The Regional Office of Education #33 has partnered with the United School District and their Adult English Language Learner Education Program to create a paraprofessional pathway, reports Assistant Superintendent Lori Loving:
“We worked with them to create what is called an ICAPS. If you think of what dual credit is to high school students, an ICAPS is an opportunity for the adult students to earn some type of credential similar to dual credit. We created the paraprofessional pathway where the adult education students went through training and prep to take the paraprofessional exam. So far, we have had two students who passed the paraprofessional exam, which then made them eligible to apply for their paraprofessional license. We have eight more students who have been working on passing the exam, so we are hoping that even before we close out this year, that we potentially could have additional people qualify to apply for their paraprofessional license.”
Loving states during the second part of the class, the students went through a curriculum on learning how to be a paraprofessional.
