Cedar Rapids paras: They make a difference

NEA Today, Nov 2002 by Winans, Dave

If you want to glimpse the future of para education, go to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, an industrial Midwestern city with a very industrious public school system. Its students outperform state and national averages in every category of the ACT test, and its dropout prevention program has produced a 98 percent graduation rate.

This success couldn't happen without a quality teaching force-assisted by paraeducators committed to kids and their own professional growth. Here are some paras you should meet:

* Even before Iowa passed its para certification law in 2000, early childhood paraeducator Michele Carter collaborated with the Grant Wood Area Education Agency and the Iowa Education Network to organize and teach paraprofessional workshops. Now (and she can't believe how quickly) Carter has earned a five-year state Special Needs para certificate at Kirkwood Community College.

In her work with preschoolers-with physical, emotional, and mental disabilities-at the Title I Grant Early Childhood Center, Carter has reached a professional high. She says her classroom partner, special ed teacher Emily Dolezal, "wants me to use what I have learned and is willing to take suggestions. That makes me comfortable and relaxed.

"Emily does the planning-the IEPs, the behavior modification plans, the paperwork, the brainwork," this para notes. "I assist in implementing her plans.

"My duties include small group supervision and routine maintenance," Carter adds. "Teachers have a difficult role, with added hours, and they have to take the job home with them. I can generally leave my job at the door when I leave each day."

But thanks to her coursework, Carter shares the same vocabulary with Dolezal. "I used to say, 'no, that's not for me.' Now I know what teachers are talking about," says Carter. "And if you understand, you can have input. Now I can help adapt activities for special learning styles, so that all students are working at the skills table together."

* Lynn Bounds is a dropout assistant in the day care center of Metro High School, Cedar Rapids' alternative setting for at-risk students, where she serves as "a 'teacher,' a nursemaid, and a counselor."

It's an important job-helping teach the preschool children of school staff and teenaged parents, while modeling parenting skills for moms and dads who are kids themselves. It's all part of the school system's philosophy that dropout prevention begins before children even hit kindergarten.

This teacher associate loves the smal scale of Metro and the caring quality of her co-workers, and bursts with pride "over the trust kids have in me to take care of them and the trust parents have in me to do this." Young parents "watch me, to see how I interact with two-year-olds," Bounds adds. "If they have questions, we sit down and talk to them."

Bounds knows her district's growing commitment to para professional development can help make her an even stronger influence in young lives. And she's ready-like many certified teachers, Bounds maintains a professional file with course completion certificates, staff evaluations, and even a "professional growth record."

"I enjoy training-you can never get enough tools in your belt," Bounds concludes. "I think training should be mandatory and the district should pay for it."

* Michele Geers already held two tough jobs before taking on a third. She's the mother of six public school students and a teacher associate at Hiawatha Elementary, where she does everything from work with a child with Asperger's Syndrome to perform copying, lunchroom, and clinic duties. And more recently she became an Association activist.

Geers realizes she may be facing a fourth job, earning course credits to get state para certification, and she contemplates getting trained as a medical first responder and grief counselor. But this outspoken unionist knows that there are only so many hours in a day and that she and many of her ESP colleagues need some sort of relief to get the job training they deserve and need.

More paid in-service time "would make a lot of people happy," Geers declares. And Central Office indicates that it hears this message-because more than one person is sending it.

"When we all pull together and and speak with one voice, we make a huge difference," Geers concludes. "You can't beat the union; it has your back. The Association listens to what we say, gets things settled, and keeps us in constant contact with the latest district policies. You can't go without health insurance, and you shouldn't go without job insurance: your union."