For years, paraprofessionals in Monroe Township, N.J., have been asking for training to help them improve their skills in the classroom. But the school district administration never seemed to listen to those requests. As a result, paras there--as in too many other districts--were often thrown into their new jobs with little or no training.

But things were different this year, thanks to a new superintendent and continued lobbying by paraprofessionals in the Monroe Township Federation of Teachers. During an inservice day at the beginning of the school year--a day when the paras would traditionally be doing duties such as photocopying and setting up bulletin boards--paras heard presentations on universal health and safety precautions as well as fundamentals about the reading program used in the district's elementary schools.

"We've always had to go out and get training on our own," says Corine Hogbin, the union's paraprofessional representative, noting that their contract includes a modest amount of money to pay for such training. But this was the first time the district had provided training to all the paras. "We got all kinds of positive comments" from members, she says.

For their part, Hogbin reports, the teachers who work with the district's 47 full-time paras were also pleased with their colleagues' new training. "They were happy when we got back to the classrooms and told them what we learned in our workshop."

When a group of Monroe paraprofessionals attended the AFT's national PSRP conference last year, their plan of action to pursue back home--something all the conference attendees were encouraged to complete--was to do something about their lack of training. Para Rose Panto worked with Hogbin to write a letter to the new superintendent about their training needs, and Hogbin raised the issue in her own discussions with him. Panto, who has completed training in behavior management through the AFT's Educational Research and Dissemination (or ER&D) program, will also be training teachers as well as paras during the local union's own inservice day.

"We've been begging for the opportunity to get more training," Hogbin says. "Once we got some, now we want more and more."

"The better we get and the more helpful we are to the teacher, the better the education of the children is," she adds. "And that's what this is all about."