Oct 8

Today I started thinking about something way, WAY outside my area of expertise. After listening to two paraprofessionals discussing teachers, I was wondering whether and how they could be used to participate in teacher evaluations. These are individuals who do have experience in classrooms, who sit in teachers' classrooms day in and day out. That's the critique of the one-shot in-and-out evaluations and administrators do -- that they cannot know the real context of the class. Paraprofessionals might not have the whole story but they see students, and they see students who struggle. They understand and positives and negatives of instruction. Unfortunately I have seen a lot of negative energy from paras in my time, but we have to realize that they are underpaid and undervalued overall. They may know more than the teacher quite often but have little input into instruction. How can this energy and expertise be channeled in such a way as to assist the school in this important function?