YES, I CAN -- The Triumph of the UFT's Classroom Paraprofessionals
Jan 12, 2001 2:51 PM
Path to a Career
More than 8,000 paraprofessionals have received two-year associate college degrees and more than 7,000 have earned their bachelor's degrees, all through the career ladder program. And about 500 have gone on to graduate work toward a master's degree or a Ph.D. Furthermore, since 1970, more than 7,000 paras have become teachers in the New York City system. Others have used their classroom experience and their educational opportunities as stepping stones to careers in law, medicine, social work, communications, fashion, business and other fields.
The paraprofessional experience points to many paths. For example, it became a testing ground for Patricia O'Connor and led to a new career. She had already been a registered nurse for 14 years when, working as a parent security volunteer at her sons' school, she became intrigued by the possibility of working with multiply-handicapped children. Pat had no doubt about her professional competence but, as she puts it, wondered whether her "innards could take it," since she had never worked as a pediatric nurse and multiply-handicapped children were an unknown quantity.
"But the more I worked with them, the more I enjoyed the job," she says."The change you can make is very rewarding."
Her four-year stint as a paraprofessional led Pat to write a proposal arguing that her students needed a full-time nurse. She carried the day and is still at PS 37 in Staten Island, but now as the school nurse.
The four outstanding paraprofessionals profiled in the following pages-Ruth Dent, Marian Thom, Eileen Hedlund and Terrence Tom-are among the 17,000 paras in the New York City school system helping children learn by giving them the special attention they need to succeed. The progress they and their students consistently make is an often unsung but nevertheless heroic victory over the difficulties that all too frequently scar the lives of today's youngsters.
Gains of such dimensions do not come easily. They are the result of ability,energy and deep commitment. These qualities, along with the UFT's unswerving battle for fair wages, job stability, tuition-free college credits and other benefits, have generated the "yes, I can" philosophy that distinguishes all paraprofessionals and remains one of the greatest gifts they bestow on the children they assist.
It's possible that getting sick was one of the best things ever to happen to Ruth Dent. When she became ill 16 years ago she lost her job in a factory making baby hats. "I never went back." Her sudden freedom stirred her to fulfill an ambition nurtured during her teenage years when she had nursed her widowed, asthmatic mother. "I always wanted to help people," she says.
That's exactly what she's been doing for the past 15 years, working with multiply-handicapped children as a paraprofessional in a District 75 school located in Brooklyn's District 14. Her job, as she puts it, is "to empower the children, to get them to do as much as they can." The rewarding moments come "with a lot of patience," Ruth says. The triumphs often come with accomplishments that most people take for granted. For instance, she recalls the time she coached a severely disabled boy to finally find the will to take off the sleeve of his coat without her help-a major advance for him.
Over the years, Ruth has continued her professional training, not only with courses at Audrey Cohen College but also with workshops in sign language,behavior modification and stress management. She is also active in advancing the interests of all her colleagues, currently serving as a member of the UFT Paraprofessional Chapter Executive Board. As a measure of the respect that Ruth has earned, the entire staff of her school and its satellite site selected her the school's UFT chapter leader.
For Ruth Dent, "yes, I can," is a working principle, for herself and the children in her care.
Marian Thom, a bilingual paraprofessional in the reading department of IS131 in Manhattan, has one sure-fire motivation whenever she finds her Chinese immigrant students getting a little slack. "How many of you plan to go back to China?" she asks. This is always greeted with a few snickers and mild guffaws. No hands are raised.
Then she drives her point home: "I tell them that to survive in this country you have to know English. They say they can go to work, and I say sure, but if you fall asleep on the subway, you have to know enough to ask where your are."
Marian knows that many newcomers often have more questions than answers.That's why she reaches out to help them complete forms for the free lunch program, for example, or directs them to clinics where they can get inexpensive medical care or the shots that children need to register for school.
During a Parents' Night at her school, Marian was once pressed into service as a translator when a social studies teacher suspected that a student was giving his mother an all-too-free translation of his academic performance.After Marian finished passing on the teacher's comments, the boy's "good"test grade of 73 lost its luster. "After all the teacher did," said the mother,"my son should have gotten a hundred."
