Yes, I Can: Empowering Paraprofessionals to Teach Learning Strategies

Paraprofessionals are an important part of the instructional team for students with disabilities. The primary job duties for most paraprofessionals included making copies, monitoring students during lunch, and taking attendance. Today, their jobs look more like those of teachers: Paraprofessionals help with instructional tasks and sometimes teach small groups of students. Paraprofessionals working in special education settings sometimes spend the entire school day providing support in a broad range of academic areas to a student with disabilities. Lasater et al. emphasized knowledge and skills about instructional strategies and learning strategies as an important area for paraprofessional training and development. As part of a university/community college/district initiative to support paraprofessionals, the authors implemented a professional development series to teach them to use learning strategies. Because activity-based training can enhance the skills of paraprofessionals, especially when such training is combined with fieldwork, their program combined these two elements. In a 2-day make-and-take workshop, 25 paraprofessionals learned how to develop and teach learning strategies to the students with whom they work. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)