The other thing is, whilst many of the teacher's assistants are great and an asset to the classroom, some are failed wannabe teachers who were failed for very good reason
. There seem to be very few hiring criteria here. We have one who really doesn't seem to like kids at all and is very short tempered and mean to the kids, picking favorites and making little secret of it, and we had another whose charge was explosive and occasionally needed restraining. She was too overweight/unfit to move fast enough to get to him in time. Fortunately she got reassigned. She's a lovely person, but really, that was a poor match-up.