Personal experience fuels Roadrunner’s drive to teach special education

August 22, 2025

by Lauren Ferguson

As a parent of a preschooler with special needs, Crystal Caesar chose to rearrange her life to ensure her son received the services he needed to thrive.

In the midst of the Covid pandemic, she gave up her decade-long city job where she connected families with resources like housing vouchers and food stamps, and moved herself and her three children from Brooklyn, NY to Hackensack, NJ.

“I had to make a really big decision,” Caesar said of deciding to give up her steady job with city benefits that also provided little flexibility to bring her child for evaluations and services.

Her son was struggling with a speech delay, and with people wearing face coverings, he could not see how their mouths moved when they spoke.

Once settled in Hackensack, she advocated for her son. He underwent evaluations and ultimately started to receive the services he needed. And Caesar – needing a job – applied for a teaching assistant position in the Hackensack Public Schools. She was hired as a paraprofessional for the Special Services Department.

She said the Director of Special Services saw something in her, saw she already had a bachelor’s degree, and encouraged her to become a teacher herself.

His encouragement combined with being in the classroom lit a fire under her. “I started to get serious about it,” she said. “I’m in the classroom. I know what it takes. I feel what the teachers are doing. I want this. And then, I don’t even know how it came across my computer: Ramapo College.”

Enrolling in TA to Teacher

Crystal enrolled in Ramapo College of New Jersey’s TA to Teacher program. The program, launched in 2022 to help fill the critical shortage of qualified teachers in New Jersey, taps into teaching assistants and paraprofessionals already serving in the classroom, giving them a clear, accelerated pathway to a teaching certificate, higher salary, and even a master’s degree, without having to leave their jobs.

Students in the program complete their student teaching right in their same schools, while still earning their salaries and benefits. The program improves outcomes for children while also creating higher paying jobs and increasing the social mobility of graduates who go from earning a teacher assistant salary to a full-time teacher salary.

Crystal started the program in May of 2023, and by May of 2025, at the age of 42, she was wearing her cap and gown at Ramapo’s Graduate Commencement and celebrating her Master of Arts in Special Education degree.

Crystal Caesar celebrated graduation in May.

She has also accepted a full-time teaching position in a special education classroom at Hackensack Middle School.

“To know they wanted to support me and keep me here and hire me as a teacher, I couldn’t ask for anything more,” Caesar said.

Applying What She Learned

In the early summer, Caesar was busy readying her classroom for the next days of a summer program. She was making choice boards, just like she said her professor, Dr. Julie Norflus-Good, director of Ramapo’s TA to Teacher program as well as the college’s Master of Arts in Special Education, taught her to do.

“I have at least three different choice boards because I have one student who came in today who is nonverbal, he’s autistic, and he needs the visual cues to say yes or no,” Caesar explained. The boards show visuals of things like crayons, toys or the trampoline for students to choose from.

Caesar said choice boards may seem like a small thing, but she learned from Norflus-Good that they can make a big difference for students in the classroom.

“When students see they have a choice in the matter of how their day goes, it changes the entire environment in a way where everyone is relaxed,” she said.

Caesar also learned from Norflus-Good how to differentiate lessons, or tailor instruction to meet the individual learning needs of each student, a skill she said she will use frequently in her classroom of fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth graders.

Crystal Caesar is now a full-time special education teacher for Hackensack Public Schools.

Making a Difference

Caesar said her background as a case manager for the city and a parent of a child with special needs helps her form relationships with parents and connect them to resources that may ultimately benefit their children.

“I not only want to connect with the students, but the parents; they need help as well,” she said.

Caesar’s own life as a single mother of three has completely changed for the better in just two years.

“This was life-altering for her, completely life-altering,” Norflus-Good said of how Ramapo’s TA to Teacher program provided Caesar with a path to success.

Caesar said in two years she went from making $27,000 as a paraprofessional to $65,500 as a teacher.

“I have opportunities, I have money. I have support. I have so much that I did not have just two years ago,” she said. “So I really, truly thank this program for changing, not just my life, but the lives of my own children who were able to see me finish something that I started.”

To learn more, visit Ramapo’s TA to Teacher webpage.