Untrained Paraeducators in the Classroom
December 18, 2008 by Abby
Filed under Least Restrictive Environment
In many schools across the nation more and more children with autism are being educated within the context of the general education classroom. Many times they will have one or more paraeducators to them to support them in the classroom. The unfortunate reality is that many of these paraeducators are untrained or poorly trained to most effectively support these children in the classroom. Time and time again as I enter into classrooms in which children with autism are included I see the same sight…children with autism sitting at a desk with a paraeducator sitting next to them earning the endearing nickname “Velcro”. I’m not arguing that children with autism don’t need additional support in the classroom; I think that it’s great that school districts are able to provide these additional supports. The problem lies within the training of the paraeducators and the implementation of the support they provide.
School districts typically provide training regarding how to deal with aggressive behavior (basically how to minimize damage) but they do not learn the basic principles of Applied Behavior Analysis, data collection, incidental teaching, prompt fading techniques, etc. If we continue to have untrained paraeducators in the classroom supporting children with autism there will continue to be problems in regards to actual access to the general education curriculum, appropriate social interactions, and full participation. The way in which paraeducators are currently used serves as a barrier between the child and typically developing peers rather than serving as a facilitating factor to support the growth and development of the child.
If we are going to provide appropriate education within the context of the general education classroom we need to stop putting untrained paraeducators in the classroom. They need to be trained by professionals in order to maximize the efficacy of their role in the classroom.
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I taught elementary school for seven years, and it’s sad to say that many teachers across the country are no more trained than paraeducators. I know I wasn’t. I had to learn it on my own.
That, unfortunately, is very true. I’ve worked with many special education teachers whose training was centered around children with high-incidence disabilities (i.e. SLD, ADHD, etc) and they had no training in working with children with more significant disabilities. If we want to ensure that children with autism and other disabilities (i.e. downs syndrome) are successfully included in general education classrooms we need to make sure their case managers are appropriately trained or restructure the service models so only those teachers with the appropriate training are the case managers of certain children who need a specific level of expertise. Unfortunately, the way things are done right now is that special education teachers are over-burdened with huge caseloads of students whose needs and abilities are so different that it is difficult to program appropriately for all of them.