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Support staff (music, PE, and art) are the greatest.  They are specialists.  My pcp is a generalist like a classroom teacher.  If I could not have a specialist, I would be grateful for the pcp.  The bulk of my teaching career (16 yrs) was spent in Palo Alto, CA, a very wealthy district with all the bells and whistles.  We did not offer language immersion classes, art, music or PE.  Who took care of those needs?  The classroom teacher!  I do not know what the required training is for an elementary credential today, but I graduated with training in art, music and PE.  No teacher, though, is talented in all those areas.  Often teachers split up the "jobs" among their peers so that the students receive the best that is available from each grade level.  Educators are creative; they will figure out ways to provide for PE and the arts because they DO realize their importance.  We even teamed up with academics.  I taught reading to the challenged learner or English learner, so I think the same thing could be done with PE and the arts until the specialists could be returned to the program.  It will be a sacrifice, but we are living in times of sacrifice and we need to suck it up.

posted 2 years, 10 months ago
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