The County Press

BE THE CHANGE

Parapros play an important role in our schools

KRYSTAL MORALEE

KRYSTAL MORALEE

I opened my son’s folder from school and saw the dreaded paper. The school play was announced, with all the exclamation points. I’d sat through this very same play twice, once when my oldest was in third grade, and once when my youngest was in a second-third split class. Now that he was in a straight thirdgrade class, it was time, yet again, to hear kids sing about hats.

My heart sank when I saw it.

Most parents likely don’t understand the anxiety a school play can cause, but for me, it would mean fights over the required clothing while shopping, and the day of the play, because wearing jeans is to my child much like a dentist visit is to me. It would also mean cold sweats in the audience, waiting to see if my kid would participate, or wander, or do something weird.

My child is not one of the happy singers. He’s the one who finds the entire experience humiliating, to the point of tears. The school play causes many days of unhappiness and stress, for him and me both, so this year, I made an executive decision. We stayed home.

Some parents might judge or even berate me for that, but they are also the ones that don’t understand the life of a parent with a child who has emotional and sensory challenges. I didn’t understand for the longest time. I listened to the people who said it was me, that I was a crappy parent, and that I didn’t know how to discipline properly. I knew deep down, though, that it wasn’t something I could discipline out of him. One day, I was reading an article about Asperger’s and it was like a flashbulb. This sounded so much like my kid! Upon my request, the school did an evaluation, and determined that he could fall on that spectrum. And just like that, instead of being sent to the office constantly, they were working with him to find ways to help him be successful.

This year, he’s got a great teacher who works in concert with a paraprofessional, and I’ve come to understand the importance of these people who help in the classroom.

Garrett Brodt is one of those people. He’s been at Lynch Elementary for three years and worked in the cognitively impaired program at Turrill before that.

“I’ve been working with special needs since I was 19,” said Brodt, who started when he was 19 with Lapeer County ISD. It just fit, he said. “I have special needs in my family, and I guess that just transferred over.”

Brodt is assigned to assist three children throughout the school day. One of them is given two short, scheduled breaks each day to get him out of the classroom for a couple minutes. That gives his occa- sionally overstimulated mind a chance to reset and refocus on his work. The other children are assisted with reading, writing or other needs throughout the day.

“I just support and give encouragement to unique needs students so they can become more successful in a general education environment,” said Brodt.

Brodt started out with an interest in going to medical school, and he enjoys creating artwork on the side. Working with special needs students was a supplemental thing — until it wasn’t. He ended up enjoying this work, where he can make a real difference in kids’ lives (and their parents).

When asked about the most rewarding part of his job, Brodt’s reply was a quiet, almost stunned, “Wow. There’s a lot.”

He went on to talk about the times when a concept has been evading a student for a while, and it finally clicks. That’s meaningful, he said, and he hopes that the students will then take the coping mechanisms that they worked on and use them to increase success in other areas of their lives as well.

The challenges a parapro faces in a day will vary, but Brodt finds he enjoys the variety of the job.

“I’m very flexible,” he said. “I roll with the punches and I never let the previous day roll into the next day, which is challenging for some people.”

The most difficult thing to overcome, he said, is the times when there is a lack of parent involvement.

Still, Brodt and the other parapros do their best during the school day to fill in when needed, so often overburdened teachers can focus on the curriculum. The teamwork approach helps keep children, like my youngest son, from falling through the cracks in the education system, and for that, I am grateful.

“You don’t know why you’re here,” Brodt said, “and sometimes those little tribulations you help people with throughout the day are why you’re here.”