How to Become a Teacher’s Aide: One Parent’s Path from Volunteer to Paycheck
The cafeteria smelled like tater tots and floor wax. Yolanda stood by the trash cans with a laminated card in her hand—room assignments, allergy list, the name of the kid who needed a quiet escort to the office after lunch—and wondered, not for the first time that week, what she had gotten herself into.
It was her first week as a paid teacher’s aide, and the only reason she had the job was that she had spent the year before doing it for free.
Her son Marcus had started second grade at Cedar Grove Elementary, and like a lot of parents, Yolanda had signed up to volunteer in his classroom on Friday mornings. She cut out laminated shapes. She listened to kids read the same sentence three times. She wiped down tables. By November, his teacher, Mrs. Alvarez, was asking her to stay an extra hour. By spring, the school secretary had pulled her aside in the front office
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