Utilizing Teacher Aides In Differentiated Staffing PDF Download

WANTED**TEACHER AIDES Students and teachers want them and need them. New school programs and citizens' advisory groups require them. All interested persons inquire at the nearest Board of Education, County or State Department of Education, or at the United States Office of Education (Department of Health, Education and Welfare). (Wright, 196 9, p. xi)NEW CAREERS IN EDUCATION ARE WAITING! WANTED Another pair of helpful hands, two kindly, watchful eyes and listening ears, enveloped by one willing spirit with understanding heart. No special training needed, but all talents will be utilized. Ability to give encouragement, helpful. Eager parents and interested relatives may apply. Hours, flexible; satisfaction guaranteed. Recompense: involvement, renewal, life meaning love. (Iacolucci, 1968, p. 424)Do advertisements such as these appear revolutionary? To some, they may. To many, they are a succinct statement of need and prediction of conditions of the present and future. Helping youngsters to grow and learn is a critical responsibility, requiring home, school, and church and community interaction. The school, has emerged as the agency of society where many agencies look, to direct the societal efforts to fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship to the learner. A trite, but true, concept is that the schools cease to be of worth to the learner if they cease to serve the learner. The learner is better understood as a functioning self today than in decades gone by. The school must prepare for and meet the challenge of the learner as an individual. Such pedagogical nomenclature as individualized instruction, continuous progress education, personalized learning, individually prescribed instruction, team teaching, cooperative teaching, partnership teaching, differentiated staffing and others are nothing more than a new way of naming a process oriented description of attempting to meet the needs of children. Concurrent with the various models that portray the many teaching-learning patterns in use today is an increasing involvement of additional personnel to supplement the certified teacher. These personnel, regardless of how they might be identified in conversation and the literature, can best be classified as aides to the teaching-learning process and may then be identified, at least for the purpose of this paper, as teacher aides. The most costly and precious commodity today in our public schools is the service performed by the professional staff, says Klinkerfuse (1968). We waste thousands of dollars daily asking teachers to perform tasks far below their level of training. Common sense would indicate that teacher aides could materially increase the quantity and quality of instructional service.