Paraprofessionals

We are teaching in an era of unique opportunity and change. Even as recently as nine years ago when I started my TVI career, whenever I needed information about how to teach or where my resources may be located, I was at a loss. I either had to reach out to the state Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired and hope they knew the answer—which they often times did—or I had to create a solution to roadblocks on my own.

Now, however, we are lucky to be working during the height of massive online collaboration projects, which means I think we are poised to start addressing some significant areas of need in our field. The area of need I am most passionate about right now is training and retention of qualified, able paraprofessionals.

          In my second year of teaching, I needed to train my first paraprofessional to work with a first-grade braille reader. Using Google, I found a variety of resources to support the need of having a paraprofessional and various definitions of the roles:

-      TSBVI’s The Paraprofessional Working with Students

-      NFB’s The Role of the Paraeducator in the Education of Blind Children

-      AFB’s The Role and Training of Paraprofessionals Who Work with Students Who are Visually Impaired

-      Family Connect’s What Teacher Assistants and Paraeducators Do for Students who are Blind or Visually Impaired

Yet, once we had hired my paraprofessional, I had no idea what or how exactly to teach him so he would be able to fulfill his role and do what my student needed on the first day of school.

I was lucky that this particular school system allowed me to work with the paraprofessional for three days prior to the start of the school year, so we were starting on pretty decent ground. My special education director at the time also purchased copies of A Paraprofessional’s Handbook for Working with Students Who are Visually Impaired, but this book was published in 1997 and a lot has changed in our field in the last two decades! NFB has another great article called Helpful Hints for Paraprofessionals Working with Students who are Blind or Visually Impaired, but an article can only go so far in training our paraprofessionals. I’m sure my training was not the best it could have been.

          Our field really needs some level of up-to-date curriculum of Best Practices TVIs can draw from to teach paraprofessionals how to work with students who are blind and visually impaired. Over the years, I have trained and supported about a dozen paraprofessionals. Some I trained from the start and others I have inherited.

          Things that I think are important to teach a paraprofessional do not always mesh up exactly with what other TVIs think we should be teaching. I have inherited paraprofessionals who have been in the field for three years and still do not know the braille alphabet, even though they worked with students who are braille readers. Others have been so knowledgeable and are practically TVIs in their own right.

Our field needs some sort of standardization of instruction for paraprofessionals. I did find this neat document from the state of Connecticut, but I don’t think it’s extensive or targeted enough. Wouldn’t regional training programs during the summer be a wonderful option!?

          Here is what I propose we do. I would love to see what you are doing to help guide your training of TVIs. What resources do you find the most helpful and easy to use? Do you have some sort of checklist to monitor and keep track of what you have taught your paraprofessionals?

          This summer I started a YouTube Channel called TVI Tips from Amanda with some basic braille videos that are all short and I can send to my paraprofessionals or to classroom teachers to help them reinforce skills I am teaching my students. I’ve used them as friendly reminders if I notice something not being reinforced as I would like. However, I think YouTube videos can only go so far (and I’ve run out of ideas!).

I created a checklist of skills I think may be relevant to paraprofessionals working with students, but I have struggled to transform this list into something I could use for progress monitoring. TVIs and administrators need to have some sort of substantive way to document how a paraprofessional is doing his/her job. If we could solve that problem, I think the field could move on towards addressing the issue of paraprofessional retention! We need to have concrete, clear, explicit ways of showing school districts how specialized our paraprofessionals’ skillsets are and that they are not typical teaching assistants. Paraprofessionals really need to be paid competitive wages for the work they do!

           

        I know the NLS Braille Certification Training Program is out there and we have great braille resources like the Hadley Institute for the Blind and Vision Impaired and websites like UEB Online, but being a proficient, exceptional paraprofessional for students who are blind and visually impaired involves so much more than knowing the braille code.

       What are you using to guide your training of paraprofessionals? How do you aid administrators in understanding the work paras do? Let’s collaborate and work together to improve training and retention of paraprofessionals, who are probably more crucial to the success of our students than we are!

~ Guest Blogger, Amanda Thompson, TVI, COMS