The first full week of March is designated as Classified Employee Appreciation Week. At Clackamas ESD alone, we have more than 60 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 270 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.
Kellie Reeves is an educational assistant in Clackamas Education Service District’s Life Enrichment Education Program. LEEP provides academic, social-emotional, communication and life skills curriculum and instruction to students who are living with complex and multiple disabilities. LEEP’s team of multidisciplinary specialists ranges from special education teachers to speech-language pathologists to nurses, and LEEP’s educational assistants are a critical part of the fabric of the team. Kellie plays a multifaceted role in supporting LEEP students at Cedar Ridge Middle School, doing whatever she can to help them have the best quality of life.
The support Kellie provides in her educational assistant role can take many forms, from helping a student communicate with switches or gaze boards to attending to their medical needs, like administering medication or helping them through a personal hygiene routine.
“With guidance from our teachers and specialists, we educational assistants help teach students new skills and assist them with their daily needs,” Kellie explains. “We might work toward a job skill or work on hygiene – anything to help them have a better standard of living.”
In addition to supporting the students, Kellie supports the classroom teachers, sharing ideas to support the development of lesson plans or providing guidance to a substitute teacher.
“The entire staff gets along great. We support one another,” says Kellie. “The students pick up on it. They know they will be relaxed and have fun at school because the staff are relaxed and having fun.”
Kellie has progressed from elementary school to middle school with her class, working with some of her students since kindergarten. Seeing their progress over the years is very rewarding.
“Recently, I was reading a story to these three girls who are nonverbal and use wheelchairs. Suddenly, one of the girls grabbed the hand of the girl next to her and held her hand, and that girl did the same thing with the girl on the other side of her. It was big that they were connecting in that moment!”
Kellie began working with Clackamas ESD in 2007, first in early intervention and then in LEEP. Her experiences with her son, Shawn, inspired her to work in special education. Early on, Kellie and her husband knew Shawn was different. They brought him to Clackamas ESD for developmental testing, and Shawn was referred to an early childhood special education preschool classroom in Milwaukie.
“We were impressed. These teachers really knew what they were doing,” Kellie recalls. “I thought to myself, this is what I want to do – return the gifts they gave us. These beautiful children deserve to have a purpose in life with the help of caring hands. That is where I want to be.
“Our jobs can be challenging at times, but the reward is so much bigger.”
