Thank You Folks, Good Night!

Remember that episode of Seinfeld when George figured out that he should always leave on a high note. He cracks a joke, people in the meeting laugh, and he figures that's the best time to make his exit because it will go downhill from there.

I'm at the point now where I would like to leave my internship. Not leave for good, but I've been ending on a high note on most days, and I know that this run will end soon. We had a PPT meeting where I had to deliver results to some parents today. The kid had some major attention problems in testing and in the classroom. After ruling out other things and looking at the behavioral scales, we figured that ADHD was the logical choice. It kind of sucks though, while you get a high of figuring out what is wrong with the child, you don't get the satisfaction of telling the parent that you have the cure and the child will be fine in a couple of days. That's the part that's missing. We just get to deliver the news and then offer a plan and a label. Fortunately, the parents were aware of the child's attention problems, so ADHD wasn't a new concept for them. They thanked me for doing the evaluation. They thanked me. That was pretty cool. I got the chance to pass out some literature on ADHD and it made me feel useful, like I was offering some information to help them understand their child better. And to top it off, my supervisor and others told me that I did I good job reporting my results. That was cool.

Of course all this means that I will punched in the face by a 9 year old really soon. I need to go work on my reflexes.

BBC

Racial Balance

So the Supreme Court is handling a new case on racial balance of schools. This court is traditionally conservative so I think it will call the recent practices of schools in Kentucky and Washington as unconstitutional. The sad thing is that most people go to schools that are not racially balanced. I was lucky enough to go to a school with a student population that actually mirrored the demographics of the town.

Right now I'm working in a suburb that has a wealthy part of town and a poor part of town. Children on the south side don't get the resources that children on the north side do. It was interesting to look at a district map that showed how neighborhoods were divided in order to determine where students went to school. I've heard of gerrymandering, but my district is ridiculous. My school's zone looks like a double diamond. All the surrounding areas are a little more wealthier, but not by much. But it is interesting to see how the school zone looks. Who was responsible for determining which streets were in our zone? How is that determined? It just doesn't seem completely legit.

BBC