In this YouTube monologue, special education teacher Michelle from The Autism Helper explains how and why teachers should show appreciation for paraprofessionals. She outlines a practical system that begins each school year with a free favorites survey (from Simply Special Ed) to learn each paraprofessional’s preferred drinks, snacks, and small treats. Using that information, she plans personalized gestures such as bringing donuts, gifting favorite drinks, shea butter, candy, and makeup items, and creating custom thank‑you cards with Canva (free for educators). She notes that Paraprofessional Appreciation Day falls on the first Wednesday in April, but stresses that appreciation should be ongoing. Michelle estimates the cost at about $25 per paraprofessional and emphasizes that these gestures strengthen relationships, foster a cohesive team, and improve the classroom environment. She invites viewers to share their own ideas and promotes her channel and resources for autism support.
Chapters
It's no secret that special education teachers rely on their paraprofessionals to help us get through the school year. Whether it's Christmas, whether it's the end of the school year, whether it's Paraprofessional Appreciation Day, we teachers need to show that we appreciate our paraprofessionals, and let's talk about how we can do that. I'm Michelle with The Autism Helper. I'm a primary self-contained special education teacher, and this is my classroom. This year in my classroom, I have 3 full-time paraprofessionals and 1 full-time one-on-one paraprofessional. So, I have a lot of gifts to buy if I'm going to do gifts, but I need to show them that I appreciate them because they do work so hard. So, for starters, at the beginning of every school year, I do this favorites survey with my paraprofessionals. I get this for free from Simply Special Ed, and this just lets me know little things that my paraprofessionals like, like their favorite drink, their favorite bagel, what kind of donut they like, because this allows me to just stop in on a Tuesday morning, get a dozen donuts, and say, "Hey girls, have some donuts. I appreciate you. Let's get through this week together." This also allows me to plan for Christmas gifts or birthday gifts if I'm going to do that, or even end of the year gifts for my paraprofessionals. Okay, so if you didn't know, the first Wednesday in April is Paraprofessional Appreciation Day. And if you miss this day, it's okay. Your paraprofessionals will forgive you as long as you have that relationship with them and you show them that you appreciate them when you can. So in here, everyone's getting their favorite drink from my favorites form that I gave them. It's springtime, so Everyone is getting a shave oil. The paraprofessionals that I have in my classroom are all female. Then they're getting a shea body butter and then a bag of candy and some little just makeup items that I have been kind of just collecting over the months. And so I'm going to put this together. Everyone's going to get a bag and I'm going to give you— give them a thank you card as well with it. Here is my thank you card that I made. If you have not heard of canva.com, this is where I created this. This was a template. I changed the wording. I maybe added a picture here. It took me 5 minutes. Now with Canva, if you're an educator, you get a free professional account. I highly recommend looking into it. It really shows my paraprofessionals that I took the time to make something personal for them. All right, so here are my finalized paraprofessional gifts, and I do have 5 here because there is a paraprofessional that works at our school who comes in on a regular basis and just kind of helps out when she's needed, and I want to include her in the appreciation as well. So collectively, these cost me about $25 each, and this is not something that I have to do. This is something that I want to do to show my, my paraprofessionals that they're appreciated And doing this helps strengthen the relationship with us in the classroom, and it ultimately leads to a cohesive team environment. Let me know how you show your paraprofessionals how much you appreciate them. Let me know in the comments. I would love to hear it. And for more tips and resources to help you help people with autism, like and subscribe to The Autism Helper on YouTube and check out our blog and resources at theautismhelper.com.
