Education support is a range of activities and resources that aim to enhance the learning experience of students, teachers, and schools. These services can improve learning outcomes and increase access and equity, as well as foster innovation and collaboration.
Servisource matches participants with their preferred Educational Support Worker (ESW) who is a good personality match, providing them with the best possible support to help achieve their goals.
1. Students
Education support services for students help them overcome personal, social, or emotional challenges that may interfere with their learning and development. These can include mental health issues, family problems, and career choices. Students can also benefit from tutoring, mentoring, and coaching.
Student support workers can provide assistance with physical and learning disabilities (such as autism, ADHD, blindness or deafness), and mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, psychosis, or eating disorders. They can also assist with study skills and time management.
Administrators play an important role in coordinating and evaluating education support services, as well as setting the vision, goals, and priorities for these services. They can also serve as a liaison between students, educators, and community members. They can also develop programs and activities that promote positive school culture and foster a sense of belonging among students. They can also build partnerships with organizations and businesses to provide additional resources, expertise, or opportunities for students.
2. Educators
The education services industry includes private and public establishments that offer instruction in a wide range of subjects. Companies in this industry also provide training, certification, and consulting services. This industry employs more than 53.6 million people nationwide and provides a variety of benefits to employees. These include medical, dental, vision, life insurance options, and retirement savings plans.
Education support professionals, like paraeducators and administrative assistants, are essential to classroom learning. They help maintain quality schools and ensure students have a safe, comfortable environment to learn.
School leaders and Board members should seek out ways to support teachers in their buildings. One way to do this is to allow teachers to voice their concerns publicly. This can create a space for difficult emotions to be shared and past traumas to heal. In addition, it can help identify policy changes that need to be made. FEA offers many resources for educators including webinars, conferences, micro-credential courses, toolkits, and publications.
3. Schools
Education support services are a wide range of activities and resources that aim to improve the quality, accessibility, and effectiveness of education. They can be provided by a variety of actors, including students, peers, parents, educators, volunteers, experts, and organizations. They can address various opportunities and challenges in the education sector, such as improving learning outcomes, increasing equity, fostering innovation, and strengthening accountability and governance.
Schools can use education support services to help their students and staff with different needs and goals. For example, they can provide tutoring and mentoring, counseling and guidance, educational materials and resources, career advice and guidance, and disability support.
ESPs are the backbone of our schools and work tirelessly to ensure that students have what they need to succeed. The MSEA ESP of the Year Award is one way to honor their contributions. The Department also offers supplemental support programs for schools in the CSI and ATSI models to strengthen internal continuous improvement systems and structures.
4. Community
Communities can support education by providing infrastructure, resources, and funding. They can also participate in awareness campaigns that promote the importance of education. In addition, they can volunteer to assist in classrooms or help with extracurricular activities.
As education becomes increasingly personalized and customizable, learners will demand more integrated and coordinated education support services that align with their learning needs, preferences, and goals. They will need to be able to select and access tutors, mentors, counselors, and other education support professionals who can deliver the right education and the right level of support at the right time.
Education support personnel are crucial to the success of a school and they contribute to a positive, safe, and welcoming learning environment. They must be recognized for their invaluable work and enjoy the same rights, status, and conditions as educators. This includes clerical and ancillary staff, custodial and maintenance workers, food service staff, health and student service ESPs, paraeducators, and transportation ESPs.