Learning: ESP on the Team
Local ESP Leaders Build An In-Service Program in Spokane

Joe Ramos, a paraeducator in Spokane, helped design a professional development program.

If you want a job done well, sometimes you just have to do it yourself. That's what a group of Washington State support staffers demonstrated when they took over the school district's ESP in-service training program.

The Spokane school district used to provide training on specific job-related issues for support educators in selected schools or work units. But the availability of training was always very spotty, and only 100 or so of Spokane's 1,400 plus ESPs would get any in-service in a typical year.

ESP leaders thought they had a better idea, recalls Joe Ramos, a paraeducator with the Lewis and Clark High School traffic-safety program.

Why not have ESP plan their own professional development? After all, support staffhad planned a regional ESP Issues Conference a couple of years ago, and it was a resounding success, drawing nearly 200 school staff.

So when the issue of in-service training came up in bargaining in the summer of 1998, the Spokane Education Association--a 3,800-member NEA local affiliate that includes both teachers and support staff--had a proposal for management:

"Give us the $16,000 budgeted for ESP training, and we'll do a better job with it than you've been doing."

Management agreed to a one-year trial, and the Spokane Education Association's 15-member ESP Commission, chaired by paraeducator Joe Ramos, went to work.

The Commission surveyed support staff throughout the Spokane district and then put together three in-service days for the 1998-99 school year. Nearly 200 support staff turned out for each of the three in-service training sessions.

Workshops covered topics ranging from "How to Have Fun with Your Computer" to understanding and effectively using the district's new attendance and grading system.

All the participants received credits for attending, which made them eligible for district-paid stipends.

The ESP-led professional development in Spokane. notes local UniServ Director Sharon Bacon, reflects a change in attitudes that's been building over time.

Both support staff and administrators are realizing, explains Bacon, "that school support staff have demanding jobs and they need professional development options, just as teachers do."

In August, says Bacon, an assistant superintendent asked if the NEA local affiliate could get a group of secretaries to sit in on a training session the district was doing for administrators.

"The assistant superintendent wanted to get the secretaries' feedback on whether the training would be valuable for office staff," says Bacon. "This never would have happened before."

The school district has agreed to provide funds that will enable the Spokane Education Association to conduct in-service programs again this year, and the ESP Commission is hard at work on the project.

Joe Ramos, for one, is clear about who deserves the credit: "This didn't happen because of me or any one person. It's all of us--our local ESP committee, our local and state staff, the state and national organizations. This is a team effort."

For more information about Spokane's professional development training, contact Joe Ramos or Sharon Bacon at the Spokane Education Association, 20 E. Montgomery, Spokane, WA 99207. Phone: 509/325-4503.

Team Player
Para with PTA Power

New Alaska PTA president Janic Louden is a special education aide at Lathrop High in Fairbanks.

Name: Janice Louden

Job title: Special education aide and Alaska PTA President

Experience: Eight years

What I do: My involvement as a special education aide began eight years ago when my daughter was in second grade. Eventually my volunteer work developed into a job as a special education aide for the deaf education program. I worked at the elementary school for three years and then transferred to the high school, where I have worked for the last five.

Currently I work with intensive resource students. We teach life skills such as cooking, doing laundry, and shopping. And students learn about the community through volunteer work and work on academic subjects helpful later in regular education classes.

During the last eight years, I have become more and more involved in the Parent-Teacher Association. I was elected Alaska PTA president last April and assumed office in July.

Unfortunately, I live in Fairbanks, and the state PTA office is in Anchorage, 358 miles away.

I don't let the 11-hour trip prevent me from doing my job, but the long drive precludes frequent travel to Anchorage. Distance definitely doesn't keep me from working alongside the 17 other PTA Board members--I get a lot done through E-mail and voice mail.

With 16,000 members and 137 units all over the state, technology cuts down the distance between Nome and Juneau. But with a goal of increasing state PTA membership to 20,000 in 2000, our work is cut out for us.

What I Believe: I truly believe that every person in a school building can make a difference in the school's atmosphere and the life of each student. I also think all parents need to be involved in their children's education to ensure their success.

To contact Janice Louden, send E-mail to louden@ptialaska.net.

Resources

Paras Bridge the Gap
In classrooms with students from diverse cultures speaking diverse languages, one strategy is to tap students' native cultures for use in the classroom.

University of Southern California professors Robert Rueda and Carmen DeNeve say paraeducators from the students' communities can help create a bridge between students and teachers: Paraeducators "can strategically draw on their own funds of knowledge, which resonate with those of their students, to promote student learning."

Rueda and DeNeve report these findings in "How Paraeducators Build Cultural Bridges in Diverse Class-rooms," reprinted on the Web by the National Clearinghouse for Paraeducator Resources, a program of the Center for Multilingual, Multicultural Research at the Rossier School of Education, Waite Phillips Hall, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0031.

Comparing Apples and Oranges?
ESP jobs are very different from private-sector jobs, even if the jobs have the same names. That's one finding of Privatizing Public Schools--A Closer Look, a recent report by the Michigan Education Association. The study determined that if the Lansing, Michigan, high school custodians did the entire set of duties of a group of contract cleaners in the Lansing Sears store, they would be doing only 41.7 percent of their jobs!

This is just one of the pitfalls of privatization pointed out in the MEA report, which is available online on the Michigan Education Association home page at www.mea.org.

To obtain a printed copy, contact Karen Cherry, Michigan Education Association, 1216 Kendale Blvd., Box 2573, East Lansing, MI 48826-2573, phone: 800/292-1934.

Does Your District Use Non-Conforming Vans?
Traditional yellow school buses are manufactured to meet stringent federal passenger safety standards. But standard 8-15 passenger vans, which have not been modified to comply with these rules, aren't in conformance with the federal safety standards.

Many states prohibit the use of non-conforming vans for pupil transportation. The School Transportation Online Web site, at www.stnonline.com has information on this issue, along with resources on the "great seat-belt debate" and other key transportation issues.

School Transportation Online is the Web site of School Transportation News, a monthly national newsletter. Subscriptions to the print newsletter are $29/year from School Transportation News, P.O. Box 789, Redondo Beach, CA 90277, Phone: 310/792-2226, E-mail: schoolbus@ix.netcom.com.