If you've been keeping track, this post is coming up out of order. I know that I have the option of pre-dating my posts and I'm taking full advantage of that. So while the next few posts were written after the fact, these were thoughts I had on those particular days and I'm just transposing written notes into my blog. But I really felt that I had a few things to say about what went on from the beginning of April to the end of May.
BBC
The LA Times featured a four-part series on high school dropouts. Reporters looked at high school students at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys. Very informative. It does beg the question, how are high school dropout rates calculated? How can school districts say one number and then an outside evaluator will say a completely different and usually higher number?
BBC
ETS decided to scrap its plans to revise the GRE. After it was deemed susceptible to fraud after foreign students built databases of oft-repeated GRE questions, the academic world awaited a new version. But ETS said that it would have been too expensive, too long, and too hard to administer. Read more here.
BBC
I just got back from the NASP (National Association of School Psychologists) convention in New York City. It was great to attend so many great workshops and presentations and get some new ideas. As a student, I appreciated the opportunity to see so many of the "celebrities" of school psychology, and of course New York was fantastic. I feel energized to try some new things for the rest of the school year.
Recent article about a lawsuit filed by a parent of a special education student. The parent is asking the City of New York to pay for the child's education at a private school. The city is arguing that the parent never tried the public schools. The case is under review at the U.S. Supreme Court. Who should pay?
BBC
These past two days really tested my patience. I volunteered to counsel a girl who has a proclivity to skip class. I took her case because the vice-principal decided that she would need counseling as well as the behavior plan that he designed. She didn't really warm up to me, which was fine, I'm still a stranger in the building. We talked for a little bit and she told me that she wished she could start over. I took this nugget and went with it. I asked her what she meant, and she said that she wished she could start eighth grade over because her grades weren't great. I explained to her that she was getting a second chance now and a fresh start. She told me that she was having a hard time with her school work, social studies in particular. So I had her get her assignment and we sat down and looked at it together. The lesson was on Reconstruction era federal government. There was a question about the 3/5 clause that she had to answer. I practically pointed out the paragraph that she needed to read in order to answer the question. But of course, she refused to read the paragraph and expected me to do all the work for her! When I refused, she asked to leave and I let her. I couldn't believe the nerve of this girl. The look of indignation that she gave me was priceless. I had enough of her attitude so I was happy to have her return to class.
Today, one of the 6th grade boys I worked with rubbed me the wrong way. I really needed his mother to sign a consent form for one of the counseling groups that I run. I purposely went to the school on Monday to specifically give him another consent form to take home. As I went with him to his locker, I saw one of the old consent forms that I had given him a while ago. I made him take that home too. I told him that it was important for him to have his mother sign it. I really needed it. Well, this morning, I saw him and when I asked him for the form, he said that he didn't have it. It wasn't the fact that he didn't have it, it was the cavalier attitude he had about it. He didn't even apologize for not having it. That pushed me over the edge. I can understand not having it, but the fact that he wasn't even sorry about it really pissed me off. This kid really needs to grow up and honor his responsibilities. He needs to understand this now.
BBC
I read and article today in the NY Times about middle school teachers. It' worth a read, and it really opened my eyes to the unique psychology of the middle school teacher. It does take a special person to deal with the turmoil of adolescence.
BBC
I sat in on my first manifestation determination meeting today. There was a middle schooler with LD who threw urine on to another student. We were supposed to determine if the behavior was caused by (or a manifestation of) his disability. Here's what happened: The boy had to use the bathroom and school security didn't allow him go back into the building. He decided to urinate into a Pringles can and in order to get rid of it, tossed it from the can out the window of the bus. Meanwhile the bus was next to another bus, in which a student had his window down. The victim basically had urine thrown on him.
I still had questions about how all of this really happened, because I felt like there were some details missing. Nonetheless, it was determined that this was not a manifestation of his disability, so he was suspended.
