Why Do Full-Time School Support Staff Roles Require Letters of Recommendation? A Teacher’s Perspective
Last Wednesday, I sat around a wobbly conference table in our school’s main office with the principal, another 2nd grade teacher, and our head custodian, going through applications for a full-time paraeducator opening. The copy machine in the corner was spitting out half-copied lesson plans every few minutes, my coffee had gone cold 20 minutes earlier, and we’d already whittled 18 applications down to two. Both candidates had the required associate’s degree, both had four years of experience working in special education, both had passed all their background checks. On paper, they were identical. Then we got to the letters of recommendation.
One candidate’s two letters were both short, generic, full of lines I’ve read a hundred times. “Reliable, works well with children, I recommend her highly.” That was the whole thing on both. The other candidate, Mia, had two letters from former lead teachers she’d worked with, and every paragraph had a specific story. One told about how Mia stayed after school every Wednesday for two months to re-measure and rearrange the classroom layout for a student who used a wheelchair—she’d noticed the original plan put his desk right in the path of the swinging door, which was overstimulating for him. She didn’t ask for extra pay, didn’t complain, just brought in her own tape measure and got it done. The other letter told the story of a nonverbal student with sensory needs who would bolt from the classroom during drop-off. Mia spent two weeks before the school year walking his usual route, talking to playground staff, mapping out quiet spots he could go to calm down, and when he once sat in the hallway holding a box of rubber bands for 45 minutes, she sat with him the whole time, no phone, just chatting about the different textures until he was ready to come in.
I’ve had so many parents ask me over the years why schools make a big deal out of letters of recommendation for these full-time support roles. “It’s just a para job,” they’ll say, or “Aren’t background checks enough?” I get the question—on the surface, it seems like unnecessary red tape. But what people don’t always see is how much time these staff members spend with kids, and how much the small, unwritten parts of the job matter more than any credential.
My own daughter, when she was in kindergarten, had a terrible time separating from me every morning. She’d stand by the door crying, and I’d have to pry her hand off my shirt and leave before I was late to my own class. The front office admin, Linda, noticed this after a week. Every morning, she’d have a sticker of a monarch butterfly—my daughter was obsessed with butterflies that year—already sitting on the front counter, waiting for her. It didn’t fix the separation anxiety overnight, but after two weeks, my daughter was walking in on her own just to get that sticker. Linda didn’t have to do that. It wasn’t in her job description. You won’t find that on a resume. But that’s the kind of thing that changes a kid’s whole experience of school.
Resumes can tell you how many years someone has worked, what training they’ve had, what certifications they hold. But they can’t tell you how someone responds when a kid is having a meltdown in the middle of math class. They can’t tell you if someone notices the kid who’s wearing the same dirty sweatshirt three days in a row, and quietly flags that to the school counselor. They can’t tell you if someone will go out of their way to make a kid feel seen, even when it’s not required. That’s what letters of recommendation from people who’ve actually worked with the candidate do. They give you a peek at how the person does the job when no one is grading their performance.
If you’re applying for a full-time support role at a school, this is a good thing to remember: don’t ask your former college roommate who runs a business downtown to write you a letter just because he has a fancy title. Ask the teacher you’ve worked with for three years, ask the parent you nannied for whose kid has autism, ask the custodian you’ve collaborated with on safety drills who’s seen you interact with kids. And if you’re writing a letter for someone, skip the generic praise. Tell the specific story. That’s what hiring committees are actually looking for.
For parents who wonder why we jump through this extra hoop, it’s not to make the application process harder. It’s because we know that your kids spend more time with full-time support staff than they do with most teachers, in a lot of cases. A full-time para is with your kid all day, every day, if your kid needs one-on-one support. A custodian walks the halls every period and sees everything that goes on, from kids hiding in bathroom stalls to kids laughing on the playground. Cafeteria staff see who’s eating, who’s not, who’s sitting alone at lunch. We want people who care about the small stuff, because the small stuff is what makes kids feel safe enough to learn.
We hired Mia, by the way. It’s only been three weeks, but already I’ve seen her notice that one of my students who has social anxiety hates group work, so she sets up a little corner table for him when we do projects, no questions asked. She brought in extra socks last week when we had a kid spill juice on his on the playground, before anyone even asked. We still have a lot to figure out as a class this year, and there are days when everything feels chaotic—lessons run over, kids forget their homework, the fire alarm goes off in the middle of standardized testing. But having the right people in these support roles makes all the chaos feel manageable.
I don’t know that every great candidate will get the kind of specific, honest letter that Mia got, and the process isn’t perfect. But it’s the best way we have to find the people who show up for kids every single day, in ways that never make it onto a resume. That’s why we ask for those letters. That’s why they matter.
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