Within any classroom there is a diversity of learning styles, a range of needs, and various challenges. Education assistants, who work with special education students, or students who have behaviour management needs, take on the responsibility of adapting environments for their students. One of the most important aspects to succeeding in a classroom is establishing genuine connections.

In order to help students reach their full potential, it is necessary to get to know them well. Being able to recognize students’ strengths will provide you with more options for helping to keep them engaged and excited.

Here are a few points to keep in mind as you navigate your role in students’ educational experiences.

If You Believe in Their Success, They Will Too

It may be the case that students you assist will have the idea, whether consciously or not, that success at school is not possible for them. Traditional markers of academic success may cause special education students to feel inadequate, insecure, or as if no one expects much from them. Part of education assistant training involves in-school experience, where you may even witness these feelings first-hand. Fortunately, as an education assistant, you’ll be well equipped to help students realize just how much potential they have, and help them see that they really do have so much to offer.

Education assistants enter a classroom looking for students’ strengths

One strategy that can be used to address negative feelings is positive reinforcement. For example, you want to make sure your students know when they do well and provide more learning experiences that foster those successes. If you notice that a student loves to draw, give them a chance to visually respond to a lesson. This validates their learning style and recognizes neurodiversity as a strength of differences rather than a deficit. Figuring this out for students may mean reflecting on your positive experiences in educational assistant classes because being able to recognize where you felt success will help you see it in others as well.

Provide a Culturally Sensitive Environment

Another aspect of knowing your student and nurturing their potential is recognizing their life experiences outside of the classroom. Acknowledging their cultural background, languages they may speak at home, and what their lives are like is just as important as being familiar with their cognitive and physical abilities.

Consider ways to adjust lesson plans or activities to reflect your familiarity and respect for who your students are. This may also extend to their general interests. For example if they love music, consider incorporating songs or lyrics into activities.

Become an Education Assistant Known for Their Creativity

Paying attention to what excites students will give you ideas for ways to keep them engaged in the classroom. The myriad of differences you may experience when you become an education assistant will quickly add up. One practical strategy that will leave space for your creativity to flourish is to record individual preferences, needs, and strengths of your students.

Educational assistants’ creativity will spark confidence in their students

Once you have a clear idea of who your students are, the ways to connect with them will become easier to grasp and organize. For example, a student may respond well to routine. Knowing this, you might set up a daily prompt for them to express their feelings each afternoon. Something like that would help you create an environment where students feel comfortable and able to thrive.

Are you interested in pursuing a career as an education assistant?

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Are you a caring, patient, and positive individual who enjoys working with children? Do you have good communication and organizational skills? And more importantly, do you want to make a difference in a workplace that is fulfilling? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then a career as an educational assistant might be right for you.

Once you complete your training as an educational assistant and begin looking for a position, you will interview with administrators and hiring personnel from different schools and institutions. Hiring managers usually look for specific qualities in the candidates that they select. Check out the kind of questions to expect and how you can prepare for your next interview!

1. Why Did You Choose to Become an Educational Assistant?

One thing that interviewers will almost certainly want to know is what your motives are. A good way to prepare to answer a question like this is to ask yourself how your motivations align with what are likely to be the school’s goals (which will hopefully be to provide a high quality education). For example, you may believe children should have people around them who are truly dedicated to helping them reach their full potential. Or maybe you decided to become an educational assistant because you believe that a strong education system is central to the development of a well prepared generation of students. Whatever your beliefs may be, it is important that you are able to communicate them clearly and genuinely.

2. How Will You Contribute to Life in The Classroom as an Educational Assistant?

The role of an educational assistant is to provide the teacher with the support they require to make sure that the classroom is the best learning environment that it can be. Essentially, the educational assistant becomes an extension of the teacher, allowing for more individual support to be provided to each student.

The educational assistant helps provide children with more individual support

So, if you should be asked about the ways that you can contribute to life in the classroom after education assistant training, you can explain that your responsibility will be to ensure that each child is treated as an individual and receives the attention that they need. You can also address the fact that you will be responsible for helping the teacher maintain a positive learning climate in their classroom. You must be sure that you are aware of what contributions you can make to create an optimal learning environment, which you can learn about in your education assistant courses.

3. What Would You Do if You Disagreed with a Teacher’s Methods?

Some interview questions might be more difficult. This is one that might catch you off-guard and for which you should be prepared. It is only normal that throughout the course of your career, you’ll occasionally disagree with a teacher. If that should happen, there are positive and constructive ways that you can deal with the situation. One thing that you should always keep in mind is that you must respect the teacher’s authority and experience. Another thing that you will want to remember is that most teachers are also life-long learners. So, you can tell the hiring manager how you would respectfully explain your point of view to the teacher. By doing so in a polite matter you might be able to learn from one another and offer students the best quality of education that you can.

You may be asked how you would handle disagreements with a teacher

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Educational Assistants strive to treat each student individually, taking into account their specific needs and how they learn. When working with a group of diverse minds, various learning styles and ways of thinking are present. Common styles are visual (through pictures, images and spatial understanding), auditory (music and sound), kinesthetic (through the hands, body and sense of touch), and linguistic (spoken and written words).

Adapting to learning styles is a great way to make a difference in a student’s life, helping to give them a more rewarding educational experience. It’s also a great way to understand different behaviours and why they may be surfacing, sometimes as a result of not feeling engaged enough by teaching methods. Read on for a few helpful things to know about learning styles, if you are looking at a career as an educational assistant.