It was nice to see that his mother was livid at the meeting. Cursing up a storm and disgusted with him. I'm so used to parents that look like they have given up, or have no control over their kids. I'm not saying she has any control, but at least she cared enough to put on a show. I just hope the kid doesn't get into further trouble while he's out of school.
And that was just part of a crazy day which included a girlfight in which a security guard got punched in the face when he tried to break it up, and a model student bringing a cap gun to school. Good times.
I'm tired. I can't wait for this semester to end. I've got a lot on my plate, and I'm realizing how much has to get done in the next few weeks.
My supervisor posed an interesting question to me. She asked me which setting I preferred, elementary or middle school. I told her that I liked working with the middle school population, but I hate how the middle school is set up. The school psychologists at the middle school have a lot of administrative duties, and when they aren't doing paperwork, they test children. Ugh! They don't have dedicated counseling caseloads. I enjoy counseling, and there's only so much testing you can do. Well, the question my supervisor asked me was "Do you think it (the middle school's school psychology practice model) could be changed?" I hadn't thought of that.
When I think about applying for jobs, I think about how the "perfect" job probably doesn't exist. There is a huge gulf between the utopia of how school psychology should be from the university's perspective vs. the harsh, ugly reality of what actually happens. I haven't thought about finding a situation that's okay, but could be changed. In my mind, I think that I could change things, so that may contribute to where I decide to work, (that and whoever has an opening!) It would be hard to gauge in an interview if a system could be changed to fit my needs. I guess I would need to have some key questions that I would ask of the administrators, so I could get a better picture of how well I would fit.
BBC
For the first time I had a dream about work. It started with me working on an evaluation of a child that will likely qualify as Intellectually Disabled (ID) and a mother who is resistant to that label. Everyone on the team knows the history and knows that the mom doesn't want this label. I've been working on building a solid case for having this child properly labeled. He's in middle school and is currently labeled ADHD. I'll admit there is some evidence of attention problems but the child is having all sorts of difficulties. I think his current IEP has close to 10 academic goals alone!
I've been thinking about this for a while because I accepted the challenge of pushing for appropriate services and diagnosis for the child. I just feel that the mother thinks that her child just needs intense instruction and that he's easily distracted. It's so much more than that.
So I was working on scoring adaptive scales before I went to sleep, then I dreamed about the upcoming meeting, and then woke up and continued to think about it. I'll be glad when its over. After checking his records today, I found that a neuropsychologist had made a similar diagnosis years ago, so I know that another qualified person tried to approach the diagnosis. Maybe I could use that to my advantage.
BBC
I think it is safe to say that whatever kids were doing in college in our day, they are doing in high school today. And whatever kids were doing in high school, they are doing in middle school today. A kid came into the guidance office today because his two friends had gotten into a fight. Apparently, the fight stemmed from what occurred at a sleepover this past weekend. As soon as the kid mentioned the word sleepover, I knew I was in for a real treat.
The boys had a contest on who could stay up the longest. The loser would be subjected to having someone's balls put on him. This led to lots of scrotums (or is it, scroti?) being placed on people and someone feeling uncomfortable with the homoerotic activity. When my supervisor heard about the prank, she erroneously believed that "balls" was a euphemism or slang for something else. Oh no, this kid meant testicles, and I knew it. I found it humorous that my supervisor and the rest of the guidance staff could not fathom middle schoolers doing this. I remember thinking that this was probable in high school and a definite in college. I guess I'm not that innocent. One of the counselors came in and said that she wasn't surprised. She thought some of our kids had talked about rainbow parties. My supervisor and the rest had no clue what rainbow parties were. That's when I realized that there is a real generation gap when it comes to sexual knowledge. People of a certain age don't think that kids are doing these things, but they are. I think we are doing these kids a huge disservice when adminstrators and mental health staff members focus on the act being inappropriate and not on the fact that it is happening. School pyschologists and counselors have to know the lingo and the activities of children and youth. It was astounding to see how clueless the mental health staff was in my school. They are just now getting around to using the internet. But there is still so much that they need to learn. No wonder kids get away with so much. People really have to stop being shocked and start taking action.
