Paraprofessionals in Special Education

Having a hard time utilizing your paraprofessionals in your special education classroom? After being in special education for 8 years, I have 5 tips to effectively utilize your paraprofessionals.

1. Be Prepared and Organized

First and foremost, you need to be prepared and organized in most aspects of you classroom. It can be difficult if you don’t have a plan or guide of how to do something. How do you expect your paraprofessional to understand? Paraprofessional need to see your plans, expectations and outcomes to help them be prepared and organized.

Paraprofessionals are conditioned to go with the flow. Something unexpected comes up and you must be able to roll with it. They will take some time to watch and observe how you handle situations, but if you keep not taking action, they won’t either.

If they constantly support the teacher and the teacher is unprepared, not organized, and is throwing stuff together last minute it can be incredibly frustrating. They may not know how to jump in and help.

It can be difficult for the paraprofessional to know what questions they need to ask, what the objective is and what is expected. So here’s my advice: plan ahead. Know how you are going to utilize the assistants in advance and be considerate of the individual who is there to support you.

2. Data Collection and Paraprofessionals

As a special education teacher, your life revolves around data so ensuring you have the appropriate data needed is imperative. Train your aides on how to take data and go into it in detail. If you have to provide your paraprofessional some training then set aside time to do so, it will be worth it! I typically show my assistants how I want data to be collected for a week, then I let them take over and ask questions for a week or so.

Allow the assistant to be your data keeper and get them invested in it as much as you are. This will help you tremendously! Make sure to effectively utilize your paraprofessional by having them take data in any area of your students’ day.

3. Empower your Paraprofessionals

Find those teaching moments where paraprofessionals too can learn more about special education. Teach them tips and tricks for working with your students. You also want to acknowledge when they are doing a great job! Let them know you liked how they handled a situation, worked with a student or taught a lesson.

Nothing is worse than being a paraprofessional and feeling like you did a bad job, you didn’t measure up and that you aren’t helping. To avoid this, as a teacher, you want to make sure you have realistic expectations. It’s important to have expectations but it’s more important that they are realistic. Think about the paraprofessionals ability level and make sure what you are asking is realistic. Consider the time frame, their knowledge, their capability, and any other factors you see fit.

4. Delegate tasks to your paraprofessional

 Next, do yourself a favor and delegate that workload. There’s no need to run around stressed out, overwhelmed, and staying at school late. Delegate the workload. Trust your paraprofessional.

Train them! The paraprofessional is there to support you and support the students, allow them to be that person for you in the classroom. They want to feel needed. They want to help, give them that opportunity and you may surprise yourself with how freeing it can be to not have to do it all on your own all the time.

Also, you need to look at your paraprofessional’s strengths! If they are very crafty and enjoy making bulletin boards, let them do that. If they’re really strong in math, let them take over a lesson a few times a week. Find those opportunities to let them shine in their own strengths!

5. Clear Guidance

Finally, when delegating the work, it is important to set clear guidelines. This goes back to the realistic expectations. I have my paraprofessional do a huge portion of my data collecting. Make sure to train your paraprofessional to create their own schedule to get it done. It is important to let them know exactly how they need to do it and the time frame. As a teacher it’s important we stick to what guidelines we stated. Therefore, if it’s a recurring task, keep it consistent and allow your word to be reliable. 

If you’re looking for something to keep this all in one place, make sure to check out how to use a paraprofessional binder!

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