Para-Professionals: Their Role in ESOL and Bilingual Education

In recent years, the introduction of non-professional personnel into the schools and the classrooms has created considerable controversy. Advocates claim that the additional assistance derived from para-professionals can be the greatest blessing to the overworked teacher. Opponents fear that employment of auxiliary personnel may be allowing for the implementation of substandard instruction in the classroom. Our experience leads us, unequivocally, to the advocacy of utilizing paraprofessionals in as many instructional situations as our imagination can conceive. Especially in ESOL and bilingual education programs it is clearly evident that the teacher must seek to vary and to individualize her instruction and her teaching as extensively as possible. The concept of the team approach can certainly be applied in these cases most appropriately. The use of another adult, properly trained and adequately supervised, can only serve to improve the instructional process towards the achievement of that elusive "quality education."