Nathan is Gone

After weeks of Nathan's status turning and twisting in the bureaucratic winds of public education, we received that dreaded piece of paper. My principal summoned me to her office and handed me the document. It was a Request for Records form. Nathan's name was at the top of the sheet and the location of the school was in another state far away. It appears that he's moving back to the state where he spent his toddler years. So that was it. Ironically, my district had just figured out how to transport Nathan back to our school; it only took about 6 or 7 weeks. A bus went to his shelter to pick him up and the family had moved out over the weekend. He's another kid that was a challenge and just when we poured our resources into him and saw a positive change, he moved away. Simply heartbreaking.

BBC

Land of the Luddites

Maybe Luddite is too strong of a word. Technologically naive seems more appropriate. I've been on a crusade to get people in my school to embrace basic technology: email, web-based programs, word processing programs, i.e., nothing fancy. As I've been trying to educate others I've noticed the different levels of technology naivete that people have in my building. My district, like many others in the nation, has moved towards using a web-based program for writing IEPs. The problem has been that only two people out of 6 are comfortable enough with the program to complete an IEP. Everyone else has expressed their trepidation towards using the computer. One of the drawbacks is that the entry fields do not appear as they do within an IEP so that those who are used to completing them by hand do not know what they are looking at on the computer. I remedied the situation by creating a manual that helped everyone work in the computer program with ease. I think that it was well-received.

Another one of the initiatives I started in my building was to post a Tech Tip of the Day. I read a New York Times blog post by David Pogue and it enlightened me on the numerous bits of computer knowledge that I've been unaware of all these years. Since there were things that I didn't know about, I figured that no one else in my building knew these either. So I started posting Tech Tips each day. I thought about sending them via email, but that would have defeated the purpose, since some people are reluctant to check their email. Well, people are reading the posts, I've seen copies floating around the school.

The last week, I've experienced two different eye-opening moments on the vast technological divide that exists in my school. Those on the inexperienced end amaze me. I was asked by a co-worker how to attach a file to an email. I thought that was the lowest, but that was beaten the next day. I was sitting in my office when I got an internal call from another room. A teacher was on the other line and she asked me if I had turned off the computer when I used it in the lab. I used the lab when I taught my coworkers how to use the web-based program last week. I guess I turn off the computer out of habit; I was finished using it so it seemed like the thing to do. I didn't know that there were people in the building that didn't know how to turn on the computer. So I figured it must have been something complex. I went to the lab to see what was wrong. The LCD projector was working so that was one less problem to deal with, but the screen was black. I thought that maybe something was unplugged and when I looked at the computer, I realized that it wasn't on. I pressed the button on the CPU and the computer sprang to life. It couldn't have been that easy, I figured that I would have to do something more than that. Well it appeared that the teacher was pressing the wrong button. Instead of the on/off switch she was pressing the button that opens the CPU. If you're familiar with old Dell computers then you know what I'm talking about. She was pressing the wrong button and couldn't understand why it wouldn't turn on. That was a new one for me. I thought I had seen it all until that moment.

BBC

In the News

A couple of news stories that caught my attention.

Obama named his nominee for Secretary of Education.

I don't have an opinion at this point. Until recently the Secretary of Education job was a thankless job that didn't seem to have a real impact on education. If you think about it, was it the Secretary of Education that played a major role in Brown v. Board of Ed? IDEA? It seems to me that until No Child Left Behind (NCLB) no one really knew what the Education Secretary actually did. Now the cabinet position is more important than ever. We'll have to see what Arne Duncan will do in his position.

A district in Maryland is getting rid of the "Gifted" label.

All I have to say is unless you have a school for the gifted, the percentage of your student body that is gifted should reflect society, about 2%. That's it. A school with 36% gifted students is either too lenient in their criteria or there's something in the water. I need to move to Montgomery County if there's a good chance of creating a gifted child just by living there. Regardless, people want their children to be in gifted programs, but not all are created equal. I would look to see what kind of enrichment these programs had to offer. Is it something I could replicate on my own? Like special education, sometimes the label doesn't matter, the level of service does.

BBC

Subpoena!

So I was sitting in my office writing a report, when my phone buzzed. It was the front desk, the secretary said that there was someone there to see me. There was something ominous about how she said "someone" but I figured it was another school psychologist, maybe a parent. I went downstairs and went to the front desk and found a guy wearing a jacket with a law enforcement badge on the shoulder. He asked me for my name, and then handed over a sheet of paper. I wish I could tell you what he said exactly. It could have been, "You are required to appear in court," or something like that. Maybe he didn't anything at all. I just remember that I was in disbelief because when I met with Children's Services, they made it sound as if I wouldn't be called to testify in court. The court case is a custody case between foster parents that want to adopt a student that attends my school, and his biological family. I had pretty much forgotten about the case, but then I received the subpoena.

I had a day to fantasize what it would be like to testify in court. I pictured stating my name, swearing in, and sitting on the stand answering questions in my most official school psychologist tone. Today the assistant attorney general called me and we discussed the case. She asked me about my education, credentials, and when I first met the student. I had a really cool story, because I remembered him from his very first day of school last year. He has a unique spelling of his first name and his teacher misspelled it. When the teacher was going around the room and asking students to tell something interesting about themselves, the student mentioned that his name was misspelled on the label that was sitting on his desk. I could empathize because my name gets misspelled a lot. Anyway, I kept talking to the attorney on the phone and it soon became apparent that I was not the best person to testify. The truth is, I have very little contact with the student. I don't provide psychological services to him, and I haven't dealt with any behavioral issues with him either. I told the attorney that I agreed to testify on behalf of our school's personnel, but she said she couldn't allow that. It would be hearsay. I guess it's her job to pay attention to such things. So in the end, she chose to withdraw my subpoena and serve the social worker instead. She would be more appropriate, but I'm disappointed in missing out on going to court. How often will I get the chance to participate in a hearing for a good reason. Let's hope that the next time I'm subpoenaed it won't be because of some sort of malpractice.

BBC

Family Dynamics in the Workplace.

Sometimes a school's faculty can feel like a dysfunctional family. I guess I wasn't far off by the looks of this article in the New York Times.

BBC

Nathan is Homeless

Something that I've been dealing with for a couple of weeks now is Nathan's homeless situation. It started suddenly when his mother notified the school that she had been evicted. Nathan missed a couple of days of school and he was commuting from a town 20 minutes away. He was temporarily living with his uncle. Then his mother moved into a shelter, and that's where he's been since. Now he hasn't been in school for almost 3 weeks now. He stopped going to his after-school therapy because transportation wasn't available. The fact that he hasn't been to school is a huge problem, because it's against the law. Mom has no way of getting him to school in our town, and they aren't residents in the town where the shelter is. The law states that a child has a right to attend the school in the town where the family last had established residency, which would be my town. His mom went through the proper channels and made a formal request for transportation. But so far there has been a standoff between the two towns. No one knows how to transport a single child in a safe and efficient manner. There aren't any other students who need to come from the other town. There are no bus drivers available from my town. Plus, no one feels comfortable putting a 6 year old in a taxi alone for a 30 minute ride with a stranger. The case is especially sensitive when one takes into account Nathan's special needs. His label maybe ADHD, but his issues are significant. And we still don't know what is going to happen, but something has to happen soon. It still won't be soon enough for Nathan.

BBC