ED PARA,EX ED,C

Under direct supervision, this position provides staff support in an educational or child care environment, performing paraprofessional work to assist teachers and students. Employees work with certified teachers, occupational therapists, and other specialists in the education, care, and development of mentally, physically, emotionally disabled, and other special needs students. The role involves instructional, vocational, and developmental assistance to trainable and educable exceptional students.

Responsibilities

• Responds to internal and external customers in a timely, accurate, courteous, and empathetic manner.
• Provides instructional, vocational, and developmental assistance to special needs students as prescribed by the supervising teacher.
• Assists students with transportation, including physically transferring students from wheelchairs to school desks or floor mats.
• Supports students with gross motor activities (grasping, holding, posture, crawling, walking, running) and fine motor activities (playing with toys, cutting, coloring) as developmentally appropriate.
• Assists students with daily living skills, including dressing, eating, lavatory needs, grooming, and personal hygiene.
• Monitors, observes, and charts student behavior, documenting changes, outbursts, and other relevant actions.
• Applies crisis intervention principles for students with aggressive behavior, including physical restraint when necessary.
• Reinforces school and learning environment rules, encouraging appropriate behavior and correcting inappropriate behavior.
• Assists in preparing lesson plans, behavior modification plans, and teacher pre-planning sessions; contributes to learning activity development and instructional material preparation.
• Maintains accurate records of student activities and behavior, including data entry and completion of forms and reports.
• Supervises learning activities, circulating within the classroom to provide assistance and support to students.
• Performs monitoring duties (hallways, lunchroom, restrooms, bus duty) and escorts students to designated activity areas.
• May assist in labs, translating lesson plans and other information for better student comprehension.
• Stays updated on current technology used by OCPS and attends training to maintain required skill levels.

Requirements

• Associate’s degree or higher, or at least sixty (60) semester hours from an accredited institution (official transcript required).
• Passing the paraprofessional certification exam can substitute for the educational requirement to meet highly qualified status.
• Must be highly qualified prior to employment start date with Orange County Public Schools.
• Ability to fulfill physical and dexterity requirements of the work, effectively attending to school-age children’s needs.
• Minimum two (2) years of experience working with school-age children in an educational environment, with familiarity of exceptional needs children’s behaviors and challenges.
• Demonstrated stress management skills.
• Vocational training or work experience in a licensed childcare environment preferred.

Skills

• Data Utilization: Ability to evaluate, audit, deduce, and assess data using established criteria, exercising discretion in determining consequences and selecting alternatives.
• Human Interaction: Ability to apply principles of persuasion and influence.
• Equipment Utilization: Ability to operate special needs equipment, devices, and standard office equipment.
• Verbal Aptitude: Ability to utilize a wide variety of reference, descriptive, and advisory data and information.
• Mathematical Aptitude: Depending on assignment, may require basic arithmetic skills (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division), calculation of decimals and percentages, and interpretation of graphs.
• Functional Reasoning: Ability to follow detailed but uninvolved written or oral instructions with some latitude for independent judgment.
• Situational Reasoning: Ability to exercise judgment, decisiveness, and creativity in evaluating information against sensory, judgmental, or subjective criteria.

ADA Compliance

• Physical Ability: Tasks involve exerting very heavy physical effort, including climbing, balancing, stooping, kneeling, crouching, crawling, and lifting/carrying/pushing/pulling objects up to 100 pounds (occasionally heavier).
• Sensory Requirements: Most tasks require visual perception and discrimination; some require oral communication and sound discrimination.
• Environmental Factors: Tasks are regularly performed with exposure to adverse conditions, such as violence when working with developmentally disabled or emotionally disturbed children.

The Orange County School District will provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities.

Schedule

• 10-month position (ESE Paraprofessional).
• Hours: 6:50 AM – 2:20 PM, Monday through Friday.