With impossible demands being placed on teachers, now more than ever, they could use a teaching assistant. Trained teaching assistants can offer teachers’ help in the capacity of impacting the instructional model, classroom management, and socialization for students. In fact, with the current spotlight in education on social emotional learning, teaching assistants can also help the teacher with the social and emotional health and safety of all students. According to Bassile and Maddin (2002), “The prevalent one-classroom, one teacher model asks teachers to be all things to all people at all times. It asks teachers to be content experts and pedagogues: to assess children’s socioemotional and academic development and manage classrooms of 30 or more students; to teach children of all abilities; to be role models and social workers; to be data analysts, trauma interventionists and a host of other roles.”
While accomplishing all of the roles and responsibilities required of teachers seems like an monumental task, many teachers put an extraordinary amount of pressure on themselves to achieve them while getting to know and meet the needs of every individual student in their classroom. “It’s an unreasonable expectation. It rests on the faulty assumption that all learners require the same thing from teachers and, therefore, any teacher can adequately serve every learner” (Bassile and Maddin 2022).
With all this in mind, the most important aspect of a teacher’s job, outside of student contact time, is instructional planning for the academic needs of their individual students. Yet teachers are so overwhelmed with meetings, training, and compliance paperwork that burnout is inevitable. Countries outside of the United States, however, recognize that teachers cannot do this work in isolation and include teaching assistants in the structure of their school staffing, especially in the primary grades. In fact, one school even goes so far as to acknowledge teaching assistants as the stars of their school.
Redesigning the elementary classroom with a teaching assistant acknowledges and supports the evolving career of teachers as compliance aspects of their job will only continue to grow. “If we want more people to thrive as educators, we need to redesign the job (Bassile and Maddin 2022). Aside from more pay, what better incentive can we offer to teachers than help in the classroom. By restructuring school staff to include a teaching assistant, school leaders can continue to recruit and retain highly-qualified teachers to educate the future generation.
Basile, C. G., & Maddin, B. W. (2022). The Next Education Workforce. School Administrator, 79(7), 13-17. http://lynn-lang.student.lynn.edu:2048/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/next-education-workforce/docview/2685100807/se-2
Teaching Assistants-Stars in our classrooms . (2013). YouTube. Retrieved November 13, 2022, from https://youtu.be/C6EFUInRHDs.
This idea is brilliant! I love the idea of a “teaching assistant” and have worked in schools where this model has been implemented successfully. The school outlines a model with clear expectations for each role (teacher and assistant), and they collaborate on short- and long-term goals. It is an unreal expectation for the teacher to be all things to all students every.single.day. The idea that teachers could have some help and the job would be restructured sounds like a breath of fresh air. Designing differentiated instruction and personalized learning plans for each student can be accomplished more efficiently if a teaching “team” can collaborate and share strategies, resources, and connections – that will be the key to building strong school communities and a positive step in the right direction.
As a special education teacher with two teacher assistants/paraprofessionals, I can attest to how absolutely wonderful and helpful they are in the classroom! Not only do they relive stress and allow me to focus on planning before and after school, but they are also extremely helpful during the day with the students and often are an extension of myself. The only downfall of teachers aides/assistants/paraprofessionals is finding the time and right way to train those individuals. The potion of training someone new can often add even more stress to new teachers whom may not have had effective training on how to work well with adults vs students. Just a thought!
This is a great way to take the stars to the next level as super teachers. T2s as they are called in some schools are often rockstars and usually get called up to lead teacher status with a wealth of knowledge that a new teacher may not have.