Delysse Taylor is less than three weeks away from wrapping up her senior year at Nacogdoches High School. She also spending an hour each day in her mother’s classroom at Thomas J. Rusk Elementary.
Delysse is completing work in Carla Coffee’s Instructional Practices in Education and Training class at NHS and will earn her Education Aide 1 certification at the end of the year. She is also a member of the Class of 2024 at NHS and has already been accepted into Texas Tech University.
Her mother, Tamyla, teaches fifth-grade at TJR, and Delysse is spending six weeks in her classroom as part of the NHS class.
“Who better than her mother to show her what it’s like to be a teacher?” Tamyla Taylor said last week.
Since her freshman year, Delysse has taken classes with Coffee through Nacogdoches High School’s Career & Technical Education Department.
In Texas public schools, educational aides and paraprofessionals often take on instructional responsibilities and tutoring in addition to helping with classroom management and lesson preparation.
According to Texas Education Agency, the Educational Aide I certification process measures the following domains or competencies: planning, managing, and providing education and training services and related learning support services; exploring and understanding needed preparation for Education and Training careers; and participating in a field-based internship that provides background knowledge of child and adolescent development as well as principles of effective teaching and training practices.
“The number of students earning these certifications is growing,” said Coffee. “The students make this program successful, and I’m grateful for their interest in committing to and earning the certifications.
Eighteen students will graduate from NHS this month with their Education Aide 1 Certification, Coffee said. Classes include Principles of Education and Training, Human Growth and Development, and Instructional Practices (the field-based internship Delysse is participating in).
Delysse Taylor works with students in her mother's classroom at TJR.
On Fridays, Tamyla Taylor’s students get a chance, in a relaxed atmosphere, to exhibit some of the things they’ve learned during the week (and during the year). For this hour, the students were employing strategy in the board game “Battleship.”
“This activity shows them how to think strategically and evaluate their responses,” Tamyla Taylor said. “I also want them talking and engaging with each other.”
Every so often, Taylor has the students change game partners; she wants them to work and cooperate with each other in a positive climate.
Despite the gameplay, the noise level in Taylor’s classroom is subdued. Taylor said she sets her expectations with students at the beginning of the school year, something she wants Delysse to understand.
“There’s a lot of negative news out there about teaching,” said Taylor. “But it does take being involved and held accountable in the classroom to make this work.”
In addition to the six weeks spent at TJR, Coffee’s NHS class has worked at other NISD elementaries. It’s in the classroom setting that the NHS students receive an up-close view of how all of this works.
“This shows me how to connect with students,” Delysse said. “It teaches me how to apply what I’ve learned in class.
“I like talking with the students. They have such a different perspective.”