Achieving your school’s learning mission during these uncharted times requires a lot of things to go right. All too often, what frequently goes wrong is student behavior. Instructional teams report significant loss of learning due to students challenging behaviors. Increasingly, paraeducators are assisting teachers in supporting the behavior of individual students so they can learn. Clearly, the need for behavioral training for paraeducators is critical but often overlooked.
On June 15-17th the NRCP and the TAESE Center teamed up to deliver a live, virtual three-day U-PBS Summit that targeted as its primary audience paraeducators employed in all Utah school districts. Each of the three days had about 450 participants from 33 school districts and 31 charter schools.
The Summit provided in-depth training in positive behavior supports and critical behavioral intervention skills to paraeducators and their supervising teachers.
Evaluations indicated the conference was extremely well received. Over 200 responded to the evaluation that they agree that the Summit provided information valuable in performing job responsibilities.
When asked what they enjoyed most about the training participants shared:
“Interacting with other paraeducators and finding common experiences in learning how we can become more effective team members.”
“The helpful information and the way it was presented. I am so happy that this training was made available. I’ve learned and picked up lots of things through my experience, yet this was just so helpful in terms of helping me know how I am doing and the great things that I Can do to be a better contributor to the teacher, classroom and SPED teams. Thank you!”
“I loved that this training was pro student. These last 3 days gave a lot of insight on how to support students with challenging behaviors. Changing the environment and not the student is something I strongly agree with. This training made me feel supported in my position as a paraeducator but also made me feel hopeful for children we service in schools. Thank you for all of your work for this training!”
“Excellent, Excellent training! More information in three days than I have received in five years.”
UPBS Evaluation June 2021
Two Follow-up booster sessions were provided to all participants using Zoom technology on September 23rd and October 21st.