Non-Instructional Professional Staff Member That Was Most

¶ … non-instructional professional staff member that was most influential to my work at a middle school was named Jon. Jon was actually a custodian. However, he had been employed in the service of this particular educational institution for some time. As such, he was familiar with most of the students, and had seen them enter the school in sixth grade and watched them progress to their eighth grade graduation. He had also seen the same process for most of their brothers and sisters.

He was thoroughly familiar with the faculty and the other non-instructional professionals at the school. Moreover, he was still a young man and seemed to have a pulse for the students, the schools, and the faculty as well.

Because of his increasing familiarity with just about everyone who traversed through this particular middle school on a regular basis during my tenure working there, Jon was a valuable resource to virtually all of these people -- the teachers, their helpers, the students, the other employees there, and even the family members of the students. He was thus able to influence student achievement from an amalgamation of virtually all of these perspectives.

For instance, if he saw students engaged in acts of truancy while on or near campus, he was not automatically compelled to report those activities to school personnel (since his job was essentially to maintain the sanitation of this particular institution). However, because he had such a good relationship with these students, he would frequently counsel them, see why they were not attending class, and occasionally attempt to help them with whatever larger issues they had that were at the core of their truancy.

These issues spanned a number of different problems from substance abuse to discord in home settings, and are those frequently addressed by social workers (Clark County School District, 2014). Therefore, by directly interacting with students in time of need, Jon was able to produce an impact on student achievement. There were also some ways in which Jon's influence with me, and with other teachers and educators, was able to positively impact the achievement of students. There was one particular student I was working with who had a disciplinary problem.

I had to constantly send him to the principal's office. Before long, he had taken a disliking to me. I was actually working with this student during the time in which there was a plethora of shootings related to and involving people working at school sites. I was not sure what sort of intentions this student might have had for me.

In this particular instance, I actually expressed some of my concern to Jon, who was very familiar with this student since Jon had seen two of his siblings pass through the school prior. He was able to alleviate my safety concerns, and actually provide information that was at the source of this student's behavior problem. I was able to contact this student's family about these larger issues, and we established a relationship that enabled the student, Richard, to improve his behavior and his academic performance.

In this respect, Jon clearly demonstrated the sentiment behind the statement that "Non-instructional employees are the support staff" (Flowers, 1989). The unifying factor between Jon's help with my situation and with that of the.