Next
week, I am going to visit a large school district that has full time professionals with no paraprofessional help in every building. They are on fixed scedules and want to reinvent themselves. Some neighboring districts are letting professionals go and replacing
them wiht paras at each building with the only professional at the district level as supervisor. Fixed schedules will not be going away; not an option to turn to flex schedules.
Role
1, as we are all familiar with, has the children come in, exchange books, listen to a story or have a library lesson lasting ten or 14 min. And then go back to the classroom. This role is the one most in danger because a para “can handle this” under the supervision
of the professional at the district level.
In
role 2, the professional tries to discover what is going on in the classroom and then does something complementary to classroom topics during library time.
Is
there anyone out there who has solved this problem with new and inventive ideas and practices? The folks in this workshop will be introduced to the idea of a virtual makerspace and will have new video production capabilities. But, what are they going to d
with these new skills? Do you have any ideas to share? Without a boost, I fear their jobs will be on the line sooner than later? But who cares? In their place will be instructional coaches who theoretically have a major impact on teaching and learning across
the school.
Email
your ideas to me at reader.david@gmail.com
and I will gather them together and publish the results plus the ideas these librarian come up with in a couple of weeks.