School Psychologists in Pop Culture 2 - "Parenthood"

I happened to watch the premiere of "Parenthood", the new NBC drama airing on Tuesdays. Click here to see the premiere episode. It's an interesting show about the trials and tribulations of being a parent. But I'm not a tv critic, I'm a school psychologist. I won't spoil the plot, but there is a moment in the episode where a child gets into trouble at school and the administrators suggest that the child may need more than just discipline to address his behavior. When they make the suggestion, they refer to the "educational therapist." Then they mention an evaluation to determine what would work best. That's when it hit me: "Hey wait a minute, they're talking about a school psychologist." But I had to wonder why they used the term educational therapist. Is school psychologist still too esoteric for people to understand. Educational therapist sounds like a possible job title if this didn't recently happen. I see this as a missed opportunity for our profession. They should have been consulting a school psychologist!

BBC

School Psychologists and Pop Culture

I don't have HBO, I can't afford it. So there are many shows that have entered the pop culture Zeitgeist that I never got to experience the first time around: The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, The Wire, etc. Nonetheless, I just started watching The Sopranos on DVD. Season 1, Episode 7 titled "Down Under"featured a school psychologist. Anthony Jr. stole communion wine and showed up at school drunk. He was suspended from school and the principal decided that he should be evaluated by the school psychologist for ADD. The first thing I noticed was that this Catholic school had its own school psychologist. Impressive, but likely, I don't know. There were a lot of things in the episode that wouldn't be legal now. I'm not sure if it's a reflection of the time since it was 10 years ago (1999), a depiction of special education identification in private/parochial schools, or poetic license. First, the principal and the school psychologist strong-armed Tony and Carmela into the evaluation. I don't remember seeing them sign a consent for the evaluation. The second thing was the lack of a PPT. The only person doing the eval was the school psychologist, but I can personally attest to being the only person doing an eval, this happens when I do outside evals for my district. But this has only happened with re-evaluations. An initial would require a lot more evaluators, including school nurse, social worker (if available) and speech and language.

There was a part of the episode where they showed the evaluation. In the scene, Anthony was completing a projectives exercise. He was looking at pictures and had to describe what he thought about them. My first reaction was, "What test is that?" then I remembered that for test security they wouldn't be able to show an actual test. I thought the school psychologist's demeanor was dead-on. Even his noncommital speech about the "possibility" of having ADD was classic. I think it was interesting how the different Soprano family members kept mistaking the school psychologist for a psychiatrist. He was introduced with the title of doctor, but somehow everyone turned him into a psychiatrist. All in all, it was a decent depiction of what we do.

BBC