Thursday, September 30, 2010

Scheduling and Such

The first thing that I do when I get into work this morning is call Florida about the student that just moved back into town.  I speak to someone in the special education department and ask questions about the IEP.  When I go over the academic program, asking about whether the student was in an inclusion or resource setting and ask what the term "direct instruction", I'm told that it means the teacher instructed him directly.  Really?  So the teacher didn't instruct him through a proxy?  How unusual.  Anyway, I found out that the student was in an inclusion program and that they would have provided a resource setting for language arts if they had had it.  Well, we have it so we'll give it.

I see my supervisor and we discuss what classes the student can go into.  I learn a new trick about our school information system which is an extra boost for me.  Once we have the student's schedule plotted out, I email the plan to the secretary at the school.

Oddly enough, my coworker and I head over to the school for an initial planning meeting.  We meet with the parent and it is fairly clear that testing is necessary.  Not only is the child's neurologist recommending it but the student's performance for the past several years also recommends testing.  So the paperwork is done and we are cleaning up the office to head on out for the day.  As we're getting ready to leave, the phone rings and it is the secretary saying that the schedule we sent just isn't possible because there is no place to put gym.  I speak to my supervisor again and after much gnashing of teeth and ringing of hands, we come up with a schedule.

This afternoon, I organize all our previous risk assessment write ups in a binder so that we have a reference to see if someone that has been recommended for a risk assessment has been seen before.  I also organize the kids that I'm scheduled to test and prepare my testing packets for them.  This takes me to the end of the day.

Brief highlights:
  • A student at one of the elementary school, just having moved to the US from a foreign country, had never seen a fire alarm before so the student pulled it to see what happened.  It was not a good day for an entire school to be outside.
  • A student was so upset at the prospect of being evaluated by the child study team that they cried and screamed so much that they threw up.
  • An ESL teacher asked one of the child study team people why they couldn't refer a student for an evaluation.  The student has been in the US for two days.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

They Just Keep Coming...

I head straight to the school this morning on four hours sleep and not having my tea (I was raised by proper Irish people) because I told the parents of the IEP saga to meet me at the school this morning.  I get in quite early and set up shop.  I deal with an FM system issue and learn something in the process about how the actual FM system functions.

The parent and student arrive late, which makes me wonder about the future of the student when they don't actually arrive on time for their first day in school.  Particularly when the parent was so eager for them to start the day before.  Anyway, I get them settled as far as their academic program is concerned and hand them off to the guidance counselor for the grand tour.

Since I had scheduled myself to be available for teacher IEP questions, I attempt to get some other work done while waiting for teachers to beat down my door and inundate me (which they don't).  When my time is up, I head back to my home office to get ready for an initial referral conference.  I talk with my coworker, who has just returned from several bereavement days, and bring her up to speed on what has happened with her caseload.

I actually have two initial referral conferences.  The first one is interesting because it involves a student with Maple Syrup Urine Disease.  Its one of those diseases that you would see on House or Mystery Diagnosis.  Since the student is, currently, medically stable and not demonstrating academic difficulties, it is referred back to I&RS for a possible 504 plan with the caveat that the parent should contact us again if further difficulties arise.

Following lunch we have the second meeting which is one that is definitely in need of an evaluation.  This student gets almost the whole menu: psychological, social history, learning evaluation, occupational therapy evaluation, speech evaluation, physical therapy evaluation.  The child has a heavy duty medical history with multiple cognitive, behavioral and educational issues.

Following this, I go to my mailbox and find another IEP for another student that has moved into town.  I ask the secretary, "Didn't we put out the closed sign?"  The IEP is from another state.  In addition to weighing in at 10 pages long (which is incredibly short by New Jersey standard; the smallest I've ever done was 22 pages) it also has nebulous information.  There is no clear indication what type of program (resource, in-class support, self-contained) the student had; the student is classified as communication impaired but there is no related service listed for speech therapy.  Another interesting thing that I discover is that the student just left the district a year ago and is now back.  That is one of the qualities of the town that I work in: there is a large transient population.  So I do manage to find some information on the student in our records, especially since he was initially classified in our district.

