Teacher Explains Why Full-Time School Support Staff Roles Require Letters of Recommendation
It’s 4:15 PM on a Tuesday, and I’m slouched in a sticky plastic chair in our elementary school teacher’s lounge, picking at a half-stale blueberry muffin left over from the PTA meeting that morning. The overhead light flickers, the coffee dispenser gurgles, and our hiring committee of three is sorting through applications for a full-time paraeducator role in our inclusion program. The last application in the pile stops us: Mia Carter, two years of substitute experience, current first aid certification, extra coursework in positive behavior interventions, and no letters of recommendation.
Our new assistant superintendent leans forward, tapping the resume. “She subbed for your class back in February, right? You said she was fine. She says her last two principals left the district for other jobs, and most of the teachers she worked with moved out of state. Can we just move her straight to interviews?” I push my lukewarm coffee aside and shake my head. I know I’m being the stick-in-the-mud here, but I also know what happens when we skip this step. Three years ago, I was in this exact same spot, and I learned the hard way why letters aren’t just redundant red tape.
Back then, we were desperate to fill an opening after our para left on maternity leave and never came back. We had a candidate named Jordan, a dad of two kids at the school, who’d changed careers from construction to education and was eager to get started. He was charming in his interview, talked about how he wanted to help kids the way he’d helped his own son with ADHD. No letters of rec, he explained, because he’d only been in education a little while, and all his old references were from construction sites. We were short-staffed, our kids were splitting time between three different subs every week, so we hired him anyway.
Three months in, I had to pull him into the hallway after he grabbed 7-year-old Leo’s arm hard enough to leave a faint red mark. Leo had run away from reading group mid-meltdown, and Jordan said he just panicked, didn’t know what else to do. Later, we got a call from a former coworker at an after-school program Jordan had worked at briefly before construction, who mentioned he’d left after a similar incident with another kid. No one had thought to ask, and we had no letters to warn us. That’s when I really got it: anyone can be on their best behavior for a 30-minute interview. Only someone who’s worked with you day in and day out can tell you how you show up when you’re tired, when things go off script, when a kid is screaming and the principal isn’t watching.
I see posts in our local parent Facebook group all the time asking why schools make such a big deal out of letters for support staff roles, anyway. People think paras, recess aides, bus drivers, and behavior techs are just “extra hands” – that the job doesn’t require the same vetting as a classroom teacher or administrator. But the truth is, full-time support staff spend more one-on-one time with our most vulnerable kids than anyone else in the building. My current para, Ms. Rita, spends three hours a day alone with Leo, who is nonverbal and has severe life-threatening food allergies. She knows he likes his apple cut into eight slices, not six, that humming the first verse of Baby Shark means he’s overwhelmed and needs to leave the room, that he’ll only take his anxiety medication if it’s offered to him in a blue paper cup, not a clear plastic one. None of that fits on a resume. Resumes list job duties, they don’t list the small, daily choices that keep kids safe and comfortable.
When we hired Ms. Rita five years ago, her letter of rec wasn’t the generic “she’s a hard worker” line that most people throw together. It was from the director of the after-school program she’d worked at for four years, and it said: “Last year we had a new student who wouldn’t speak to anyone for six weeks after his mom lost her job and they moved into a shelter. Rita brought in the same brand of fruit snacks his grandma gave him every day, sat next to him during craft time and didn’t push him to talk. He said his first word to her on the seventh week.” That’s the stuff you can’t get from an application. That’s the stuff we need to know.
For parents who wonder what this means for their own kids, there are two small, concrete things you can do. First, if your kid receives any kind of extra support at school, ask your principal or classroom teacher what the hiring requirements are for full-time support staff. Most districts require letters of rec, but not all do, and it’s reasonable to advocate for this requirement if it’s not already in place – it’s a low-effort check that makes a big difference. Second, if you’ve had a good experience with a substitute or part-time support staff member who is applying for a full-time role, offer to write a letter of rec for them. A 100-word note from you that says “They remembered my son’s allergy every single day at recess and stayed with him when he was upset after his dog died” means more than a generic letter from an administrator who barely saw them work.
After we pushed for letters, Mia reached out to two retired teachers she’d worked with at her first district, and she got them to send notes. The first one said she stayed after school every day for a month to help set up the classroom for a teacher going through chemo, and that she always remembered to set out the non-verbal student’s communication board before class started. We moved her to interviews, and she sat down with us last week. It went well, but we haven’t made a final decision yet.
Nothing is ever guaranteed, of course. A great letter doesn’t mean someone will be a perfect fit, and a bad fit can slip through even the best checks. But this small step, asking for letters from people who’ve actually seen the candidate work with kids, cuts down on the risk a lot. It’s not about checking boxes. It’s about making sure the person who spends half their day with your kid is someone who already has a track record of showing up for them, even on the messy, hard days. We’re still waiting to wrap up the hiring process, but whatever happens, I’m glad we took the extra time to get those letters.
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