Education Support Professionals Day 2022: Every year on November 20, the Wednesday of American Education Week, people who work as educational support professionals celebrate National Educational Support Professionals Day. In order to honor the hardworking education support staff who make public schools run smoothly, the National Education Association Representative Assembly created this day.
Because they help kids in and out of school, these professionals do a lot to keep the community healthy. There are nine important services that Education Support Professionals offer: para-educators, skilled trades, technical, transportation, food, para-custodial and maintenance, para-educators, health and student assistance, and security.
People who are thinking about a future in this field can get financial help from many of the scholarships available on Schoalroo. Let’s honor the important roles that janitors, administrative assistants, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, and other support staff play in making sure that learning settings run smoothly on National Educational Support Professionals Day.
The job of these professionals is to make sure that schools work well and keep kids safe. For our school system to work, they are essential. Their work every day shows how important they are to making the future what it will be like. Honoring the important part that education support professionals play in the school system today, let’s fly the flag high. These people change the game for real.
History of National Educational Support Professionals Day
June 1 is Education Support Professionals Day, a time to show appreciation for the important work that ESPs do in public schools and say thank you. There are lots of celebrations and events this week in honor of ESPs, and today is one of them. According to the National Education Association (NEA), this day was made official in the United States.
When ten state education groups came together in 1857, they became the NEA. At that time, it was called the National Teachers Association (NTA). As a group, they wanted to improve the quality of public schools for all kids by working together and sharing resources. The organization’s name was changed to the National Education Association (NEA) in 1870.
It was in the 1980s that the NEA gave ESPs full membership rights because of how important they were to public education. There should be a special day to recognize and thank the hard work of educational support workers in public schools, which the NEA Representative Assembly suggested in 1987. The result was the creation of National Education Support Personnel Day, which is now held every year.
Since support workers deserve more respect and honor, the name was changed to National Educational Support Professionals Day in 2002. This change is meant to recognize the professional job that these people have done to keep our public schools running smoothly and give students a good place to learn.
How to celebrate National Educational Support Professionals Day
An effective way to show your support for the event is to ask a politician to declare April 19 as National Educational Support Professionals (ESP) Day. For support for the declaration, you could talk to a federal or state representative, a federal or state senator, the governor, the mayor, or a member of the city council. Please write an essay explaining why National ESP Day is important and how it helps people understand the important role that people who work in educational support play in society.
Remember to be patient while you wait for their answer after sending the email. Support ESP Day on social media at the same time. Talk about the event with your friends by using the phrase #EducationSupportProfessionalsDay. Local TV, radio, and print media can help you reach more people by inviting them. In order to get these media outlets to spread the benefits of ESPs, you can write opinion pieces and talk to their managers.
Another great way to show your appreciation is to thank ESPs directly. Thanks note and gift cards are two ways you could say thanks. Your community will be more likely to support and value educational support workers if you show them appreciation for their work.
Interesting Facts About Education Support Professionals
Professionals in education who help students learn (ESPs) are very important in all levels of schooling, from kindergarten to college and even after high school. As proof of how important these people are, here are some interesting aspects of ESP:
How Much Schooling You Had:
ESPs in grades K -12 hold an associate’s degree or higher about 57% of the time.
More than 94% of ESPs in higher education have at least an Associate’s degree.
More time to devote yourself:
ESPs are very dedicated and enthusiastic, as shown by the fact that 61% of them say they plan to work in education until they retire.
Giving money
For K -12 kids, 66% of ESPs have promised to pay for field trips, school supplies, and homework with their own money. It shows that they want to make sure that all of their students can get the tools they need to get a complete education.
Making the Community More Inclusive:
There is a strong sense of community and belonging among K–12 ESPs because most of them live in the school area where they work. They know what the students and people in the neighborhood they serve need because they live there.
Findings like these show that ESPs have educational backgrounds, are dedicated, care about others, and are involved in their communities. They play a very important part in making learning environments for students.
