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Managing Paraeducators in Your School

Item # 101

By Nancy K. French

Specific Strategies for Utilizing the Talents of One of Our Most Valuable Resources—Paraeducators

Paraprofessionals—or paraeducators—have long been an invaluable resource in our schools. A well-trained paraeducator not only boosts teacher morale and school-home-community relations, but also increases the amount and quality of instructional time as well as student achievement levels. But where are paraeducators' talents best utilized? Who will train them? And how can we best serve the ever-changing needs of the student population?

This comprehensive resource provides teachers and administrators with answers to these important questions and much more, supplying practical tools and strategies for how to best recruit, manage, and use paraeducators in their schools. French gives specific guidelines for working with paraeducators in Special Education, Title 1, Bilingual (ESL), School Library/Media Center, General and Special Education Classrooms, Speech/Language Pathology, and Health Care Services, helping teachers and administrators make the right decisions for their districts and schools.

Managing Paraeducators includes:

Practical, easy-to-use worksheets that identify the needs and readiness of a school to employ paraeducators, providing a platform for team communication and the development of personalized job descriptions
Self-assessment and support checklists that identify potential problems and how to surmount them
Guidelines for helping make sure paraeducators are being used in ways that most contribute to student achievement
Strategies for identifying best practices, timeframes, and person(s) best suited to training paraprofessionals
Corwin Press, 2002