u/gregoryecox1

I'm a K-12 administrator, and I'll say up front I'm asking from the side of the system that's bad at this. If you're a para, an SLP/OT/BCBA/teacher who works alongside paras, or a parent whose kid's whole day depends on one — when a para is great at a specific thing (de-escalation, AAC, inclusion in a gen-ed room, reading a nonverbal kid no one else can), where does that recognition go?

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I'm a K-12 administrator, and I'll say up front I'm asking from the side of the system that's bad at this. If you're a para, an SLP/OT/BCBA/teacher who works alongside paras, or a parent whose kid's whole day depends on one — when a para is great at a specific thing (de-escalation, AAC, inclusion in a gen-ed room, reading a nonverbal kid no one else can), where does that recognition go?

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I'm a K-12 administrator, and I'll say up front I'm asking from the side of the system that's bad at this. If you're a para, an SLP/OT/BCBA/teacher who works alongside paras, or a parent whose kid's whole day depends on one — when a para is great at a specific thing (de-escalation, AAC, inclusion in a gen-ed room, reading a nonverbal kid no one else can), where does that recognition go?

What I'd guess from inside admin: a verbal thanks from the teacher, an email if you're lucky, maybe an end-of-year card. Nothing that follows you to the next building or district. Nothing that separates "showed up" from "is the reason that 4th grader moved out of self-contained." And part of why I'm asking is that I know admin often doesn't even see the work — the paras I've known were floating between rooms, rarely in the meetings, working off whatever they got told in the hallway that morning.

So: is that right? Or am I missing the systems that actually work — for recognition, and for the training most of you never got?

(Disclosure: I'm building something that tries to be one of those systems, and to be useful for paras to learn from, not just be named on. I'm not after clicks — I want to know what already exists before I add to the noise.)

Hi all. I'm Greg, a K-12 administrator in Washington state. This isn't a recognition post and I'm not asking you to sign up for anything — I'm asking for a read.

Here's the honest backstory: the paras in the buildings I've worked in are the front line of adult contact for our highest-need students, and the training we actually give them to do that work is close to nothing. I got tired of watching it. So I built a thing like what I wish districts handed paras on day one, and now I need the people it's for to tell me whether it's any good.

Two pieces, both no-charge to paras and staying that way:

1    A self-assessment. Scenario-based, about 5–10 minutes. It walks the seven areas of the work — behavior support, inclusion/differentiation, communication, instructional support, SEL & trauma, health & safety, and professionalism/self-care — and gives you back a profile of what you're already strong at and where you might want to grow, with specific resources pointed at the growth areas. There's a 3-minute rate-yourself version and a longer scenario version too.

2    About 190 short briefs on the actual day-to-day: de-escalation, reading a seizure before the nurse arrives, AAC basics, FERPA boundaries, what to do when a parent asks you a question only the teacher should answer, the in-the-moment stuff for when something is happening right now. Written for paras, in plain language, not for administrators. Most have a plain-English version and a more detailed one side by side.

What I want from you — especially the skeptical version:

•    If you're a para: does the self-assessment ask about the work you actually do, or does it miss the parts that matter? Are the briefs useful or are they obvious / wrong / written from the perspective of someone who's never been in the room?

•    What's missing? What would you have wanted in your first month that isn't there?

•    Does it read like it was built for paras, or about paras? I care about that distinction and I won't know if I got it right unless you tell me.

Full disclosure: I built this, I'm a K-12 administrator and not a former para, so I'm exactly the wrong person to know what I got wrong — which is why I'm here. I'm not collecting your email to take the assessment. There's a recognition feature in there too (you can put on record a colleague who taught you something), but that's not what this post is about and you can ignore it entirely. Link's in my profile so I'm not breaking the no-promo rule; happy to drop it in a comment if a mod's fine with it.

I'll reply to everything, including — especially — the comments telling me it's not good enough yet.