Why Education Support Professionals Day is Important
Giving credit to participants who aren’t seen
Let’s honor the unsung stars of our school system on Education Support Professionals Day. In order to make sure that our kids’ schools are safe and run smoothly, these people work hard, often behind the scenes. Their unwavering commitment is something we can recognize and thank them for today.
Drawing Attention to the Important Part Professionals Play in Supporting Education
Education support professionals are very important for keeping the classroom safe and effective, and today is the day to recognize them. No matter if they work as office assistants, school bus drivers, or cafeteria workers, they have a big effect on how young minds grow.
Making people feel like they belong in the group
Thanksgiving is a great time to bring people together, and Education Support Professionals Day is a great way to do that. School administrators can plan special events for parents and students to show their appreciation in their unique ways. These projects that bring people together reinforce the idea that everyone’s contributions are important in the bigger picture of education.
How To Observe Education Support Professionals Day
Things you should think about are:
Unique events should be planned and carried out to show off the work and accomplishments of Educational Support Professionals (ESPs). Appreciation events, like award ceremonies and luncheons, can be of many different types.
Thank you messages that are personalized
Sending thoughtful gifts or making custom thank-you cards is a great way to show what you appreciate about each ESP. This kind of appreciation is more meaningful and makes them feel truly valued when it is tailored to their specific successes.
Promotional use of social media
Get more people to know about the important role that ESPs play in the school system through social media marketing. Spread success stories, testimonials, and pictures that show how influential they are to get other people to notice their work.
Things that will happen to make people more aware of education:
To teach your kids about how important ESPs are to their education, plan activities. In-person classes, meetings, or discussions that help students understand and value the range of duties held by ESPs could be part of this.
What is ESP day?
#EducationSupportProfessionalsDay. The day honors a long list of professionals who keep schools running smoothly. They include all secretaries, classroom aides, cafeteria workers, maintenance workers, bus drivers, and the others who support educators, school leadership, and the students, too.
We have recognized the important work of PreK–16 Education Support Professionals on Wednesday of American Education Week for thirty years. Because of their hard work and high standards, it might not be possible to thank them all in one day. In order to make living and working conditions better for all ESPs, the MTA continues to back the ESP Living Wage Campaign.
The teaching and learning processes in our public schools and organizations depend on ESPs, who make up about 20% of the MTA’s membership. Maintaining and fixing up old infrastructure, making sure transportation is safe, serving healthy meals even when there aren’t enough workers, and teaching one-on-one and in small groups are some of the things they do. Our kids often see their ESPs first thing in the morning and once they leave at night.
Over the past year, ESPs have been able to successfully negotiate big changes to contracts in a number of areas. Their main focus is on better living and working conditions, such as providing a livable wage, in order to reach the goals set out in the MTA PreK–12 ESP Bill of Rights. A guide for regional efforts to negotiate better contracts, the Bill of Rights is now available in Spanish and Albanian. The ESPs have shown their support for their coworkers by working on local projects and actively pushing for ESP living wages in a number of places across the Commonwealth, including Worcester, Amherst-Pelham, and Wilmington.
What is ESP in school?
School support staff, also known as Education Support Professionals (ESPs), strengthen our schools, communities, and associations across the country. They play a vital role on the education team and in students’ lives inside and outside the classroom.
There are important people in our communities, national groups, and schools who are Education Support Professionals (ESPs), who are also sometimes called school support staff. In addition to helping the students in the classroom, they play an important part outside of school as well.
Our schools must be safe, healthy, run smoothly, and are good places to learn because of ESPs. In order for schools to run smoothly and for kids to be ready to learn every day, they work very hard. Both in and out of school, they make a big difference in the lives of kids.
ESPs have long been strongly supported by the National Education Association (NEA), which has pushed for their full membership and acceptance as qualified professionals. Nearly two and a half million ESPs work in public schools and institutions across the country right now, making up one-third of the public education population. Beyond 500,000 people belong to the NEA.
What is the role of an ESP teacher?
