Maine paras give selves some credit

NEA Today, Oct 1999

With teachers' help, `ed techs' address their training needs.

In the southern Maine community of Windham, paraeducators have improved their professional development opportunities by creating their own "local support system." For these educational technicians, as paraeducators are called in Maine, that means credits where credit is due.

First, a little background: In Maine, individual ed techs must meet specific educational requirements to be "authorized" by the state Department of Education. To maintain their authorization, techs must take the equivalent of three credit hours of educationally related coursework every five years.

Unfortunately, however, "It's difficult for ed techs to get the education credits they need," laments Lynda Locke, a kindergarten ed tech at Windham Primary School.

It's been 12 years, Locke points out, since any Windham support staff have been paid for workshop days-and most of the workshops offered haven't been relevant to ed techs.

So when Locke learned last winter that, thanks to years of hard work by the Maine Education Association, the state board of education had adopted rules that let districts set up their own "local.support systems" for ed techs, she jumped at the opportunity.

Locke spearheaded a group of about a dozen ed tech members from the Windham Education Association. Working with teacher leaders, the group drafted a plan to establish a local credit system for Windham's 60 ed techs, within the existing local teacher certification support system.

The new ed tech support team is now gathering information about the jobs and educational experiences of the district's paraeducators, with mentoring help from teacher Jane Diamond, who is the head of the teachers' certification support system.

Already in place is a local support system that gives Windham ed techs credit for new, job-related learning from nontraditional sources.

"A group of us took sign language workshops to help us work with a deaf student," Lynda Locke recalls. "With a local support system in place, we'll be able to get educational credit for this. Before, it wasn't counted."

Cheryl Atherton is the team's "primary sign-off person" for approving ed tech credits. Next on the agenda, she notes, will be the planning of in-service that really meets ed tech needs.