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Call in the paraprofessionals
By John Young
 One of World War II’s first heroes wasn’t a soldier. He was, in fact, a mess attendant, assigned to something menial until something unimaginable happened.
You might laugh, but that decorated hero, Waco’s Doris “Dorie” Miller, reminds me of my wife. She’s not an administrator. She’s not a teacher. She’s not a health professional or a counselor. Yet, she fills all of the above roles when the cause arises.
Miller won the Navy Cross for manning a machine-gun post aboard the USS West Virginia when early casualties from the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor left the ship defenseless. He had been collecting laundry when the alarm sounded; Miller rushed to the deck and served his country in a near-legendary way.
My wife, whose current job title is school secretary, has never been decorated for what she does. But she ought to be. Her title, along with her personality and her smarts, means basically that whatever is not being done on her campus, she will do. She’ll do anything in the blink of an eye, and without blinking. That applies to a host of paraprofessionals in our schools.
She’s been in a half dozen “para” roles in schools — classroom aide, writing lab instructor, clinic aide (but careful not to mislead about her lack of credentials) and substitute teacher.
Oh, the hassles she endures.
When the plumed parrots of the media were declaring a swine flu crisis — ack! — she was the one taking all the calls from the frantic and misinformed. She was disgusted that no one in the information business sought to calm the public. It was all about fear and surgical masks. The calming function came down to her — being in the information business as well, just not paid as well.
She’s had to enforce rules about who can attend her school to red-faced parents, tapping their toes — only to later watch her higher-ups overrule their own rules.
She takes the early morning calls from teachers who have come down with a bug and need a sub. When the substitute system malfunctions, she squirms and grimaces. Of course, she’s done all she can.
She’ll be the first to tell you, as will I, that teachers need to be paid better, need to have less paperwork, need more cooperative parents, and need students who are better prepared to attend school and listen to what they’re told. Each of the above challenges applies to her plight as well — except that when better pay and benefits come up, paraprofessionals tend to get left out of the conversation.
Consider the school nurse, who handles a plethora of medications, mystery stomach aches and phantom “owies.” At my wife’s campus, the school nurse is a licensed vocational nurse — very much a luxury. Although this tireless servant does everything a registered nurse would do in the same role, she is a paraprofessional, and paid accordingly.
Back to Doris Miller. He was tending to domestic duties, rather than serving in a combat role, because he was black. However, because of his heroism at Pearl Harbor and that of many others in the ensuing conflict, black Americans became equals in the service. It would take decades for the civilian world to follow the armed forces’ lead.
In the education world, it would be nice one day for paraprofessionals to be treated — if not as equals with professionals — at least in a way that befits their unblinking contributions.
JOHN YOUNG is opinion page editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald and author of Ghosts of Liberals Past. He can be reached at jyoung@wacotrib.com.
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