The other fun part about the IEP is that there is no contact information on it.  Most NJ IEPs have the district's address, phone and fax numbers.  No such luck here.  There isn't even the name of the person that completed the IEP.  It doesn't mean that a case manager complete the IEP.  In a number of other states, a special education teacher would actually conduct the IEP meeting and write the document.  But you would think that for accountability sake, the person who wrote it would have to have their name on it.

So I talk to my supervisor (not my director) about the student and the IEP and I make plans to call the district tomorrow.  I look the district up on the internet and I'm amused by the fact that their website doesn't list the area codes for any of their phone numbers.  I guess the district just assumes that no one from outside the state would give them a call, or even someone that lives in the next area code would call them.

With that my day ends.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

IEP: The Saga Continues

I get into work and check my email.  I find that the parent finally called my supervisor back and gave the dates that I needed to complete the home instruction board approval.  I quickly type it up and submit it.  After I drop that off to the proper channels, I zip on over to my school to see what the IEP says the incoming student needs as far as services are concerned.

I drop my stuff in the office, pop on over to the main office and grab the paperwork.  I look it over and see resource classes for language arts and math.  Even with this news, I'm still stuck because I can't find out the number of students in each section of those classes because of the primitive method of scheduling that exists.  I attempt to contact one of my supervisors who deals with the scheduling and creation of these sections based on need and they aren't in yet.  I shoot an email off to her and then spend the rest of my time at the school checking the email history to see if it has been read yet.

My OCD like clicking is interrupted when I'm informed that the parent for said student is in the main office.  I meet with the parent and discuss the hold up and promise to have information for her by the end of the work day, with the hope that I can get their child in to classes tomorrow.  Then I return to my office and press the mouse button like a lab monkey attempting to get another hit of cocaine.  After a few minutes of this, I remind myself "a watched pot yadda yadda yadda."  If this saying has fallen out of common use, I'll put it here in full: "A watched pot never boils."

So I proceed to finish scheduling teachers for IEP meetings next week and craft my apologetic email informing them of the meeting.  While I'm doing this, I get a visit from the guidance counselor.  She asks me about a student that is on my coworker's caseload.  From her description, the child has been experiencing a lot of anxiety/school avoidance behaviors, including an incredible fear of male teachers.  We talk about it for a bit with little resolution since, from the description, the student may need more services than in-school counseling and I would want to talk to my coworker who is the case manager of record.  There are no indicators that the student is a danger to himself or others, so it is something that can sit until tomorrow.

A short time later, a teacher comes knocking at my door and introduces herself.  We talk for a bit and she brings up that she is the school's testing coordinator for the state and district assessments.  She brings up the need for the testing accommodations and I tell her that we've already received the paperwork that needs to be completed and submitted to the district testing coordinator.  The teacher appears happy with this answer and goes about her day.

My time is almost up at the school.  I check to see if my supervisor has checked her email, see that she hasn't, and I decide that I can do more damage from my office back at home base.  I tell the school secretary that I will call her as soon as I have instructions and head back to mission control by way of Wendy's.

After I assault my temple (okay, more like a condemned building) with that food, I attempt to locate my supervisor and find out that they had a half day and hadn't come in yet.  I am then struck by brilliance...or the cheap facsimile my mind passes off as brilliance...and realize that my coworker has the schedules that I need and find the appropriate binder.  I look over the class rosters and check with the law to make sure about legal limits for class sizes and then speak with my boss of bosses since I don't want to wait any longer and want to put this thing to bed.  My boss thinks it is a good plan and I should go ahead with it.  I walk out of her office and run right into the person I had been hoping to see all morning.  So I decide to go over it with her and I learn a few things about the 5th grade.

First, the 5th grade has teams.  They try to pair up teachers so that they all work with the same group of kids across all their academics.  Not just special ed teachers but regular teachers too.  I don't blame my boss of bosses (I really should just start referring to this person as my director to help avoid confusion.  Dear readers, please remind me if I forget) for not knowing this since it is a little bit of a detail that isn't under her direct purview.  And now the big lesson: there are two teams that have resource math and language arts.  These resource classes are double periods.  One team has their resource classes filled to capacity.  The other team isn't filled but someone went and scheduled the one period of the resource math with one period of the resource language arts making it impossible for a student that needs resource for both to be scheduled for both on that team.

My supervisor stares at the schedule in amazement that this could happen, especially when she had gone to great lengths to make sure that this didn't happen.  It appears something changed at the school level.  As she asks the rhetorical "how could this happen", I provide the psychological answer: expediency.  That someone at the school level needed something else from the schedule and changed the schedule without notification.

