Randi’s coffee station at Nathan Hale for staff on Wednesday. Nathan Hale prepares for new school year ahead. Linda Randi has prepared a coffee station for her Nathan Hale School colleagues at around 6 a.m. everyday for the last 42 years. With the start of the new school year approachin g on Monday, Randi, New Haven’s 2026 paraprofessional of the year, kicked off another year of her tradition of keeping Nathan Hale staff awake and energized — at least through the morning. While paras’ first day back was Friday, Randi volunteered to go in on Wednesday, to welcome teachers back with a hot cup of joe as they prepped the school building for the year. She set out Keurig cups, teas, sweeteners, and milks in the staff kitchen. “This is what I do everyday,” she said. This year is Randi’s 42nd year as a paraprofessional at Nathan Hale. At the end of the 2025-26 school year, the district announced that Randi, 71, was selected to receive the districtwide Para of the Year and Teachers, Administrators, Parents, and Support Staff (TAPS) award for her decades of work. Randi’s journey of becoming a para was “born out of the most challenging times of my life,” she recalled. In 1985 Randi began volunteering at Nathan Hale after the sudden passing of her husband. Her children were 3 and 6 years old at the time. “I knew I wanted to remain close to them as we navigated this new reality together,” she said. After volunteering, Randi joined the district’s former “Write to Read” program, which later pushed her to become a paraprofessional. Paraprofessionals serve as unlicensed educators who support teachers in the classroom. Randi does a lot. The week before, she had distributed school supplies provided by the school’s partnership with Amazon, in a pop-up for families to get free supplies and toiletries. (For years, Nathan Hale has partnered with Amazon to get its returned products in good condition to provide to families and staff at the school at no cost.) On Wednesday, she volunteered from 8 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. for teachers’ first day back, helping many of them as they cleaned, organized, and set up their classrooms for the fall. Randi also reunited with Nathan Hale kindergarten teacher Danielle Herrmann, whom she has been running a classroom with for the past 16 years. She joked that after 42 years, she has still yet to graduate from kindergarten. She credited her students with keeping her young, as well as her colleagues for decades of support. Randi emphasized just how impactful having a supportive Pre-K-2 team is, especially when it comes to dedicating yourself to a school district for decades. “They are my family,” she said. “Even on days when you’re dealing with something in your personal life, coming in feels like a pick-me-up because they all have my back.” In between setting up the classroom with Herrmann, Randi checked in on other colleagues on the same floor, like first-grade teacher Briana Amodio and para Denise Cusack, who has worked in the district for 31 years. They were making their classroom phonics wall welcoming and getting their storage bins labeled. Denise Cusack and Briana Amodio. Mindy Canalori and Lucy Prokop. Herrmann, a veteran educator of 28 years, reflected on the excitement of starting a new school year, describing it as a “fresh start.” After working together for over a decade, Herrmann and Randi described their partnership as para and teacher as a “match made in heaven.” Her own decades of experience and partnership with Randi will inform her throughout the year. She said she also is learning from her own daughter, Mariella Herrmann, a first-year Head Start teacher who recently was hired and will start her career at Nathan Hale this year. During Wednesday’s prep day, Randi set extra supplies to the side, like rolls of tape and Expo markers, for Herrmann to pick them up and pass them on to Mariella to stock up her own classroom. “We’re so in sync. She knows when I put something down, where to put it,” Herrmann said. They prepped their classroom Wednesday to help their kindergarteners learn 125 sight words by the end of the year. With a classroom of 26 students, Herrmann said it’s “necessary” to have support from a paraprofessional daily. As Randi cleaned out the classroom’s storage closet, she made a pile of oversized books that were used for a decades-old reading curriculum the district once had. She planned to pass them along to the preschool teachers down the hall, like Hermann’s daughter Mariella, to build up her classroom reading corner and library. Herrmann, meanwhile, designated a plastic storage bin as the new home of all cleaning supplies for the classroom. She filled it with wet cleaning wipes, tissue boxes, and hand soap. She next worked on the other side of the classroom to organize the class’ bus list to help her and Randi know who takes the bus and who is a walker. Checking out what’s stored away… …and finding her lost handmade board game for students! Around 15 years ago, Randi learned that her students had never played games like Chutes and Ladders, so she crafted her own classroom board game for the students to play. While cleaning out the storage closet on Wednesday, Randi celebrated finding her second laminated, handmade board game that had slipped behind a cabinet of stored materials. During the school year, Randi hosts morning meetings for her kindergarteners daily, which task the students with singing songs to identify the days of the week and learning to count to 100 then back down to one. As Herrmann teaches lessons in math or creative writing, Randi works with students in small groups or individually on the same lessons. Randi passes extra supplies to Herrmann to pass to Mariella. Mariella in her first preschool classroom Wednesday. Mariella spent Wednesday morning sifting through her new classroom’s exciting belongings and adding her own touches. She found a full collection of hand puppets, each labeled with a letter of the alphabet that seemed to have lacked use in recent years. So she cleaned them up and placed them in the corner of her preschool classroom to use this year. Mariella grew up watching her mom teach and spent much of her childhood alongside many of Nathan Hale’s veteran educators. “I feel like I’m already apart of the family, which I know will make my first year memorable,” she said. She feels extra supported by her mother and Randi because she can talk to them about what her students will need in preschool to be successful kindergartners. As Herrmann and Randi got their room together, second-grade teacher Lorena Lubanda joined them. While the group talked about the year ahead, Lubanda used thumb tacks to put up Randi and Herrmann’s alphabet letters. The staff were able to prepare their classroom spaces between 8 a.m and 1:30 p.m. As time passed, more and more boxes were emptied, creating piles on piles of broken down boxes representing a new school year. In just a few hours, Randi and Herrmann’s classroom welcomed new stools, textbooks, and play-dress-up stations. Many staffers agreed they would benefit from having more than three days before the start of the school year to prepare their rooms. In another kindergarten classroom, led by educator Mindy Canalori and 31-year para Lucy Prokop, Prokop brought out a hula hoop to practice showing off her skills to her new students on the first day of school. Prokop is a New Haven native who volunteered at Nathan Hale 31 years ago. After three years of volunteering, veteran staff like Randi encouraged her to become a para. While she said she still enjoys the job, along with her colleagues, Prokop said that it’s sad that paraprofessionals are not paid more. “Our minds, just like teachers, are always on our kids. Inside school and out,” she said. She argued that para support should be offered up to the fourth grade. That’s because they offer not just extra eyes and instruction in the classroom but also extra hugs and listening ears for students. “That extra body in classroom can mean so much to teacher and students,” she said. Canalori agreed on Wednesday, telling Prokop, “I would be lost without you.” Lucy Prokop practices hula hooping to show students. The post Para Of The Year Readies Kindergarten Classroom appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less