Para with PTA power

NEA Today, Jan 2000

Name: Janice Louden

Job title: Special education aide and Alaska PTA President

Experience: Eight years

License Plate: LUVPTA

What I do: My involvement as a special education aide began eight years ago when my daughter was in second grade. Eventually my volunteer work developed into a job as a special education aide for the deaf education program. I worked at the elementary school for three years and then transferred to the high school, where I have worked for the last five.

Currently I work with intensive resource students. We teach life skills such as cooking, doing laundry, and shopping. And students learn about the community through volunteer work and work on academic subjects helpful later in regular education classes.

During the last eight years, I have become more and more involved in the Parent-Teacher Association. I was elected Alaska PTA president last April and assumed office in July.

Unfortunately, I live in Fairbanks, and the state PTA office is in Anchorage, 358 miles away.

I don't let the 11-hour trip prevent me from doing my job, but the long drive precludes frequent travel to Anchorage. Distance definitely doesn't keep me from working alongside the 17 other PTA Board members-I get a lot done through E-mail and voice mail.

With 16,000 members and 137 units all over the state, technology cuts down the distance between Nome and Juneau. But with a goal of increasing state PTA membership to 20,000 in 2000, our work is cut out for us.

What I believe: I truly believe that every person in a school building can make a difference in the school's atmosphere and the life of each student. I also think all parents need to be involved in their children's education to ensure their success.

To contact Janice Louden, send E-mail to louden@ptialaska.net.

RESOURCES

Paras Bridge the Gap

In classrooms with students from diverse cultures speaking diverse languages, one strategy is to tap students' native cultures for use in the classroom.

University of Southern California professors Robert Rueda and Carmen DeNeve say paraeducators from the students' communities can help create a bridge between students and teachers: Paraeducators "can strategically draw on their own funds of knowledge, which resonate with those of their students, to promote student learning."

Rueda and DeNeve report these findings in "How Paraeducators Build Cultural Bridges in Diverse Classrooms," reprinted on the Web by the National Clearinghouse for Paraeducator Resources (www.usc.edu/ dept/education/CMMR/Clearinghouse. html), a program of the Center for Multilingual, Multicultural Research at the Rossier School of Education, Waite Phillips Hall, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-- 0031.

Comparing Apples and Oranges?

ESP jobs are very different from private-sector jobs, even if the jobs have the same names. That's one finding of Privatizing Public Schools-A Closer Look, a recent report by the Michigan Education Association. The study determined that if the Lansing, Michigan, high school custodians did the entire set of duties of a group of contract cleaners in the Lansing Sears store, they would be doing only 41.7 percent of their jobs!

This is just one of the pitfalls of privatization pointed out in the MEA report, which is available online on the Michigan Education Association home page at www.mea.org.

To obtain a printed copy, contact Karen Cherry, Michigan Education Association, 1216 Kendale Blvd., Box 2573, East Lansing, MI 48826-2573, phone: 800/292-1934.

Doos Your District Use Non-Conforming Vans?

Traditional yellow school buses are manufactured to meet stringent federal passenger safety standards. But standard 8-15 passenger vans, which have not been modified to comply with these rules, aren't in conformance with the federal safety standards.

Many states prohibit the use of nonconforming vans for pupil transportation. The School Transportation Online Web site, at www.stnonline.com has information on this issue, along with resources on the "great seat-belt debate" and other key transportation issues.

School Transportation Online is the Web site of School Transportation News, a monthly national newsletter. Subscriptions to the print newsletter are $29/year from School Transportation News, P.O. Box 789, Redondo Beach, CA 90277, Phone: 310/792-2226, E-mail: schoolbus@ix.netcom.com.