The first full week of March is designated as Classified Employee Appreciation Week. At Clackamas ESD alone, we have more than 50 types of classified jobs. These are people who touch every corner of our agency’s work and the districts we support, from providing hands-on help to teachers, children and families, to filling endless behind-the-scenes roles to keep buildings and teams safe, cared for and high-functioning.
This Classified Employee Appreciation Week, we’re highlighting five of our more than 200 classified staff members and contractors, to provide a peek into the diverse ways this large group of employees lives our mission of service. We appreciate our entire classified team and the meaningful work they do.
June McCoy is an educational assistant in our Life Enrichment Education Program (LEEP), which provides comprehensive education for students with complex disabilities and communication needs.
Educational assistants support our special education teachers and work closely with our students to help them achieve their full potential. This year, June works in a classroom at North Clackamas High School with 16-to-18-year-old students living with autism. June describes her role as “meeting the needs of the kids, meeting them where they’re at, and that requires wearing a lot of different hats.”
June became interested in working as an educational assistant when she wanted to return to work after her three children started school. She had previously worked in retail management, which required a lot of travel and working on holidays, so she sought work that was more compatible with her children’s school schedules. June started off in the Colton School District, and in 2010, she began working at Clackamas ESD.
“It allowed me to feel like I was helping people, contributing, but yet I could still have time for my kids,” June shares.
June continues to work as an educational assistant because of the positive impact her work has on her students’ family lives.
“When you see kids being able to interact with their family on outings and things like that, because of what we’ve worked on at school, that makes you feel really good,” she explains. “When kids can suddenly be independent at something you’re like, ‘yes!’”
The pandemic brought changes to all of our lives, and LEEP classrooms were no exception.
There was a period when a series of substitute teachers were leading the class until the right permanent teacher could be found. June stepped up and helped provide consistency for her students.
“We had rotating staff each day and that’s really hard on our kids. So I just started going ahead and running the Google Slides,” June reports. “I was able to utilize that to keep the classroom consistent, so, if nothing else, I was there every day and the kids had something that they knew would be the same. Consistency and structure are so important. They’re not going to do anything new if they don’t feel safe.”
