2020 ESP of the Year Offers Guidance, Advocacy During Crisis
When Ohio announced the closure of schools for the rest of the academic year to help fight the spread of the coronavirus, Andrea Beeman’s thoughts, like most educators, went to her students. A special education paraprofessional in Maple Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, she works with students who have severe developmental disabilities.
“It’s critical that our students stay home during this crisis, but I worry about my students retaining all of the skills and knowledge that the special education teams have worked so hard to help them develop,” Beeman says. “We’ll continue to support them as best we can by distributing more learning packets, urging parents to read to their students, and finding other ways to continue instruction.”
Education support professionals (ESP) are finding many ways to support students nationwide during the school closures – like the paraeducators who put together instructional packets, food service workers who prepare and bag much-needed meals, and the bus drivers who deliver food as well as books and other learning materials. Or the secretaries answering a myriad of parent questions, the technical services staff working to maintain external and internal communications and support the massive move to online learning environments, and the custodians who clean distribution sites and make sure buildings are safe, sanitary and the cleanest they can be when students return, whether its later this spring or next academic year.
“ESP members are the glue that holds our schools and communities together,” says Beeman. “Never in the 21st Century have we ever experienced anything like the CONTINUE READING: 2020 ESP of the Year Offers Guidance, Advocacy During Crisis