Education Support Professionals: Engaging the Whole School to Support the Whole Child

At the beginning of October I was privileged to be able to share some of the findings of my dissertation at the annual meeting of the American School Health Association. While I, like everyone else, had hoped to be presenting to a room of people and having an interactive conversation, that was not to be.

Instead, I presented in a highly didactic format. This felt a little ironic since the work I was sharing was based on highly interactive research. I won't go through the whole presentation here. I have attached it. Rather, I want to focus the idea that when we engage a wide range of school staff we can begin to develop a vision of education that centers the needs of the whole child.

Education Support Professionals (ESP) are well positioned to see the whole child. Many of the jobs ESP do are focused on meeting the basic health and safety needs of students. They are often deeply connected to the community that the students live in. Bus drivers are often the first/last school related adult that a student sees. The challenge then if we seek to transform schools is how to bring these folks to the table with teachers, administrator, family members, and others.

While I don't have an easy answer, I do offer one. Ask them. In my research I heard from ESP who felt that they had been left out of the conversations in schools. Whole school initiatives were seen as something done to them, not with them.

What ideas do you have?

Education Support Professionals-?Engagin.

Download • 2.26MB