I'm beginning to think that my sixth graders are starting to get hormonal. There have been a lot of interpersonal conflicts recently. Girls are fighting and boys are being sexually inappropriate. It's just hormones running rampant through sixth grade. I feel like we're a couple of months away from rainbow parties and lewd details on myspace. It's scary only because I know its going to get worse before it gets better. The next couple of years are going to be rough for these kids. Adolescence is full of confusion and emotion. You couldn't pay me to go through that again.
Everything is so freaking dramatic. At the junior high, I had a girl that was ready to fight three others because they were talking about her. First, she came into the office to tell me that she was mad and ready to fight 3 girls. I immediately noticed that she was wearing shoes that didn't match. She chose a more comfortable shoe for her right foot because she hurt her ankle and was wearing a splint of some sort. Anyway, it was really noticeable that she was wearing two different shoes. Apparently one of the girls wrote a note to the other girls remarking that she was wearing mismatched shoes. This is why the girl wanted to fight?! Despite my efforts to make her see how ridiculous she was being, she still felt that she had justification to fight. Fortnately, I do believe that in the end all violence was avoided that day. Whew!
BBC
I had a breakthrough today with one of the kids I counsel each week. One of his goals is to acknowledge his strengths and weaknesses and accept that he has a learning disability. After having some unsuccessful sessions with him, I finally sat down with him and talked about what he as good at in school. It was weird because, for some reason, he was more receptive to what I was saying in session. We were able to talk and discuss what he needed to work on in school, and he was able to tell me some ideas on how he could change. For this kid, it was a huge step towards meeting his psychological goals. This really made my day. I'm learning to appreciate those good days.
BBC
Today I get called to a third grade classroom because a kid said something disturbing that attracted his teacher's attention. The kid was playing a game with other students and blurted out "Raise your hand if you wish you could die," and he raised his own hand. So I get buzzed to visit the classroom.
The child talked to me and I tried to figure out his state of mind. I asked him how he was feeling, and he kept telling me that he was okay. Although, I could clearly see that something was bothering him, especially when I took into consideration the anguished look on his face. He looked like he was on the verge of tears. He told me that he was feeling sad, but he wasn't sure why. I asked him if he said that he wished he could die and he said yes. "How often? " "Sometimes."
Now at this point, I'm taking this very seriously. I'm looking at an 8 or 9 year old child with possible suicide ideation. What do I do now?
In the back of my mind, I was screaming at myself, "Find out if he has a plan! Find out if he has a plan!!!!" I asked him why he sometimes feels like dying and he said, "I have a boring life." I dug a little deeper and asked him what could change that would make his life not boring. He replied, "I could play baseball." After explaining to him that baseball would be possible in the spring and trying to gain more information, I couldn't get a good read on his intentions. He kept telling me that nothing else was making him feel sad. And I was starting to get pressed for time (I hate it when that happens, but I had to be at a meeting later.) So I knew there had to be more but I didn't feel that I had enough time to get what I needed from him. Our conversation left me with a feeling of uneasiness, so I told my supervisor and sat in on their conversation.
She was able to ask him about a plan, which he had none. Overall, her approach was great. She was able to get more information out of him and learn enough to assess the situation. The child seems depressed, so I may check in with him to see how he's feeling over the next couple of weeks.
I know that these things come with time, but I really felt like I didn't know what to do. Correction - I knew what to do, I just didn't know how to do it. Watching my supervisor talk with the child was a great learning experience for me. I hope that I can gain those counseling skills before I'm out there on my own.
