Nurse Named NEA SISP Fellow

By Sheila Caldwell, BSN, RN, CSN-NJ

“Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.”

This quote from H. Jackson Brown Jr., the author of Life’s Little Instruction Book, holds great significance for me as I embark on an opportunity that I want to share with you. I was selected by the National Education Association (NEA) as their first specialized instructional support personnel (SISP) Fellow for the 2021-22 school year.

NEA describes SISPs as the staff in a school who work with teachers, educational support professionals, parents, community members, and other education stakeholders to help students remove learning barriers while examining their individual strengths and talents, interests and insecurities. SISPs include school nurses, like me, as well as school counselors, psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists, library media specialists, speech-language pathologists and others.

Let me step back for a moment to give you a little bit of the background that has led me to have this amazing opportunity. It is the result of a journey for which I have been taking “dance lessons” throughout my life. I will be sharing this latest journey with you in a monthly post on njea.org that, this month, is being introduced in print in the NJEA Review.

You likely had seen or heard me in one of…