After looking at our options, we decide on a game plan and I attempt to call the secretary to get the schedule made.  I only get a voice mail.  It is very close to quitting time.  I craft an email detailing the plan and send it to the secretary, the principal, and my supervisor.  I also call the family to meet me at the school tomorrow morning so that we can finish this travesty.  With that I leave for the day.

I get home and greet my family.  As my child is attempting to get my attention, the house phone rings.  At first we think it is the district's automated system calling to remind us of the board meeting (I don't live in the town I work in...that is a subject I have an opinion on that I'll leave for another day) but since I'm in the snow chain, I get these messages as well.  I then notice that the call is actually from my office building.  I answer the phone and it is my supervisor.  She tells me that the building principal had concerns about the plan we had developed and had proposed an alternative because another student had moved out of district and we can now put the student in the first team.  This is all done to the background noise of my child wanting me to help build a road.  My supervisor seems to quickly end the phone call and I think it is because she hears the chaos that is going on around me.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Meetings, Meetings, IEPs, and Meetings

Sorry for the late post, I was trying to catch up on some DVD watching before I have to return it to the library.

After a wonderful weekend, I get into work to find that the IEP I was hoping would materialize has not appeared.  So I gather what information I have and attempt to call the parent.  I end up leaving a message asking them to contact me at my office or at the school office.  I head over to the school.  Since it is raining, I choose to park as far away from the school entrance as possible.  I say "choose" because claiming to be cursed is histrionic.

Once in my office, I get ready for the onslaught of teachers that are going to come down to ask questions about the IEPs and modifications for students.  Instead of a stampede, I get one teacher who has already had their IEPs for a week and two emails.  I then attempt to schedule teachers for my IEP meetings next week.  This is much harder than it seems because I need something visual to see when the teachers have prep or in-class support classes so I can decide whether I need a substitute.  Even with the graphic representation that I have it is difficult because of the politics of being in a new school.  I decide that I'll consult the principal when I see him just to be on the safe side and make sure that the procedure we discussed previously is still viable.

Following this, I attempt to call a parent on behalf of my coworker.  I leave a message for the parent and then document the phone call.  I also notice that my coworker's line just rang.  I check her voicemail just in case it was the parent calling from an unfamiliar number and it turns out to be an upset phone call from another parent.  I'm peripherally aware of this case and call the case manager from last year to get a little more background.  Once I get that information, I call the out-of-district placement for information and get a different story.  I evaluate the situation and decide that the parent's need (to hear from the out-of-district placement) has been met and leave it at that.

I get off the phone, rush to my CST mobile (read: personal vehicle), and drive over to another school for two back-to-back initial referral conferences.  The first one goes smoothly and within the expected amount of time.  The second one drags on due to a garrulous participant.  Both end up being referred back to I&RS for monitoring.

Following this, I head back to my office to grab some more paperwork and to get an instant breakfast for lunch since I have to rush back to the school to be ready for more teacher questions.  I promised I would be there.  Just before I head out the door to the school, I get a call from the district that is supposed to have the IEP for the student I have been trying to get into school.  I am told that they will face the IEP over to me.  I give the school face number since I will be over there.

Once I get to the school, I see that the student lunch period is still in full swing and, against my better judgment, I decide that this will be more satisfying than the instant breakfast drink.  I should have reminded myself that the drink was at least chocolate.  I get the lunch room's interpretation of a chick Caesar salad wrap (you know your in trouble with the salad part comes in the little side salad cups, croutons and all).

I spend my time waiting for teachers and the IEP by trying to call my coworker's parent again.  Still no luck.  Since this is now holding things up, I send an email to one of my supervisors who is aware of the case and explain the situation.  I also document, document, document.  This is very important.  Not only is this important from a CYA aspect but it is important so that if someone works on the case while you're out (like I am) then they have something to refer to instead of half-remembered conversations.

The hour flies and it is suddenly time for my next initial referral conference.  With the exception of my Initial Referral/Eligibility/Initial IEP tri-fecta, this is one of the fastest initial referral conferences I have ever attended.  The reason is that the case manager already knows the parent from years past so it runs very smoothly.  After this, I return to my permanent office.

