Mission

Teaching special education professionals effective practices to improve academic, behavioral, and social outcomes for students with disabilities.

In order to improve outcomes for our special education students, Kary believes we must build up the capacity of our special education professionals, specifically paraprofessionals.

As paraprofessionals dominate the special education workforce, we owe it to them to make sure they are fully equipped to work with our students to the best of their ability.

Special Education Workforce

In the 2015-2016 school year, there were 439,00 special education teachers compared to 1,308,100 paraprofessionals. Together, they service over 6.7 million students with disabilities (see references below).

Kary Zarate,Ph.D.

Kary seeks to improve educational outcomes for learners with disabilities. By researching methods to improve the training of paraprofessionals, Kary has created training packages that efficiently and effectively improve academic and behavioral outcomes for students. Further, as a former paraprofessional and special education teacher, Kary understands the intricacies of these roles and highly respects the tremendous work being day every day in the classroom. Her training packages are founded on skills to improve collaboration among team members. Each package uses adult learning principles and is tailored to the individual school needs and can cover topics such as:

Role Clarity

Behavior Management Interventions

Academic Support Interventions

Culturally Responsive Teaching

Data Collection

Functional Behavioral Assessment and Behavior Plan Implementation

Teaming and Collaboration

Special Education Law and the Individualized Education Program

References

*U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2019). Digest of Education Statistics, 2017 (NCES 2018-070), Chapter 2.

**Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Special Education Teachers, on the Internet at https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/special-education-teachers.htm (visited August 05, 2019).

***Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Teacher Assistants, on the Internet at https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/teacher-assistants.htm (visited August 26, 2019).