Although she began as a para back in 1969, Marian's enthusiasm is undiminished.In addition to her work in school, Marian is the District 2 paraprofessional coordinator, a member of the UFT Paraprofessional Chapter Executive Board and president of the New York chapter of the Asian-Pacific American Labor Alliance affiliated with the AFL-CIO. In recognition of her outstanding work, Marian has received the UFT's Smallheiser and the AFT's Robert Porter Awards.
When newly-widowed, native New Yorker Eileen Hedlund returned to the city in 1986 with her two young sons, she naturally looked for employment in the business world that she had known before her marriage. That is, until someone told her about a "wonderful job in the public schools" -about the benefits,the hours, the collegiality, the personal satisfaction.
That "sales pitch" led Eileen to her current para position in Bayside High School in Queens, alternating between the Special Education Department and the English Department's PCEN reading program.
"I enjoy working with students," she says. "You get such satisfaction when they're able to figure out what's going on after I convince them that 'it's not that hard.' And they feel so good, too."
One of Eileen's career high points was being stopped in the hall by a former student for a spontaneous hug and kiss. "Thanks for failing me," the boy said with absolute sincerity. "Now I know that I have to work." All the students know how closely Eileen works with her cooperating teacher and that, when it comes to grading, her input carries a very heavy weight.
Another source of professional pride for Eileen is the recognition of how often youngsters come to see her for help in sorting out all sorts of difficulties. She feels that raising her own two sons has given her the patience necessary for her job and has made possible her rapport with students. She's often able to give her charges a healthy reality check with a motherly, "I've heard that story before."
According to Eileen, her school experience has provided another bonus by giving her the confidence for challenging volunteer work. On Sundays she's in charge of the library of St. Joan of Arc Church in the Jackson Heights historic district, supervising the work of 10 other volunteers.
Terrence Tom is a man with an education theory. After 10 years as a paraprofessional working in the math departments of intermediate schools in Brooklyn, bringing lagging students up to grade, he is convinced that self-discipline and focus applied in one area can be carried over to other academic disciplines.
To Terrence this is not just an abstraction, but a working principle. His main vehicles for implementing his ideas are steel bands.
He established his first on his own time at IS 390 when he began as a para in 1987, and again, with the full support of his principal, when he moved over to IS 246. Terrence simply can't accept the idea that the student who has developed the commitment to show up for band practice at 7:30 in the morning or who spends his lunch period working through a new arrangement can't succeed as well in math or in any other subject.
Building discipline and focus are the keys, Terrence says . Working as a para has been "definitely a positive experience. I'm learning, too," he says,"and it inspires me to continue and want to become a teacher."
Terrence already has his associate's degree in electronics and is currently enrolled as an undergraduate at Medgar Evers College.
He continues his work in the community at Basement Recordings, teaching music recording techniques. Terrence's student steel bands have performed at Africa House in Brooklyn and at Medgar Evers College. As band leader and arranger,he is always looking for new music to interest his students. One of Terrence's recent works is a steel band arrangement of the tunes from Disney's "The Lion King."
Carmen Cotto who worked as a special education paraprofessional at PS 396in Brooklyn while earning her bachelor's degree, says she had a tough road to travel in reaching her goal of becoming a teacher. But she did it - and she encourages other paras to do so as well.
"Overall, it was a positive experience," she said of her six years as a para."But not in the beginning." She walked into school that first day not knowing that she would be working with children who had severe emotional and behavioral problems.
"Out of 30 children, I had 20 who were 'anecdotal' [that is, having behavior problems] or who were labeled with having special needs. Some nights I would come home crying. But those experiences helped me to become a strong teacher."
After a hard day in the classroom, Cotto would go to Brooklyn College at night. She later taught as a regular sub for nine years as she earned her master's in early childhood education and raised her two sons, Joseph, 7,and Steven, 2.
"It's difficult when you have a 2-year-old crying while you're trying to write papers." It helped that her husband was supportive throughout the whole process.