Once there, I talk to my supervisor about the parent that hasn't returned my call.  She has also put in a call to the parent.  I decide to put in a board approval request for one part of the issue that I am calling for and the other part will have to wait for the parent to respond.

Two of my coworkers visit my office to size it up.  They are the two people that are going to be moving in when my office mate and I move to our new digs.  They examine the office and consider the feng shui of office furniture.  We joke around a bit about the office layout and the idiosyncrasies of one of the duo.  I do agree with them that having your back to the door is uncomfortable.  For me, it is something that's from my previous career and is a safety concern.

After this comedic interlude, I visit my boss of bosses since I try to call the person that was going to send me the IEP since it is now close to 3pm and no IEP has materialized.  I had really hoped to have it earlier in order to plan the student's schedule today and get the kid in school tomorrow.  That will not be my fate.  At the suggestion of my supervisor, I attempt to call again and then take it up the chain.  I speak to the secretary of the other district's special ed supervisor who feels like she yeses me and doesn't get me anywhere.  I speak to my supervisor again and she calls.  Within half an hour, we have the IEP, faxed to the school and not my office, but we have it.  I also get a call from the secretary that I had spoken to earlier in the day.  The call starts off curt but once we both explain our positions, we come to an amiable understanding.  I'm not joking or being sarcastic, we do come to an amiable understanding.  She didn't know that I had actually spoken to someone from their office last week, had been told something would be done, and had nothing materialized.  She made a comment about how business shouldn't stop just because one person (her) is out for the day.

Then it was time to visit some highway traffic.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Department Meeting Friday

So I finally get the IEP for the student that I was told about yesterday.  While I'm looking at it, something just doesn't seem right and then it strikes me: this IEP ended in March of 2010.  So I leave a message for the case manager from the previous district.  There are also some things that are confusing about the actual description of the program but this is more due to the lack of uniformity in the way district record things in the IEP.

One of the emails this morning reported that our department meeting has been moved up by half an hour.  This doesn't leave a whole lot of time to do much else.  During the meeting, we do quite a bit of house keeping which isn't very interesting.  Although, it also turns out to be Risk Assessment Friday and two of my coworkers head off to have some fun.  We manage to finish the meeting pretty quickly today and don't have to re-adjourn this afternoon.  Although we are given an edict to go forth and review the district mandatory trainings, which includes the crisis management plan, blood born pathogens, discrimination, sexual harassment, drug policy, etc.

My favorite line from the crisis management plan "if you discover a fire or explosion..."  From what I know, explosions usually announce themselves and don't need to be discovered.

After the meeting, I return the call from the previous case manager for the student I mentioned above.  I contact her and discover an explosion, whaddaya know...no, no...discover that the student actually left their district at the beginning of last school year.  Nothing is ever easy.  I contact the secretary at the school who has the whole package and find out that while the parent supplied the IEP from one district, they reported that their last district of residence was someplace else entirely.  So I put on my Sherlock Holmes hunting cap and call the next district.  I leave a voice mail message and I also send a fax requesting the most recent IEP and then I hope and pray that the district actually did another IEP or that the family didn't move again.

Time passes and I don't get a return phone call or a faxed IEP.  But I get nothing.  I complete the request for board approval for the FM system and speak with my supervisor about notes that were made on my coworker's initial request for board approval for home instruction for a student.  If you're wondering why I'm doing stuff for my coworker, she had to leave town suddenly due to a family emergency.

Toward the end of the day, I send an email to the teachers in my assigned school telling them about the procedure for obtaining accommodation/modification sheets (which are part of the IEP) and let them know about my availability at the school next week.  I decide to go to the school to finish preparations so I don't have to run around on Monday.  I find my coworker's mod sheets and go to the files.  While prepping the files, I see that my 6th grade files are out of alphabetical order.  And not just by a little bit, by a lot.  I know that a few teachers have gone through them but could they put things back in the proper order?

I finally manage to get in touch with someone in the other district that might have an updated IEP on the student but it is looking really uncertain that I'll have the information from IEP.  I call the family and let them know of the hang up and tell them that I'll call them on Monday morning.  And then it is time to go home.

Have a good weekend.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Long Day, Poor Memory

Today just felt like a long day but I can barely remember any of it.  So I'm going to try to hit the highlights.

