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.
John “Mitch” Beck is a therapeutic intervention coach in an elementary school-age classroom at Clackamas Education Service District’s Heron Creek Therapeutic Program. Students at Heron Creek experience significant social and emotional challenges and need specialized support to address their barriers to success and build self-regulation skills. In Mitch’s role as a therapeutic intervention coach in one of Heron Creek’s skills for success classes for students with lagging communication skills, he focuses on encouraging safer, respectful and responsible behavior from students.
“I get to play with the kids a lot. I just try to have fun with them and build a relationship,” Mitch shares. “It is honestly really fun a lot of days.”
Mitch applies a collaborative problem solving approach to redirecting students’ behavior.
“Collaborative problem solving is a very student-first philosophy,” he explains. “It helps the student be heard, gives them autonomy, and teaches them to find a solution to help themselves in tough situations.”
In addition to working directly with the students, Mitch acts as a resource to the other staff in the classroom, stepping in when someone needs a hand and coaching his colleagues on how to turn a student’s behavioral incident into a learning experience the student can grow from.
“When I get feedback that my support or advice was helpful, that’s pretty awesome to hear!” he says.
Data drives Mitch’s work. Heron Creek tracks students’ behavior at regular intervals each day and rates their behavior based on their individualized goals. Mitch interprets this data to find patterns in students’ behavior, assess which intervention approaches are most effective for each student, and gauge their progress over time.
“You might see a pattern that a student struggles with transitions at 10 o’clock each day and engages in hitting. You can then review what kind of interventions we have tried and whether those interventions are working. You can see if you’re making progress or not,” notes Mitch. “The data goes a long way to help us track students’ progression or regression. The numbers really help.”
Mitch joined Heron Creek’s team in 2022, bringing several years of classroom experience with him. He became interested in a career in behavioral support after a friend who worked with students experiencing autism suggested his kind and patient nature would make him a good fit.
“I tried it out and had a blast interacting with the kids!” says Mitch.
Mitch finds the slow but steady progress of his students rewarding.
“We’ve had a handful of students who have made it out of our room and into a less restrictive environment, from having a one-to-one aide to a classroom with fewer aides,” Mitch reports. “And it’s always nice to hear from the parents that they’re seeing progress at home.”