Individual Styles to Apply Learning Theory from Educational Assistant Classes

A common misconception is that each person falls under one learning style. On the contrary, children will often respond strongly to a few types of learning, sometimes with a combination of styles working best. As you’ll learn in educational assistant classes, it’s important to meet the individual needs of each student.

You can give students extra assistance that is in line with their learning styles

If basic instruction is structured in a way that resonates with most or all students, then individual help can be more tailored to each student’s best way of learning. For example, the teacher you assist may use music to teach a small group, then follow this up with visual instruction for a child who gravitates heavily towards images. This personalizes learning and shows empathy and understanding for each individual on their journey.

Thinking Style will Matter too When you Become an Educational Assistant

Thinking style differs from learning style, but the two go hand in hand when catering class material to a student. The difference is that learning style is how a child receives information best, while thinking style is how they process information best. It can affect how much time they need after a lesson to process, as well as the appropriate pacing that the instructor you work with will use.

Linear thinkers need structure and a sequenced format when they process new information. These children need the first step to be completed before they can move on to the second step. They prefer that things are consistent and predictable, meaning that weaving this into your teaching assistance, while keeping your pacing moderate or slow, will keep them from feeling lost or frustrated.

Global thinkers aren’t as patient with a step by step format. They want all of the information available right away, so that they can see the whole picture. Children who want an entire lesson at once and seem to get antsy waiting between steps will want information faster, with a big picture given before review.

A Growth Mindset Prevents Children From Getting Boxed in

It’s important to maintain a growth mindset when you become an educational assistant. A child may excel with one particular learning style, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t excel in a different learning style a year from now. You may assist a teacher who uses kinesthetic strategies with a student who’s very physical and responds to learning through their five senses. At the same time, this student could be challenged to learn through auditory tools and build their skills with learning through sound.

It’s important to give students room for growth with their less preferred learning styles

You may be asked to encourage these developments by blending different learning styles when you assist students. Let them learn through combining what they are great at with something they find challenging, making it less intimidating and confusing for the child as you help them.

Are you interested in an education assistant training course?

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Are you considering a career as an educational assistant? One important subject you’ll encounter during your training is learning theories. Simply put, a learning theory is a way of understanding how knowledge is acquired and retained, which makes it an extremely useful concept for educational assistants when helping students better comprehend new material.

If you pursue training to be an educational assistant, you will work under the supervision of the teacher to help students with their lessons. Since lessons are often built on the principles of at least one main learning theory, understanding the main tenets of a few important learning theories will be an asset in the classroom.

Read on for a look at the three main learning theories and how they can be utilized by educational assistants.

Educational Assistants Can Use Behaviourism to Help Students Learn Factual Material

Behaviourism focuses on knowledge and learning that is quantifiable and observable, such as facts and dates. Behaviourists favour a model of learning that focuses heavily on positive and negative reinforcement. For example, as an educational assistant, your responsibilities may include assisting with grading tests, which showcases behaviourism in action. A good grade on a test is a case of positive reinforcement as it encourages the student to remember the correct answers that led to that grade. A bad grade, on the other hand, is a type of negative reinforcement, which discourages a student from repeating an incorrect answer.

Grading is one way that educational assistants use behaviourism in the classroom

Behaviourism is a useful tool if you are helping students learn something for which there is always a correct answer, such as scientific facts, foreign language vocabulary and historic dates. However, it is less useful with teaching more abstract concepts, like comprehension and critical thinking.

Cognitive Constructivism is an Important Tool for Students in Educational Assistant Training

Cognitive constructivism (also called cognitivism) is a learning theory which argues that people construct knowledge based on what they already know, such as their previous learning, cultural background and their life experiences. Instead of viewing students as passive learners motivated only by positive or negative reinforcement, a cognitivist sees learning as a process of active discovery.

After educational assistant training, you can use cognitivism in a number of ways, including by helping students with learning difficulties. In such a case, a teacher, with your assistance as an educational assistant, may develop an individual program tailored to the abilities and knowledge of these students. You will then help put this program into action. For example, as an educational assistant, you may ask a student to repeat new material in his or her own words. Having a student put material into their own words is more effective than simply having them repeat material verbatim, since the latter doesn’t necessarily indicate that he or she has understood the lesson.
A lesson built on cognitivist principles is less concerned with drilling students with right answers and focuses more on creating an environment that allows them to discover new knowledge for themselves.

Social Constructivism Focuses on the Collaborative Nature of Education

Social constructivism shares the cognitivist belief that learners construct knowledge based on what they already know. However, this theory emphasizes that the way new knowledge is constructed is a collaborative process involving the community, society and fellow students.

Social constructivism sees learning as a collaborative effort

Once you’ve completed your educational assistant classes, you may find social constructivism put into practical use in the classroom through group exercises. For example, the teacher may divide the class into groups and give each group an assignment, like a mathematical problem, to solve together. Your job as an educational assistant may be to help each group by observing the behaviour of students and ensuring they stay focused on the task at hand.

While an educational assistant ensures the groups stay on track, students ultimately work on the assignment with their peers. This sort of social constructivist teaching strategy combines elements of both behaviourism and cognitivism, since students are constructing new knowledge based on what they already know, and they are also being motivated through positive reinforcement from other group members.

Are you interested in pursuing a career as an educational assistant?

Contact KLC College to learn more about our career college.