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MANY TEACHERS SAY THEY ARE NOT PREPARED TO COACH PARAEDUCATORS

May 19, 2000

Teacher supervision and feedback is the lynchpin of a successful paraeducator certification and training program, experts say, but many teachers say they do not feel qualified to provide the kind of coaching paraeducators need. In a recent survey of teachers, paraeducators and school administrators, the Minnesota Statewide Paraprofessional Consortium found that the people who train paraeducators -- most often teachers and school administrators -- may need additional training themselves.

The survey of 569 educators in Minnesota, including 266 teachers, 211 paraeducators and 92 school administrators, revealed a distinct gap between paraeducators' perceptions and teachers' perceptions of how well the teachers coach and communicate as the leaders of a classroom instructional team. The majority of paraeducators said teachers are less effective than the teachers or administrators think at frequently demonstrating seven core competencies the consortium identified as necessary for working with paraeducators. The teachers fall short, according to paraeducators, in communicating with paraeducators, managing them, planning and scheduling their work, training and providing instructional support, modeling respect and patience for the paraeductor and advocating on his or her behalf in conversations with administrators.

PARAEDUCATOR'S ROLE IS CHANGING AMID TEACHER SHORTAGE May 19, 2000

According to teachers, they do not do a good job of training or managing paraeducators because they do not feel adequately prepared for that role. Teachers view on-the-job training of the paraeducator as far less important than the paraeducators do. They also take less seriously their role as advocates, while paraeducators said they need the teachers they work with to validate and support what they are doing, said Teri Wallace, research associate at the University of Minnesota's Institute on Community Integration, where the consortium is based. Finally, most teachers reported they were effectively fulfilling their duties to the paraeducators, while a lower percentage of administrators and paraeducators agreed.

In addition to lacking their own training, teachers said they do not provide the feedback and coaching paraeducators need they do not have enough time to sit down with the paraeducators and discuss specific situations and strategies, the survey said. Some noted the difference between teaching adults and teaching children poses a distinct barrier, and the different knowledge bases from which each operates can further strain communication.

Anna Lou Pickett, director of the National Resource Center for Paraprofessionals, agreed time is a key element of improving teacher-paraeducator teams. Making or finding time to train these teams, she said, "is one of the most difficult issues we face right now," because in the current nationwide teacher shortage, both teachers and paraeducators bear heavy workloads. To help improve team dynamics, Pickett suggests the teachers and paraeducators communicate regularly via e-mail, teachers add a column in their lesson plan book to spell out the paraeducator's role in each lesson and school districts pay paraeducators to report to work on the same day as the teacher at the start of the school year, so each classroom team has an opportunity to meet and set up a plan to communicate throughout the year.

The Minnesota consortium plans to use the survey information to work with institutes of higher education on better teacher preparation programs, Wallace said, and it is considering establishing a "train the trainer" plan that will help teachers become more effective paraeducator coaches. The consortium also plans to use the information to refine its competency checklists for teachers and paraeducators and put together training materials that will address these problems, she said.8