I got into work and was told by the office manager that the company that oversees our IEP program managed to upload the information that I couldn't upload yesterday.  That was a pleasant surprise and allowed me to complete an IEP.  I wouldn't have been able to finish the IEP without the assistance of our district transition coordinator, who is in charge of assisting students in their post-high school plans.  Well, that isn't true.  I would have been able to finish it but it would not have turned out as well as it did without her help.

Earlier in the day, I talk with my office mate about emptying out one of our file cabinets and just sharing the one file cabinet.  I have an ulterior motive, which I share with her, to have the newly emptied file cabinet to the basement and use it to store the psych testing supplies that I haven't been able to organize.  She agrees and we move what little stuff I have into the other filing cabinet.  I also pack up the protocols from the evaluations that I did during the previous two years.  I put the date on them as well as the general date when we will be able to dispose of them.  I look at the "2017" that I write on it, sigh, and wonder where I'll be by then.  I move the used protocols to the basement and into a storage room.  The maintenance man in our building move the filing cabinet to the basement, right next to the other filing cabinet that we, psychologist, rent two drawers from.  I mark the filing cabinet with a sticky note, "Commandeered for psych testing supplies."  I then go in search of something to replace the filing cabinet since that is where our printer sat.

Scavenging is a time honored tradition in education.  Before I started in my first district, I was shown my office, which had a very nice bookshelf.  For a bibliophile like me, it was awesome.  When I moved into my office, two months later, the bookshelf was gone.  One of my future coworkers had claimed it for their office.  During the summer after my first year in that district, I scavenged a bookshelf from a classroom whose teacher had been let go.

Jump to the present day, and here I am scavenging another piece of furniture.  The maintenance guy tells me that their is a nice computer desk, just the right size, in another room that no one is using.  I quickly retrieve it and it is just perfect.

Later in the morning, I finally had a meeting with the principal of the school that I'm assigned.  We discussed the protocol for several activities, such as requesting a risk assessment and getting general education teachers to review the IEPs, as well as several specific things like the training I'm trying to arrange for FM systems.

After I return from the school and have lunch, I begin shuffling protocols and testing supplies in the basement.  It takes a while because I feel like setting up the drawers according to themes: cognitive assessment, adaptive/learning behaviors assessments, emotional assessments.  It ends up being a little more messy than that but at least I have a rough draft to work from.  After a while, I run out of gas but I'm pleased with my progress.  So I return to the surface world.

I work on some more paperwork and get a call the my school's secretary.  She informs me that another student is ready to be enrolled and the student has an IEP.  I haven't received notification of this student yet, or a copy of their IEP so I seek it out.  The office manager tells me that they were waiting for word from the board office and she'll pass along the IEP to me.  I call the school secretary back and tell her to hold off schedule.  She tells me that the student has several medical appointments the next day so Monday would be a good start day.

Finally, I work on some paperwork for my office mate.  I try to complete a couple of "requests for board approval."  Unfortunately, this gets held up because I need some information.  For one, I leave a voice mail for the parent.  For the other, I have to contact Phonak, the makers of fine FM systems everywhere.  I'm trying to get a price quote on an FM system.  The interesting thing is that their company doesn't put their catalog on their website and I doubt they even have a product catalog that they would send to customers.  So it is sort of like going to a car dealership where they don't put the prices on the car.  When I call the company and speak to the rep, I explain that the student doesn't have a hearing loss and only needs a device for amplification due to an auditory processing disorder, hoping that this will knock out the more expensive models.  The rep rattles off some names that I barely understand after asking me some questions.  I stick to my guns with the "we only need it for amplification" and the rep says that she'll pass the information along to the person that handles written estimates and that they'll email the quote to me.

I always hate the way I feel after these sort of encounters.  I feel the same way I do when I go to the mechanic: that I'm being swindled in some fashion.  Its the reason why I loved Saturn.  I don't like bargaining because it isn't something I'm good at and take no pleasure in it.  I know I wasn't bargaining in this case but I was working blind.

That is it for today.  Tomorrow is Friday, department meeting day.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Teachers, Risks, and Computers

The interesting thing about today is that I actually made several notes to myself to talk about things.

I'm back from my day off and 17 emails greet me as I log into our email server.  Sheesh!  I don't that many emails during the work day.  They must save them up.  I slog through them and respond to the ones that I need responses.  I get my two voice mail messages, pack up my stuff, and head over to the school.

