Her Family Was Helped, Now She’s Giving Back

Editor’s Note: Paraprofessional Recognition Week is Jan. 16-20 in Minnesota. Paraprofessionals work as instructional assistants, help out with special education classes, monitor lunchrooms and playgrounds, help in media centers and perform many other tasks in local schools. Oakdale Patch will be featuring a few paraprofessionals throughout the week, and we invite article comments and letters to the editor recognizing the paraprofessionals at your school.

Lori Dvorak—or “Mrs. D,” as the students call her—starts her day at supervising as many as 150 students in the school’s gymnasium, she said, helping them get calmed down and prepared for the day ahead. She ends the day, she said, telling them goodbye and reminding them to do their homework as their parents pick them up.

She knows the names of just about every student in the building, she said, and her work as a paraprofessional is so varied, she might see every one of them in the span of a day.

And the most rewarding part of her job?

“The hugs,” she said.

“It is hugely rewarding for me,” Dvorak said. “It’s a job where I’m getting out of it as much as I’m giving, and there aren’t a lot of professions where that happens.”

Her own experience raising a child who struggled with behavior and academic issues sparked her interest in the field of work, and now she helps kids who face similar challenges as a member of Oakdale Elementary School's intervention team.

For most of the day, she works with small groups of students—typically three or less—in grades one through five who need extra help with their reading. Each group has about 20 to 25 minutes with her, she said, and she’ll typically see about 23 students in a day.

“I kind of feel like my job is a continuation of being a mom,” she said. “I expect them to be on task and working hard.”

Dvorak excels in building good relationships with the students, said Principal Peter Mau.

"She genuinely cares about each one and shows them through personal attention and through her determination to provide the help and support each one needs to be successful," he said.

Sometimes it takes trying a few different approaches to figure out what’s going to help a particular student grasp a concept, Dvorak said. Many of the students she works with don’t learn in a typical way, she said.

“That moment the light bulb goes off, and they’re just so happy,” she said, “it just makes you feel good every day.”

In addition to her intervention work, she helps out with the kindergartners in gym class and she leads guided reading groups in fifth-grade classrooms. In the groups, students not only practice reading, she said, but also deeper into the books by inferring, comparing, contrasting and predicting things.

Although she’s been at Oakdale Elementary School for five years, this is her first year doing guided reading, she said.

“Lori has been willing to take on any role we have asked her to,” Mau said. "Her flexibility and willingness to help wherever needed has been extraordinary."

Inspired by Personal Experience

Dvorak said she sometimes sees a little bit of her own experience in the families and students she works with.

At age 25, she and her husband took in her 6-year-old nephew who had behavior problems and academically, she said.

“We were literally married six months and had no idea what to do,” she said.

They enrolled him in Weaver Elementary School and were “taken by the hand,” she said.

“I found so much support and help and guidance and literally, it changed his world around, and it changed my husband’s world and my world,” she said.

Dvorak had worked in business as an accountant before choosing to stay home with her kids—she now has four that range from age 14 to 27. She’d never considered a career in teaching, but when she decided to return to the workforce, that experience she’d had at Weaver Elementary stuck with her.

“It really touched me,” she said. “I wanted to give back because I felt that we had just been very blessed with all of the help and guidance that we had.”

She has worked for District 622 since 2003, spending time at Weaver and Webster elementary schools before starting at Oakdale Elementary five years ago.

Her nephew—whom she considers a son—is now 27. He’s successful, happy and a father himself, she said, and now she’s busy helping other students achieve similar success.

“Many a student has been impacted by Lori’s work,” Principal Mau said. “Students have been more successful academically, more confident in their abilities and developed more self-esteem as a result of the work Mrs. Dvorak does at Oakdale Elementary.”