
Thank you for joining the where do I even start podcast series!