Learning: ESP on the Team
Rhode Island ESP Chart Career Path Through Certification

Teacher assistants get training on their way to being certified.

In Rhode Island, professional development for teacher assistants is everyone's business. Sandie Blankenship, an 11-year teacher assistant and NEA Rhode Island (NEARI) regional vice-president, is helping to see to that.

Six years ago, concerns about a misguided legislative proposal motivated her to persuade the bill's state senate sponsors to amend it. The legislation as finally passed required that any teacher assistant hired after January 1, 1999, possess a certificate. Teacher assistants who were employed as of that date were grandfathered in.

Blankenship's initial involvement led to her appointment to a Rhode Island Department of Education task force charged with defining the roles of teacher assistants and establishing the criteria for certificate training programs. The guidelines the task force came up with allowed school districts, as well as other public and private organizations, to create certificate preparation programs and submit them to RIDE for approval.

UniServ Director Jane Argentieri and Blankenship decided that NEARI should offer its own training program, both as a service to current members and as a way to connect prospective members to the Association. They found strong support from NEARI leadership, and in the fall of 1999 the first NEARI Teacher Assistant Certificate Program sessions began.

The program was repeated last spring. In all, 110 Rhode Island teacher assistants have graduated from it so far.

The demanding program consists of 11 three-hour classes covering all aspects of the teacher assistant's job, including instructional, legal, health and safety, and technology issues. Trainers are drawn from all parts of NEARI's membership--ESP, teachers, nurses. Blankenship, a teacher assistant in a North Kingstown high school work-study program, co-teaches the opening class on "Collaboration and Team Building" with NEARI President Larry Purtill. Participants may miss only two classes and are required to keep a journal throughout the program.

Last year both sessions were full, and people were turned away. A number of nonmembers enrolled, even though the program fee for nonmembers is $150, compared with $25 for members. "If you offer people what they want, they'll come," observes Argentieri.

Blankenship isn't surprised that 90 percent of those enrolled so far have been veteran teacher assistants, who were exempted from the law's requirement that they earn a certificate. "ESP want to learn to do their jobs better, and to interact better with teachers," she says. Local associations in Rhode Island are now trying to negotiate stipends for those who have obtained their certificates.

RIDE Commissioner Peter McWalters is very excited by the response so far to the new teacher assistant certificate requirement. In addition to NEARI's, there are about 20 other training programs around the state. NEARI's training program continues this year, with two more sessions planned. Blankenship remains closely involved with it but will also be serving on another RIDE task force, this one charged with enhancing standards and training requirements for specific teacher assistant specialties, such as speech and language and ESL.

For more information about the Teacher Assistant Certificate Program, contact Sandie Blankenship or Jane Argentieri, NEA Rhode Island, 99 Bald Hill Rd., Cranston, RI 02920, 401/463-9630). E-mail: sanran@ids.net (Blankenship), jargentieri@nea.org (Argentieri).

Team Player
Past Experience Serves the Present

Name: Evelyn Wilkinson

Job Title: paraeducator

Experience: I'm familiar with the struggle some children have in the classroom. A childhood plagued by frequent ear infections, high absenteeism, and impaired hearing were serious obstacles for me, making learning a challenge.

But, with the help of concerned teachers, I made it over those bumps in the road and finished school. I now spend my days inspiring struggling students at Soap Lake Elementary, in Soap Lake, Washington.

If my day has been spent assisting a student in the process of learning, then my time has been well spent. I love to see the light turn on when a student grasps a concept, no matter how long or hard the struggle.

Special Concerns: I helped develop the "Helping One Student To Succeed" (HOSTS) program 10 years ago. The program focuses on helping high-risk children in reading via one-on-one and small group tutoring sessions. In addition to working with the children, I train and recruit community volunteers, pull reading materials for the program and for classwork, and help teachers assess which students need additional assistance.

Other Activities: I'm involved with various activities at school, including teaching math for Soap Lake's L.A.P students. In addition, I serve as an officer in our local P.S.E. Recently, I was recognized as Washington's ESP of the Year 2000.

Going the Extra Mile

Joyce Tucker, a Title I aide at Owens Elementary School in Athens (Alabama), is this year's AEA-ESPO's Shining Star Award winner.

Tucker is a shining example of volunteerism at its best. Over the past 38 years, she has served as PTA president, cheerleader sponsor, public relations person, Boy Scout leader, School Advisory Council member, ESPO building representative, even the basketball coach.

"She has an outstanding ability to meet the students where they are and to try to bring them to the level where they need to be," says Principal Alvin Sheefield.

Hundreds of fuzzy bears comforted Buell Elementary school children following the shooting of classmate Kayla Rolland, thanks to the fundraising efforts of Sheila Thorn. A secretary with Michigan's Beecher Secretarial/Clerical/Aides Unit, Thorn solicited $5 donations from local association members to support Beggin' for Bears, a Texas-based nonprofit that sends stuffed animals to kids in crisis.

"We collect money for domestic violence, for the needy, why not for this?" she says. As a result, a semi-truckload of 600 bears arrived the day children returned to class after the shooting.

"This is all about trying to make a child's life better, if only for a moment."

For teacher's aide Annette Davis, winner of this year's Ohio Education Association SSP Award, Veterans Day is celebrated year 'round.

Davis, with teaching colleague Valerie Kinney, helped build a $75,000 memorial park at Faircrest Memorial Junior High honoring veterans.

It took about two years to raise the money from school fundraisers and donations from veterans groups, the Rotary Club, and the community.

The school, named for one of nine district graduates killed in Vietnam, hosts annual Veterans Day observances and veteran recognition breakfasts, and conducts a two-week program on veterans every four years.

Resources

The Pitfalls of Privatizing
Privatization is not and never will be an adequate substitute for good public management, claims economist Elliott D. Sclar in You Don't Always Get What You Pay For: The Economics of Privatization. Sclar, who teaches urban planning at Columbia University, offers well-documented examples of how poorly managed private-sector contracts often collide with important public values and interests. The result: costly mistakes at the taxpayers' expense.

Sclar cites, for example, the Metro-Dade Transit Agency experiment of the 1980s in which a private company was hired to run 10 of the system's bus routes. Complaints doubled, ridership plummeted, and the project was scrapped only 18 months later when managers discovered the new buses were so poorly maintained that only 10 of the 40 buses could be kept in service. $25 plus $3.50 s&h, from the Cornell University Press, CUP Services, P.O. Box 6525, Ithaca, NY 14851, 800/666-2211.

Child Care Examined
In 1960, 80 percent of mothers with preschool children did not work outside the home. By 1997 almost two-thirds had joined the workforce.What are the consequences for children and how should the public respond?

Research and education organization Public Agenda examines these issues and current policy debates in its new release Necessary Compromises: How Parents, Employers, and Children's Advocates View Child Care Today.

The report is an in-depth look at how parents, employers, and children's advocates view the various issues surrounding parental responsibility, employer's concerns, public policy, and societal values. The study is based on interviews with leading professionals and decision-makers, focus groups, mail surveys of employers and children's advocates, and a national random sample telephone survey of parents. $10 plus s&h. www.publicagenda.org.

Education: The Big Picture
The Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics offers a pocket-sized Mini-Digest of Education Statistics 1999, a compilation of statistical information covering American education from kindergarten through graduate school. Includes stats on the number of schools and colleges, teachers, enrollments, educational outcomes, federal funds for education, and more. Available online at nces.ed.gov/pubs2000/2000036.pdf.