I’m 1 of 3 paraprofessionals at an Elementry school, and the only one that leaves at the end of our contracted hours each day.
They always agree to take on home room teachers projects, and then ask me to help and get annoyed when I say no. I get 20 minutes of plan time each morning and I don’t want to waste them on cutting out posters for you when I need to be prepping for my students.
Since they always agree to take on the home room teachers’ projects, I look like the asshole when I won’t take on other peoples work.
Our union has stated multiple times that we are not teachers aids and should not be doing copies for teachers.
We had a big problem last year when the system we use to test reading levels were short copies. Each teacher needs multiple levels and multiple copies per level, and the last few years my coworkers did the copies, but last year they were too busy and didn’t. The teachers ended up mad at me and my coworkers for not doing copies for them. I blame my coworkers for letting the teachers expect extra work from us.
How do I get them to stop taking on extra work and letting the teachers try to use us?