Honestly, I didn't see much of the monitors today. I got in and did a little paperwork prep for a parent meeting at 10am then I went to the high school for some counseling before my meeting. The meeting went alright. The mother of the student is in a difficult position because the culture she is from makes it hard for mothers to impose rules and structure on their male children. Unfortunately, rules and structure are what the student needs.
Just as I return to the office and sit at my desk, my phone rings. It is the district counselor calling to confer with me about a student possibly needing a risk assessment. The problem is that the incident that is potentially a trigger for the risk assessment not only happened two weeks ago but it didn't even happen on school grounds. The director of guidance, who is the district counselors supervisor, told her to get a risk assessment. My opinion in the situation is that the only way a risk assessment would be fruitful is if the student not only admits to doing what was said (which he isn't) but if he still wants to do it. Otherwise psychiatric screeners would laugh in our face for sending someone for additional screening. I know that the director's position is a CYA and this brings up an interesting thing to note. Or at least interesting to me.
The difference between the clinical standpoint and the school district point of view. Definitely not a revelation but something that might be a cautionary lesson for anyone not in school psychology but is thinking of going into the fielf. I'm going to digress for a minute and get into my personal background because I think it is pertinent to my point of view.
My entire career has been in the field of mental health and psychology. I was an undergrad psych major. My early career was working with psychiatrically disabled adults. My masters in in psychology. It wasn't until I was in my 30s that I went back for school psychology and entered education. I don't have the education background that a number of my fellow school psychologist co-workers have. At least 3 of them have their undergrad degrees in education. My strength is my clinical skill. My weakness is my understanding of curriculum and pedagogy. So my being in the educational system still feels a bit like an outsider looking in.
So my viewpoint colored my perception of this situation: clinically, I know that a risk assessment at this time was fairly pointless. The district counselor had already advised the mother of her options in this situation. But the clinical viewpoint doesn't mean much when someone further up the chain of command wants it another way. So I went over to speak with the kid.
After about 45 minutes of the kid not changing his story but doing a very poor job of convincing me that the incident didn't happen, I let him go. Nothing short of waterboarding was going to get him to admit it.
So, I return to the office none the worse for wear. I have lunch with my coworkers where we discuss children's television. I share my cynical viewpoint of Franny's Feet which is received with much laughter. We discuss Yo Gabba Gabba, which another coworker can't believe such a show exists.
After that, I head over to finish the testing I started on Monday. The additional subtests from the WISC-IV Integrated pretty much bear out my hypothesis on the student's abilities. I go back to the office once again and let my boss know about the "risk assessment" and also see if I can find out about the monitoring status. I learn that there are some of the issues that the monitors have noted and that they don't seem to be seeking to play a game of "Gotchya."
With that, another day comes to a close.
Looking back at what I have just written about the risk assessment, I feel like there wasn't too much of a point in what I wrote. I may have to look at it again and edit or expand on it. Ah well, it is the best I could do at the moment...
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