BBC
If you haven't discovered the genius of Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Blink" and "The Tipping Point", and contributor to The New Yorker, you really need to read his work. Everything I've read by him has made me think about how I think about things. His latest article discusses the Enron scandal, and examines it through national security expert Gregory Treverton's interesting concept of puzzles vs. mysteries. To summarize, Gladwell argues that the US Federal Prosecutors treated Enron as if it was a puzzle. There were many pieces to gather and once they gathered each piece, they would know what Enron was up to. His argument is that Enron was actually a mystery. All of the pieces were there for everyone to see, it just took the right person to look at the information, know what he or she was looking at and interpret it.
That got me to thinking. Sometimes in school psychology, we tend to look at assessment as a puzzle. We look at a child and try to gather pieces of the puzzle, and when the puzzle doesn't make sense, we keep trying to find more pieces, i.e. we conduct more tests. But what if we looked at the assessment process as a mystery instead? What if it's a matter of interpretation? I think we tend to steer away from looking at the process as a mystery because we want everything to be concrete, make clear sense. But we all know that, sometimes, things are bit murky. We, as school psychologists, are given the task of looking at the murky information, make sense of it and interpret it for others to see. I think that one byproduct of this change in philosophy will be a reduction in the number of tests given to a child. A kid can be tested to death if the results don't support a clear answer to why he or she isn't functioning well in the classroom. Somehow this needs to be addressed. Maybe a change in philosophy could be the change we need.
BBC
Ughhh! I didn't want the break to end. I was in serious denial on New Year's Day. When my alarm went off this morning I had to resist the urge to hit the snooze.
The first day back after the Christmas break is interesting in a school. All the kids are sporting new clothes, new sneakers, and new hairdos. Teachers look rested, and everyone talks about starting a diet and complains about how much they overate during the break.
One of the kids I counsel got a grill for Christmas. Gold plate and cubic zirconia, gotta love it. The thing actually looked uncomfortable. He insisted on wearing it during our counseling session. I should have threatened him with reporting his new mushmouth to the speech and language pathologist, but I was getting too much of a kick out of watching him try to talk. If this kid ever knew what braces felt like, he probably wouldn't bother putting that thing in his mouth. But he's young, what else could I expect?
BBC
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
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
Today was great. It was the perfect way to end the week. I had to finish an assessment so that I could write the report over the weekend and hand it in on Monday. The kid that I've been testing was reluctant to come with me because he hated being pulled out of class. Today I had to be done with the testing, and I was feeling the pressure of the deadline. Of course when I sat down to prepare for testing I get call over the intercom to report to the office.
I get there and I'm told to see as distraught student in one of the classrooms. When I got there, the teacher told me that the student told her that she had a fight at home and she needed to talk to someone. I sat down with the student, and I was able to get her to open up to me and tell me what was going on. There were a lot of issues happening at home. Today, she had a fight with her sister which escalated into the police being called. Apparently, this student's family are no strangers to family services. After I got the necessary information I tracked down some resources and made sure she was able to get back to class.
I was finally able to start testing,. I had been trying to complete academic achievement testing and I only had a couple of subtests left. My student had a math test first, and then we finally met. Of course, by this time he had art class coming up, so we only met for a few minutes and then I had to dismiss him. Then I was off to meet with my supervisor. The meeting went well, and I received a good evaluation. It was nice to get some real feedback about what I can do to be better.
At the end of the day I was able to finish testing (whew), score it, and figure out how it will fit into my report. And the clincher, I was able to reconnect with a student that was mad at me because I failed to uphold my end of an agreement. He had been mad at me for weeks because I forgot to let him play basketball as a reward for good behavior. After using a teacher as a liasion, I approached him and asked if he wanted to play, he thought about it and said yes. I'm glad he finally agreed, because I was starting to wonder how long he was going to hold that grudge.
BBC
So my school really stepped up its security. It went from a school with an open front door that led directly to the indergarten with no one present to check on a visitor's nature of business, to a school with all locked doors, security cameras, a buzzer, and key passes for all personnel. I'm glad that finally happened, that was way overdue.
BBC
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