Under appreciated para
I’ve been a para for 20 years. I with worked with 15 case managers, most are amazing educators and humans. Earlier in my career, I felt as though I was part of a team. We were all vested in seeing our students succeed. And it was so rewarding. I loved it!!!
In the last few years, as the challenges in the classroom have grown paras jobs have become more difficult, the support from case managers has decreased. They seem to forget that we are on the front line taking the worst of hits, pushes and punches. Instead, they are passive aggressively micro managing us. “Why were you 5 minutes late?” … “because my other student was having an meltdown for the last 2 hours” The next day, the principal emails me and wants to discuss the importance of following the schedule. ( which doesn’t have time built in to get to our next student.)
I feel like case managers either take their frustrations out on us. They talk down to us, don’t consult with us and boss us around. Or ignore us altogether.
This year I worked with the worst teacher in my career. She offered absolutely no support, was incredibly unorganized and has blamed the classroom teachers for the issues the child is having. BUT, she’s on every school committee possible and kisses up to administration every chance she gets.
Therefore, I’m done.
My question is this should I go over admin and tell the SPED director what’s going on? We have a team of 10 paras 4 are leaving. We feel like we’re letting the students and classroom teachers down.