Paraprofessional

Position Summary

The role of the paraprofessional is to provide additional support in the Head Start classrooms where preschool children with pre-diagnosed moderate to severe disabilities are enrolled in any site at Mary Crane Center. The paraprofessional’s goal is to assist in providing a well-organized, smooth functioning classroom environment in which all children can take full advantage of the instructional program and available resource materials.

Duties & Responsibilities

Work with individual children or small groups of children to reinforce new skills initially introduced by the teacher.

Assist the Lead Teacher and Assistant Teacher in devising and implementing special strategies for reinforcing skilss based on the special needs and abilites of each child.

Assist with critical daily activities such as classroom transition times, mealtimes and toiletring.

Utlilize appropriate language, interactions and positive discipline.

Model positive behavior

Implement age appropriate activities that support the Head Start standards, the NAEYC standards and the Creative Curriculum.

Implement and model family style eating during meal times.

Assist with field trips or day trips such as neighborhood walks under the supervision of the Lead Teacher.

Continously monitor children to ensure safety at all times, and report child abuse and neglect.

Assess Children:

Assist the Lead Teacher in administering and scoring appropriate screenings and assessments required by the program according to designated timelines.

Take pictures and maintain anecdotal notes, written observations, and other approved forms of documentation for each child when instructed to do so by Lead Teacher.

Curriculum Preparation:

Utilize research library, research, plan, and develop age appropriate activities for lesson plans in conjunction with Lead Teacher, Assistant Teacher and Education Coordinators.

Assist Lead Teacher and Assistant Teavcher with developing appropiate individualization activities for the children identified with disabilities and document these on the lesson plans.

Assist Lead Teacher and Assistant Teacher to prepare activities that support lesson plans.

Documentation:

Must attend mandatory monthly professional development trainings.

Must keep their paraprofessionals binder current.

The paraprofessional binder Checklist