Description:

Effective utilization and training of paraeducators who serve students with disabilities are commonly reported challenges by administrators. How to best allocate paraeducators, train them, delineate roles, and support teachers in their role in directing paraeducators’ work are the questions that beg answers. This session frames the ethical and liability issues and discusses proactive development of policies and systems for allocation, roles, training, and supervision to ensure the appropriate use of paraeducators.

Objectives of the Presentation:

• Discuss issues related to paraeducators use in schools
• Clarify and differentiate ethical and legal roles and responsibilities of the paraeducators and teachers
• Develop an understanding about the administrator role in fostering collaboration among the team members and establishing effective training and supervision systems for paraeducators  

Description:

Paraeducators, with little or no formal preparation, are increasingly providing direct instructional and other supports to students with disabilities. Additionally, paraeducators often work with teachers who do not have preparation in directing the work of the paraeducators. Legal, ethical, and programmatic concerns and challenges have frequently been raised with the excessive and inappropriate use of paraeducators. The session provides research-based tools and resources to help teachers be effective in leading and overseeing the work of paraeducators as well as utilize strategies that create strong teacher-paraeducator teams.

Objectives of the Presentation:

• Clarify and differentiate ethical and legal roles and responsibilities of the paraeducators and teachers
• Discuss teacher’s role in structuring, directing, managing the work of the paraeducators, and ensuring creation of strong paraeducator-teacher teams.
• Share tools that help teachers with providing ongoing coaching, feedback, and support to paraeducators.   

Description:

With continued emphasis on inclusive practices, paraeducators are increasingly relied upon as an integral part of instructional service delivery for students with disabilities. However, research consistently reveals that the effective use of paraeducators depends largely on the leadership and direction provided by the teacher. Incorporating paraeducators into the instructional planning and delivery process requires that several considerations be made. This session provides (1) guidance to teachers for designing lesson plans that paraeducators can effectively implement, (2) ideas for implementing a process for building the paraeducator’s knowledge and skills of instructional delivery, and (3) ways to improve facilitation of differentiated instruction through the use of a paraeducator as an instructional aid.

Objectives of the Presentation:

• Discuss the importance of creating instructional plans for paraeducators to use with students with disabilities 
• Explain how to facilitate the paraeducator’s knowledge and skills of instructional delivery 
• Discuss the need for ongoing guidance and feedback to support paraeducators’ implementation of an instructional plan. 
• Share examples and templates for instructional plans for paraeducators 
• Demonstrate ways a paraeducator can help facilitate differentiated instruction 

Description:

Students with significant cognitive disabilities benefit from having opportunities to interact with and learn alongside their peers without disabilities. Unfortunately, paraeducators who support students with significant disabilities in general education classrooms often are not well prepared to facilitate peer support and peer interactions. In this session, we will share a practical how-to guide for training and supervising your paraeducators to implement peer support arrangements. Peer support arrangements offer an evidence-based approach for supporting students with significant disabilities and their peers to work together in general education classes. Research shows that both students with autism and their peers benefit from peer support arrangements.

Objectives of the Presentation:

• Describe the potential benefits of peer support arrangements for students with significant disabilities and their peers.
• Describe the steps involved in training and supervising a paraeducator who is facilitating peer support arrangements. 
• Design an individualized plan for implementing peer support arrangements with a student with a significant disability.  

Description:

There are over 450,000 paraeducators being utilized in classrooms across the United States (Bitterman et al., 2013), with 91% of schools reporting employing paraeducators (Ashbaker & Morgan, 2012). On average, paraeducators spend 80% of the school day managing student behavior (Carter et al., 2009) and collecting behavior-related data (Maggin et al., 2009). With legislation (IDEA, 2004) mandating the use of Behavior Intervention Plans (BIP) to address challenging behavior in the classroom, many paraeducators implement BIPs throughout the school day (Bambara et al., 2012). Since varied school personnel are responsible for implementing each student’s BIP, intervention plan fidelity becomes of even greater importance (Hagermoser Sanetti et al., 2015).  Training school personnel to execute BIPs accurately and efficiently has shown to be more complicated than once thought (Bambara et al., 2012). In general, paraeducators have shown to be significantly undertrained (Fisher & Pleasants, 2012) and even more so relative to implementing BIPs specifically (Carter et al., 2009). Although they report feeling not prepared to manage paraeducators (Lewis & McKenzie, 2009), special education teachers tend to provide on-the-job training for paraeducators (DaFonte & Capizzi, 2015). With research showing that low levels of implementation fidelity may make interventions less effective (Sanetti et al., 2013), it is crucial for paraeducators to be supported when implementing BIPs as to not compromise implementation fidelity. Providing special education teachers with guidance on how to effectively support paraeducators who implement BIPs may help improve treatment implementation of interventions outlined in BIPs, boost student outcomes, and enhance the teacher-paraeducator relationship. 

