Building and Sustaining a Collaborative Educational Team: Teachers and Paraprofessionals

Collaboration is as important as pedagogical content knowledge (Hamilton-Jones & Vail, 2014). However, there is little preparation or ongoing support on how to engage professionally and respectfully in the multiple aspects of collaboration despite its complexity and necessity (Daniel et al., 2013; Frantz et al., 2022). In addition, with the many demands of teaching, teachers often overlook how collaboration will occur. As such, the authors offer guidance on how to develop and sustain positive working relationships, focusing on the relationship between teachers and paraprofessionals because these educators spend much of the school day working side-by-side. Specifically, we discuss known barriers and share initial strategies and resources for determining how the teacher and paraprofessional will collaborate, communicate, and resolve conflict.