Jeff Running: 'I Wanted to Work With Kids and Learn From Other Teachers'

Editor's Note: Gov. Mark Dayton declared Jan. 16-20 as Paraprofessional Recognition Week. All this week, Richfield Patch is featuring a series of articles on paraprofessionals within Richfield schools—all suggested by school administrators, teachers, staff members and parents.

After heading to the University of North Dakota as a business major in the fall of 2004, Jeff Running found the field wasn’t for him and that he needed to regroup.

“I started thinking about all the positive experiences that I had as a student growing up and all the teachers that had a great impact on me,” Running told Richfield Patch. “And I thought, ‘Yeah. I can do this.’”

Running, the head coach of the golf team, has a teaching degree and license to teach fifth- through 12th-grade social studies, but has found opportunities for teaching positions difficult to come by.

“I wanted to work in a school,” he said. “I wanted something full time where I could be working with kids and learning from other teachers.”

To start his work with kids, Running was a substitute teacher for two years before coming on in 2010 as an instructional paraprofessional at  (the school focuses on science, technology, engineering and math). He mostly helps students who are behind in math, but he also assists the school’s social workers. He calls himself a "hybrid para.”

"I think it’s helpful for male students, being that both (of the school's) social workers are female,” he said.

“Jeff does an incredible job leading our math intervention for 200 students daily,” Principal Joey Page told Patch. “He is especially wonderful at executing other, often unseen, but very important tasks for the school.”

“I just use a very laid back approach,” he said of his social work at the school. “I try to figure out the situation, see what the problem is, and try to figure out what we can do to make [a student] have a better day.”

Running hopes to eventually transition into a teaching role in the Richfield Public Schools District.

“I live in the community and coach in the community and, obviously, work in the community,” he said. “[Teaching] would be ideal.”