More Aide Talk

Just for the record: the aides I have now are terrific. I don't want to short-change anyone. I went through my first few years thinking "I can barely keep up with what I need to do; how am I going to manage a teacher's aide, too?"

I didn't seen the irony of that thought then. Now I think good aides are a Godsend.

Well, The Meeting took place at lunch. Sara had a whole Powerpoint presentation she's put together the night before ("It only took me a couple of hours," and that on a finals night) ready to go: she'd e-mailed herself a copy and burned a copy onto CD as a backup. At lunch, she commandeered my laptop, set up the LCD projector, and gave the new aides the essentials. I only made a couple of brief comments. The other girls were very interested.

Get this: Sara has no intention of leaving. She'll be coming in on Fridays, volunteering an hour to manage things, organize, see what needs to be done, leave notes for the other aides, and generally preside over the paperwork end of my classroom in absentia, all while being an aide for another teacher this semester: Paul, you're going to love her. Oh, and I'll get a couple of drop-ins per week during lunch or after school, or whenever she said she'd be here.

I used to think I had a great aide one semester who'd take papers home to grade. But now the dedication bar has been raised considerably. Truth to tell, I really don't want to lose her, but it's only fair to give others their shot.

I had her leave the presentation on my hard drive, and I added some screen shots of my gradebook with some step-by-step instructions. I'll see how it plays when I'm done.