Helperbird Sponsors the 2026 CESA 7 Paraprofessional Summit

TL;DR: Helperbird was one of two sponsors of the 2026 CESA 7 Paraprofessional Summit in northeastern Wisconsin. It is a rare thing: a full professional learning event built for paraeducators rather than for the people above them. This post is a thank you, a look at what the summit is, and an open invitation to organisers running events like it.

Written by Robert James, founder of Helperbird and a dyslexic developer. Helperbird is used by schools, libraries and workplaces in over 100 countries.

Paraprofessionals are the people who sit beside the student. Not at the front of the room, not in the district office — beside the student, all day, every day. They read the question again. They break the task into three steps. They notice the moment a child stops coping and quietly step in before anyone else in the room has clocked it.

So when CESA 7 built a two-day summit entirely around them, we said yes to sponsoring it without much deliberation.

What is the CESA 7 Paraprofessional Summit?

The CESA 7 Paraprofessional Summit is a multi-day professional learning event for paraeducators, teaching assistants and instructional aides, run by Wisconsin's Cooperative Educational Service Agency 7 and hosted at Luxemburg-Casco High School. Sessions cover behavior support, literacy and maths strategies, student independence, and the practical realities of working alongside a classroom teacher.

CESA 7 is one of Wisconsin's twelve regional service agencies. It supports 38 school districts and 209 public schools (opens in a new tab) across the northeast of the state from its base in Green Bay, covering everything from special education and early childhood through to school safety and assessment. A summit like this is exactly the kind of thing a regional agency can do that a single district usually cannot — pool the paras from dozens of schools into one room and give them two days that are genuinely theirs.

Why paraprofessionals deserve their own summit

There are around 1.4 million teacher assistants employed in the United States (opens in a new tab), according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. They are one of the largest workforces in education and one of the least likely to be sent to a conference.

The pattern is familiar. Professional development budgets flow to teachers and administrators. Paras get a handout, a twenty-minute briefing before the school year, and an expectation that they will pick the rest up as they go. Meanwhile they are the adult implementing the accommodation, running the intervention, and holding the relationship with the student who needs the most support in the building.

CESA 7 marks Paraprofessional Appreciation Day every April, calling paras "the superheroes behind the scenes." The summit is what that sentiment looks like when it comes with a budget and two days on the calendar.

Why we sponsored it

I am dyslexic. I built Helperbird because reading on a screen was hard for me and the tools that existed were expensive, clunky, or made you announce your diagnosis to the room in order to use them. What I remember most clearly from school is not a piece of software — it is the handful of adults who quietly adjusted things so I could keep up. In a lot of classrooms, that adult is a paraprofessional. Backing an event for them felt less like marketing and more like paying something back.

There is also a practical reason. Accessibility tools fail when the person holding them has not been shown what they can do. A district can license the best assistive technology available and see almost no change in outcomes, because the adult sitting next to the student was never trained on it. Paras are the last mile of accessibility. Investing in their learning does more for students than another line item ever will.

What paraprofessionals actually use Helperbird for

For paras who came across us at the summit, or who are hearing about Helperbird for the first time here, this is the short version of what it does in a classroom:

• Read anything aloud. Text to speech works on any website, including worksheets, PDFs, Google Docs and district portals — so a student can listen to a passage while you support the next one.
• Strip a page back. Immersive Reader removes the clutter, enlarges the text, and adds line focus for students who lose their place.
• Change how text looks. Dyslexia-friendly fonts, letter spacing, color overlays and rulers, set once per student and remembered.
• Support writing. Voice typing and dictation for students who know the answer but stall at the keyboard.
• Work on Chromebooks. It lives in the browser, so there is nothing for a para to install or troubleshoot on a managed device. Our teacher's guide to accessibility tools on school Chromebooks walks through the setup.

If your district wants to look at it properly, Helperbird for Education covers deployment through Google Admin and Microsoft, and we are happy to run a session for support staff rather than just for teachers.

Thank you

Thank you to the CESA 7 team for organising it, for the care that went into the room — the signage, the flowers on every table, the fact that it felt like an event people were welcomed to rather than processed through. That detail matters when the audience is a group who are rarely the guests of honour.

Thanks also to MagicSchool (opens in a new tab), our fellow sponsor, for backing the same room.

And mostly, thank you to the paras who spent two days of their own late summer learning how to do a hard job better.

If you are running an event like this

We want to sponsor more of these. If you are a CESA, a district, or an association running professional learning for paraeducators, support staff or special education teams, get in touch. Sponsorship, licenses for attendees, or someone to run an accessibility session — whatever is actually useful to you.

FAQ

What is CESA 7?

CESA 7 is Wisconsin's Cooperative Educational Service Agency No. 7, based in Green Bay. It provides shared services — special education, curriculum, technology, professional learning and more — to 38 school districts across northeastern Wisconsin.

Who is the Paraprofessional Summit for?

Paraeducators, teaching assistants, instructional aides and special education support staff working in CESA 7 districts. It is registered through CESA 7 and usually runs over two days in early August, before the school year starts.

Was Helperbird at the summit in person?

No. We sponsored the 2026 summit remotely and were one of two sponsors alongside MagicSchool. We would like to attend a future one.

Is Helperbird free for paraprofessionals?

Helperbird has a free tier with core features including text to speech, reading mode and font changes. Schools and districts can license the full version for staff and students — see Helperbird for Education for details.

How do paraprofessionals get started with Helperbird?

Install the extension in Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari and it works on any website straight away. If your district manages devices, IT can push it out centrally so nothing needs installing on individual Chromebooks.

Last updated: August 2026