From Kitchen Garden to the Classroom – The Paraprofessional in School

Leanne is a teacher aide, employed at two country schools in SE Queensland. Her story illustrates the many and varied roles teacher aides perform around the country. It also highlights some of the amazing life experiences of paraprofessional staff that contribute to the rich learning environments of our schools.

Leanne spends Fridays working on a kitchen garden project with primary students and their teachers. She has put in a lot of preparation time at home, to get everything organised and ready for the day. Leanne interacts with the students as they plant vegetables and tend the garden. They use the produce from their garden to prepare the food for a shared lunch. Leanne loves this day as it is creative and draws on her past experiences in hospitality and corporate events.

In contrast, her other three days are very structured, as she follows a set timetable, where her role is to support students’ learning and prepare resources for teachers. Leanne also likes having this structure, as it helps her manage her dual role as a paraprofessional, and her busy schedule as a mum with three children.

Teacher Aide growth predicted to grow by over 20% in 5 years

There are 71,700 teacher aides employed across all Australian schools, who support students from the early years to secondary school. Like Leanne, the majority of the workforce are women over 35 years and around 75% work part-time. However, it is likely that this figure is much higher, as there are many more teacher aides, who work as volunteers or parent helpers.

The teacher aide role is relatively new to the education sector. Yet it is predicted that there will be a massive growth in the workforce over the next 5 years.

A national professional learning association for teacher aides

Most teacher aides provide some teaching and learning support to students from Prep to Year 12, under the supervision of teachers. They work in classrooms, with small groups and with individual students, and have a variety of position descriptions such as classroom assistant, education aide, teaching assistant, integration aide and so on.

You can find out more here about the teacher aide workforce in the different Australian States and Territories.

To ensure that the support provided by teacher aides, has a positive impact on student learning outcomes, teacher aides need opportunities to develop their practice through collaboration with colleagues, and by access to professional learning.

For the first time, teacher aides are represented in the education sector by Australian Teacher Aide. ATA is a national organisation that connects teacher aides, with each other, through an online learning community, and provides access to ongoing professional learning tailored to the role of the teacher aide.

This will be especially helpful for the many rural and remote schools across Australia, where isolation and access to professional learning is limited. Members can collaborate with each other to share ideas, solve problems and find inspiration.

Teacher aides are dedicated to their work and consistently express a passion for helping students. So much more can be achieved when paraprofessionals have a network to which they belong, where the common goal is working together to improve outcomes for students.

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. — Helen Keller