Once in the school, I settle down to organize some things.  I check the schedules of the kid that was supposed to start yesterday and meet with parent of the kid that started today.  The student that started today had been in the district last year but had been in the process of moving out of town so they withdrew at the end of the school year.  But the move didn't go through and they had to prove residency again.  So the student started late.  The parent was wondering if her child was still in special education or whether they would have to go through the whole process again.  I explained that the student was still in special education and even if they had moved, their child still would have been in special education.  Remember: if special education law is confusing and uncertain to people that have had to take classes in it, it is twice as confusing and uncertain to people that haven't.  Much of your job may involve educating the parents.

A short while later, a teacher for the above student comes in to the office and says something to the effect of, "You know this student is in my class which isn't a special education class?"  I say, "Yes."  "So you know the student isn't in a special education class?"  "Yes, that's okay.  The student stills get the modifications in their IEP, like extended time, preferential seating," I say as I refer to the IEP.  In a leery tone, "Ookay, I just wanted to let you know."  "Thank you, have a good day, " in my best, chipper tone.  I love messing with the normals, especially when they think that this revelation was an accident and believe that my response should be, "My lord, how did this happen!  I'll rectify this situation right away."

I respond to a voice mail from a teacher asking for the IEPs of two students she didn't have on her roster.  I meet with the teacher and get the names.  I also check on the kid with the FM system.  One of the emails that I had gotten was from a teacher of the deaf that has been assigned to work with the student from an outside contractor.  I return the email, asking if it would be in her purview to provide some training to the teachers on how to use the FM system, since I don't think that it is the student's responsibility to teach the teachers.  She says that it is and I send an email to the student's teachers to see who needs/ wants it.  Several teachers had the student last year and are familiar in its use and I'm pleasantly surprised by the number of teachers that are eager to learn how to use it and learn more about it.

Fire Drill. A few minutes of fresh air and then back inside.  After that, I speak to the principal about the process of making sure there is coverage for teachers when I have IEP meetings.  Once I get that information, I write up the invitations for several IEP meetings.  I attempt to look up information on the 'net about timelines and accidentally stumble across this gem of a website.  It is a central resource for a number of pieces of information that is scattered across several websites, as well as the Rutgers Law Library with the information on how to look up court cases that has to do with special education law.

I put some paperwork in the right place and type up some more paperwork.  One of the teachers that gets a stipend for doing technology stuff in the district comes by to see about a problem that my coworker had trying to log into her remote desktop yesterday.  My coworker had given me the heads up that someone was coming by.  As soon as I see him, I know that the problem won't be resolved because we talked about it last week and I know he doesn't have the level of access to do this work.  We talk about what our (my coworker and I) next step should be and he goes on his merry way.  I finish up an IEP.  Respond to some more emails that have popped up while I was typing.  Then I head back to home base to eat lunch and talk with my coworker, as well as meet with my boss.

After lunch, I do some more paperwork.  Then I have a discussion/debriefing with two of my coworkers about a risk assessment that they did at one of the elementary schools.  It was a messy one and that is the problem.  It wasn't messy in the sense that it was terribly tragic or that anything happened.  It was messy in the sense that it wasn't clear what the administration was asking for because there wasn't any apparent threat of harm to self or others.  The student that was assessed had stated that another student had had a weapon, yet from the circumstances of the situation, there was no way that either student was able to encounter each other during the day.  Backpacks were checked and nothing was found.

From my coworkers' perspective, they were asked to do a risk assessment because the kid was acting weird and has a habit of engaging attention seeking behavior, and the administration didn't communicate what it wanted very clearly.

From my clinical perspective, any sort of assessment that we engage in should involve a mental status examination and along with that comes an assessment for danger to self, others, and property.  If a student is acting "weird", then as we assess for hallucinations, delusions, etc, we should also assess for danger.  If a student is presenting with an issue that brings into question whether they are a danger, then we should also assess for hallucinations, delusions, etc.

As for the clarity of the request that comes from administration, it is a matter of understanding that administration may not understand what they want either.  Their response may be motivated by a number of things such as the desire to protect the district from liability or the discomfort of dealing with a situation that is not normal, which can be particularly disturbing when seen in very young children.  In addition, the information that we get when the referral comes in to use has usually passed through three or four people.  Remember the game, telephone?  That is what happens.