ESP teachers have to take multidimensional and unpredicted responsibilities because of the on-going changing patterns of learners’ needs. They should formulate certain goals and objectives, select and develop effective materials, plan appropriate courses, and evaluate the learners’ patterns of development.
Since this is the last part of our look at ESP, it’s time to talk about the specific tasks of an ESP teacher. This shows how this job is different from that of a regular English teacher. However, it is just as important to know the real differences between what General English teachers and ESP teachers are responsible for, even though we have always stressed how important it is to include ESP in the bigger picture of language learning.
These are some of the things that an ESP teacher has to do besides just teaching in a classroom. This job includes a lot of different tasks, according to Swales (1985), and the title “ESP practitioner” best describes them all. These tasks include figuring out what the students need, making lesson plans, and creating or adapting class materials. Just reading the book shows how ESP practitioners can be useful in many situations.
That a lot of ESP teachers have yet to have official training in ESP is a surprising difference. ESP teachers often start their jobs without any ESP-specific training, which is different from regular English teachers, who usually go through different training. Being trained in different ways gives ESP teachers a unique point of view. This shows how important it is to keep learning and understanding the problems that ESP practitioners face.
Why is ESP important?
Ultimately, the goal of all ESP programs is to help learners become more adept in the use of language aligned to their specific disciplines or professional lives (Abuklaish, 2014). An important characteristic of an ESP course is that the materials and goals are tailored to the learners’ specific needs.
Training in a foreign language, especially English as a Second Language (ESP), needs to be taught differently. According to Dudley-Evans and Saint John (1998) and Hyland (2006), this change means setting clear learning goals for both short-term and long-term courses that are in line with the needs of each student, the general goals of the course and the training outcomes that are wanted when the program is over. Abadlakh (2014) says that the main goal of ESP programs is still to give students language skills that are useful in the fields where they learn or work.
Different from other types of classes, ESP courses focus on adapting to meet the specific needs of each learner. For students to make sure their English is good enough for school or work, these classes focus on the language, skills, and genres that are most important for the tasks they will be doing. Language learning is more useful and relevant in ESP situations when this personalized approach is used.
What is the main role of ESP teacher?
It is likely that in addition to the normal functions of a classroom teacher, the ESP teacher will have to deal with needs analysis, syllabus design, materials writing or adaptation and evaluation.
Many ESP (English for Specific Purposes) courses are different from EGP (English for General Purposes) courses because they bring in adult students, most of whom are working adults and secondary school students. It stresses the importance of meeting the different needs of adult learners because ESP is a learner-centered method. Because of this, ESP teachers need to use a complete, adult-focused method that takes into account not only language needs but also students’ psychological aspects and desires. ESP teachers should act as both advisers and teachers from a humanistic point of view.
These duties include working together with subject teachers outside of school and encouraging close relationships between them, which is another important duty. ESP teachers can learn a lot about how to make lessons and teach in ways that meet the specific needs of their students by working together. For some reason, many subject teachers have strong biases that could make it hard for English teachers to work together in this way. There is a very good way to solve this problem: encourage English teachers and ESP students to work together. ESP teachers need to do both theoretical and action-based studies in order to meet the changing needs of language learners. It is important to use a variety of methods when teaching English as a second language (ESP).
The name of the holiday was changed from “Educational Support Personnel” to “Educational Support Professionals” in 2002 so that it better expressed the joy that ESPs feel and the important role they play in public schools.
ESP members work full-time in schools, according to a new poll from the NEA. One interesting fact is that 53% of these workers work with students who need special education help. This shows that they are dedicated to creating learning environments that are welcoming and helpful for everyone.
ESPs also give their own money—an average of $170 per year—to help kids with basic things like field trips and school supplies, according to the study. They really want kids to have access to the tools they need for a complete education, and their financial help shows that.
This holiday is a chance to thank ESPs for their hard work, which can be very demanding and financially stressful at times. Experts like these give their time and knowledge away for free, and they also care about the students they help and invest in their educational paths. It is important to show appreciation for Education Support Professionals on this holiday because they have had a big impact on how our school system will change in the future.