For 19 years, Lakeisha Warren was a helping hand in Western Avenue School classrooms.
Warren was a paraprofessional, the person called upon to give a student a one-to-one lesson that came with a smile and encouragement. She retired at the end of the school year.
For 19 years, Lakeisha Warren was a helping hand in Western Avenue School classrooms.
Warren was a paraprofessional, the person called upon to give a student a one-to-one lesson that came with a smile and encouragement. She retired at the end of the school year.
“I support the teacher, reinforce what the teacher teaches,” she said. Over her years of service, she worked with a number of teachers at the Flossmoor school and in conjunction with a student’s case manager.
If she’d developed a special relationship with a student, she sometimes would stay with the student for the next year.
While Western serves students kindergarten through fifth grade, Warren stayed with the younger children, mostly kindergarten and first grade. “I love the babies,” she said.
Warren, of Chicago, had been helping her mother run a Mailboxes Etc. store before she came to District 161. At the time, Warren didn’t need a special certification, but today paraprofessionals do have to pass a test to get certified. Still, Warren kept up with changes in education attending training sessions at least three times a year to learn how to help special needs students.
She said she started as a paraprofessional “at the district office with early childhood. That was a classroom for severe kids with special needs.”
Over time, she transitioned to Western Avenue School and found her role with assisting students who mostly were in the instructional needs class and typically needed special help mastering the subject matter. This year she was in a general education class.
“We have plenty of work for kindergarten and first grade. We teach spelling, writing, it’s pretty much something every day,” she said.
Warren’s days at Western Avenue are finished now, but she’s not the retiring type. She is opening a laundry service, and she bought a food truck that she hopes to have on the road by October.
