The perspective of the paraprofessional...

As a part of the special education program we are blessed to have 2 paraprofessionals, or educational assistants, who work with our students.  Below is a note from one of the paras: Ms. Steph

As a para working with my PA class, I have noticed a lot of change already.  This is my 2^nd year our class is doing PA.  This year the group I’m working with picked the issue of Bullying.

Being the 2^nd year for most of the students they jumped right in and had a crazy amount of ideas and ambition to tackle the topic of bullying.  Some have already faced road blocks.  How do you advocate to STOP BULLYING if they are the bully themselves?

But in every group they have their strengths and weaknesses.  This group of students has passion, amazing ideas, and creativity.  They are good listeners and public speakers.  Sometimes they don’t reach their goals and they can have difficulty settling down and getting on the same page. There are many interruptions as they try to agree on topics and ideas.

But when it comes down to it, they work as a group and it becomes like a family and they each have their group.

Each day can be different, but it’s amazing to watch these students come together with a common goal to stop bullying.  They have brainstormed tons of idea to help stop bullying in their school- posters, PSA’s, after school program, a hotline number, district-wide anti-bullying campaign and the list goes on…

Now they need to figure out the steps to accomplish their goal.  Stay tuned to see their progress this year.

A word ABOUT our students....

I mentioned in my original post that I would include some further information about the students working in our PA teams. Our students qualify for special education services in the state of Minnesota under the disability category of Emotional Behavioral Disabilities (EBD).  The definition of the educational disability of EBD in the state of MN reads as follows:

"Emotional or behavioral disorders" means an established pattern of one or more of the following emotional or behavioral responses:

A. withdrawal or anxiety, depression, problems with mood, or feelings of self-worth;

B. disordered thought processes with unusual behavior patterns and atypical communication styles; or

C. aggression, hyperactivity, or impulsivity.

Our program is a federal setting III which means that out students are with us, and away from the general educational setting, for at least 60% of their day. Many of them are with us for their entire school day because they have not been successful in other, more traditional, school settings.  School has not been a place of success for our students.  Students in programs similar to these are traditionally left out of opportunities such as PA and are tucked away as much as possible in school buildings.  There has been an “out of sight, out of mind” approach for many years.  This may partially explain the high burn-out rate for special education teachers… but that is for another post!

We have begun to see student’s perspectives and the perspective of another adults change in regards to our students through PA.  One student told me last year, “people think we can’t do anything because we are in this special program… but we can, we can do more.”

The Start of a New Year in PA....

At the start of a new year we have some new students and some returning students back to work in Public Achievement again.  Our returning students have struggled at the beginning of the year since they have repeated the democratic process of deciding on an issue and have chosen 2 completely new issues. Going through the process of meeting new coaches and working in new teams has led to some growing pains. The students are working to find their roles in these new situations.

The two issues selected this year are: bullying and working with kids who are hospitalized.

These are two difficult and complex issues that the students are spending time exploring along with learning to work as a team and with new adults in their lives.

Welcome!

Hello Fellow PAer’s!

            Welcome to our blog—Radical Change in the Midst of Mediocrity.  Hopefully we are doing what we can to live up to that title…

The idea for this blog came about when a group of us from Augsburg College attended the national ADP in Orlando, Fl back in June of 2011. We had attended the conference as an opportunity to share our work- and the work of my students- with other groups looking for new ways to bring Public Achievement alive in their own parts of the world. 

Public Achievement has been around for awhile so you may be wondering what made us feel we could make the bold claim of radical change.  Our new twist on PA was bringing it to students with special needs.  More specifically, we were “PAing” with students with Emotional Behavioral Disabilities currently being serviced at a federal setting III (if you are not familiar with K-12 education there will be a future post explaining this further).

We were overwhelmed with the response to our work during our pilot year and were met with many requests for further information about our work so…here’s the blog!