feature stories

Indispensable

Jun 7, 2007 1:38 PM

Not long ago, Mashantuck Bell, a para for nine years, who works with special-needs students in inclusion classes at IS 302 in Brooklyn, was helping her students with maps. Teacher Daniel Clarke was giving a lesson on major oil-producing regions including North Africa, the Middle East and Russia but the small group of students with disabilities in the class was having difficulty following the geography.

Bell, having consulted the students’ IEPs, knew that they learned best by doing. So she employed a graphic learning model, like the Venn Diagram, to show the students how to compare and contrast physical maps of the regions. Using the models to demonstrate map comparisons “will help them do the research they need to write on this subject,” Bell said.

Finding just the right way to help the students she works with “get it” was all in a day’s work for Bell.

Paraprofessionals have become such a fixture in the New York City school system today that it’s hard to imagine 40 or so years ago before there were any. And their quick assimilation into the school system is a direct result of Al Shanker’s efforts to organize them and bring them into the UFT.

Were it not for Al Shanker pledging to “do for paras what the UFT had done for teachers,” paras would never have become a part of the UFT, says Shelvy Young Abrams, who helped organize the first paraprofessional chapter and now chairs it for the union.

And thinking back to those days, Al Mancuso, the UFT’s District 75 representative, who was a special ed teacher, said he wonders how he ever managed without a para. “That’s the real tribute to the paras,” he said, making the point that paras have become indispensable to students with disabilities. The para’s job is to attend to the individual needs of students, and that should make the teacher more successful in his or her work, Mancuso said.

While most of the city’s 17,000 paraprofessionals work in schools where special education children are in the mainstream and/or schools with general education students, close to 6,000 work in the more than 60 schools in District 75.

One of them is Jenny Macias, a para at PS 79 in East Harlem. She is one of 175 paras that comprise more than a third of the staff. One of her many jobs is to help transport students with some of the most severe disabilities from buses every morning.

“These kids need us more than they will say,” said Macias, who has been excessed three times since she started working as a para eight years ago at Manhattan School for Children. She had worked with special education students before being placed at PS 79, but hesitated to go to the District 75 school because she had lost a teenage daughter who struggled with severe disabilities.

“I didn’t think I could work in a school like this,” she said. It reminded her too much of the child she lost. But after talking with the principal and others she became convinced the job was perfect for her because of all the experience she has had dealing with a handicapped child.

“They were right,” said Macias, who now fully embraces her work. “It’s almost like a calling. I’m proud of what I do,” she said.

For Macias, a para’s job is physically trying. In helping profoundly physically handicapped youngsters move around, toileting them, changing them and helping them eat, the daily toll is physical as well as emotional.

For other paras the toll is more subtle.

Helena Brown, a career para with 18 years experience, works with 5th- and 6th-graders with special needs in inclusion classes at Brooklyn’s PS 156. Were it not for her, a student like D’Andre might not make it through school. Even though he can read, said Brown, he was placed in special education due to his hyperactive behavior.

“When someone says something to him, he thinks he is supposed to talk back,” said Brown. She has taken to standing behind the youngster to keep him on task, while the teacher instructs the class. Working with a volatile young man requires a great deal of patience. “Patience is the main key to being a good para,” particularly when working with emotionally disturbed children, said Brown.

Throughout the school system, day in and day out, in a variety of ways, paraprofessionals are making the schools work and are helping students overcome adversity.

Paras making a difference for thousands of students