Reply to Why does no one acknowledge how overworked teachers are?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Okay, how about paraeducators. We work the same hours as teachers during the day, and get four vacation days. Yes Summers and some school holidays, but there are many what they call "no work no pay" days for paraeducators.

The hourly rate is less than what I could make at Starbucks or Costco. There is Health insurance, but that is changing too, for the worse: from CareFirst to Cigna[/quote]

Thanks for what you do. No question, you are inexcusably underpaid and underappreciated. [/quote]

+1  and yet we don't see a thread about paraeducators being overworked.

[/quote]

Because for the most part, they're not. In my experience as a special ed teacher, the paras are people who have few other job opportunities and want the school schedule. My MIL worked as a para in a 1st grade class and complained endlessly about working with the kids (and God forbid if she was asked to help with a child with a disability, she wanted nothing to do with them). She took the job when her kids were in HS because she (her DH) wanted the health insurance but couldn't get another job with benefits because she had never worked before.
They get the great parts of the job (working with the kids) without all the junk- dealing with parents, paperwork, lesson planning, etc. The only exception IMO is special ed paras. They deserve way more pay than a run of the mill elementary class para. [/quote]

I can’t speak for other schools, but Eastern’s paras are often in contact with parents, including providing their personal cell phone numbers. [/quote]

At the schools that I have worked at, the only paras that have any direct contact with parents are the 1:1s (who are of course sped paras). Even then though, those 1:1s often are not attending the IEP meetings for their student. [/quote]

When I worked for almost 20 years as a special ed para I did attend some IEP meetings but only when the parents requested it.  In general, in my school district, the head of special ed did not want paras to attend IEP meetings despite their being the person most familiar with every aspect of everything about the student.  The special ed admin usually had good control over the special ed teachers but not so much over the paras, meaning they could not be sure what the para might say or reveal and the fear was that it might not reflect what the special ed team wanted revealed.

Admittedly some paras are not well trained enough or possibly not sharp enough to know what to say or not say at an IEP meeting and the time required to bring them up to speed was not available, so it was easier to just ban them from attending IEP meetings and avoid any issues arising from paras saying something they shouldn't.  I'm sure you can imagine what I'm talking about, like the IEP might say student is accompanied to all specials by support staff and the para pipes up and says "Well that's impossible because I am assigned to monitor lunch for another grade during that time on Wednesdays and Fridays" and just like that they are out of compliance and have to scramble to address that situation.[/quote]

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