In this session, presenters will discuss the importance of implementation fidelity as it pertains for BIPs, give suggestions for special education teachers who supervise paraeducators carrying out BIPs, and offer additional resources for teacher-paraeducator dyads to use when executing BIPs.

Objectives of the Presentation:

• Participants will learn about the role paraeducators and special education teachers have relative to the implementation fidelity of Behavior Intervention Plans (BIPs). 
• Participants will learn some of the challenges special education teachers face when ensuring BIPs are implemented accurately. 
• Participants will learn 6 practices to better support special education teachers who supervise paraeducators implementing BIPs.   

Description: Students bring a diverse range of challenging behavior to the classroom. One approach to promoting positive behavior change is to focus on the events that occur immediately before the behavior of concern, known as antecedent strategies (McCollow et al., 2016). By manipulating the events immediately before a target behavior, the strategy has the potential to prevent the target behavior from occurring (Kern and Clemens, 2007). Antecedent strategies have been found to be an effective treatment for a diverse range of behavior (Radley & Dart, 2016). With paraeducators serving as primary interventionists (Fisher & Pleasant, 2012) and with paraeducators often supporting students who exhibit the most challenging behaviors (Giangreco et al., 1999), it is crucial to equip paraeducators with a toolbox of strategies for addressing problem behavior. Moreover, it is important for paraeducators to be fluent in universal evidence-based practices that can be used across students and environments.

Participants will learn 10 easily implemented antecedent behavior strategies to help prevent challenging behavior across environments. Strategies such as environmental predictability, matching instructional level, opportunities to respond, effective instruction and commands, pacing, opportunity for choice, use of preferred activities, precorrection, high-probability requests, and behavior specific praise. Additionally, participants will learn ways to effectively implement these strategies with fidelity (e.g., gaining attention, tone, wait time).

Objectives of the Presentation:

• Participants will learn foundational information for behavior management theory and practice and how it applies to students with disabilities.
• Participants will learn the theory and rationale for antecedent strategies.
• Participants will learn 10 antecedent strategies for preventing problem behavior in the classroom.  

Description:

The development of communication skills is paramount for social and academic success. To develop effective communication skills, students with complex communication needs often utilize augmentative and alternative communication. Paraeducators often support students who use augmentative and alternative communication, yet paraeducators rarely have the training needed to support the communication of these students.

This interactive module will outline:

• the importance of paraeducators as communication partners for students who use augmentative and alternative communication
• different forms of augmentative and alternative communication that students might use
• a strategy to help paraeducators support the communication of students who use augmentative and alternative communication.

Objectives of the Presentation:

• Participants will be able to identify the importance of communication partners in supporting the communication of students who use augmentative and alternative communication
• Participants will be able to describe different types of augmentative and alternative communication systems that are frequently used by students with limited verbal communication skills
• Participants will be able to describe a strategy to support the communication of students who use augmentative and alternative communication  

Description:

Virtual training is an exciting option to provide training to paraeducators and can have many potential benefits. Live training also provides essential skills and knowledge to paraeducators. In this session, potential benefits of both types of training will be discussed. Considerations should be made when creating training programs to ensure maximum benefit. 

This interactive module will allow participants to consider the possibilities of live and online training for paraeducators and how training might be implemented to meet their specific paraeducator training needs. Participants will be provided with resources for available live and online training materials.

Objectives of the Presentation:

• Participants will be able to describe the benefits of live and virtual training to support paraeducators
• Participants will be able to describe the essential components to support paraeducator training
• Participants will be able to identify existing resources for providing training to paraeducators