After this and some additional paperwork, my boss is back and I go to see her about an IEP that I had written.  She finds that it is missing several things.  When we look in our IEP software, we find that the things that are missing are stored somewhere but failed to download into the document.  I attempt to download it several times but the program refuses.  It goes through the motions but the information won't budge.  Sometimes I think that it would be easier to write an IEP with Pong.  At least I would know the end result instead of this haphazard crap.  I call it a day and make a note to contact the tech support people about it tomorrow.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Monday Q&A

Well, I started my Monday with an email referring to a comment left on the blog.  Cameron left this comment for me and I'm going to answer his questions in between and then get on with today's wrap up:


Greetings!
I am a current psychology undergrad very interested in school psychology. Let me say that your blog has been amazing to read. I have just finished going through all of your posts and you have provided a wealth of information and reinforced my interest in this career path.



Thank you, Cameron, those a very kind words, although I personally think "amazing" is a bit strong.  As for being a psychology undergrad, take my advice: stay in school.  I deluded myself into thinking I was going to make a livable wage, right out of college, with a BA in psychology by working in mental health.

I just have a couple of questions regarding the field.

- I was wondering exactly what the counseling you do entails. I know you have stated that it is not psychotherapy but you haven't quite specified what it is.
The way I talk about counseling in my blog may be a bit on the side of dissuading the lay person away from the idea that I'm sitting in a room with a student saying, "Tell me about your mother" in my best Viennese accent and it may be more like what counseling is today.  It is more focused and goal oriented as opposed to what may be done in private practice.  That is because IEPs must have counseling goals which are objective and measurable.  In addition, you may be more focused on school behaviors but it is naive to think that school and home are separate.

I will say that counseling is not my strongest suit and isn't the part of psychology that I most enjoy, perhaps because it isn't my strongest suit.  Part of that is likely due to the fact that it was an area of my training that was a little light.  You have to keep in mind that, in New Jersey, most school psychologists have post-Masters degrees called Ed. S.  So you only have so much course work you can squeeze in there before the program should really be called a Psy. D. or Ph. D.  You have all the diagnostic classes and other stuff that is required.  I took basic counseling classes (the ones focused practicing active listening, reframing, reflecting) and basic classes on counseling theories (family therapy, etc) but I have not been indoctrinated into one particular style of counseling, like I would get if I attended the Psy D. program at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine which does a bang-up job in CBT.

- What are some of the differences in dealing with the different age groups and which do you prefer.
I haven't worked with a lot of younger, younger kids, such as pre-K to 2nd grade.  My experience has largely been with 13 or 14 year olds and up.  My previous career dealt with adults.  So I'm more comfortable with the older students which may be more due to familiarity than anything else.  I do like being able to have more full conversations (and the older kids may even laugh at my jokes).  Some of my colleagues that have been in the field longer have said that you work more with the parents and teachers when dealing with younger students and more directly with the older students.  So if you like having direct client contact (it is hard for me to get out of using the old mental health lingo) then you should aim for working with older students.

- Does your years of experience in psychotherapy before school psychology come in handy or is it a completely different ball game.

My previous experience was working for non-profit behavioral healthcare.  My first job was as a residence counselor in an adult psychiatric group home and I moved into psychiatric outreach, as well as having done a stint as a mental health screener for psychiatric emergency services.  I've done drug counseling, vocational counseling, worked with medication managements, and been to some of the least hygenic places on the face of New Jersey.  I would say that it has both helped and is a completely different ball game.




How has it helped: it has really helped keep things in perspective.  When I have had a rough day at the school and gotten my butt chewed out by a teacher or parent (which hasn't happened all that much, knock on wood) or the red tape of the school setting has been tough, I just think to myself, "Well, I'm not riding in an elevator that smells like I'm breathing in tuberculosis" or "I haven't gotten choked by the crack-head boyfriend of one of my clients" or "No one has thrown bricks at me today."  When you look at it from that perspective, everything is just rosy.  In addition, my experience with the extremes of human behavior has also made me fairly unflappable so I remain calm in situations that others might panic or become agitated and I've developed a helluva poker face (do not insert Lady Ga Ga music).



On the other hand, the school setting is a different world that has its own rules, both socially and legally, and when you enter it for the first, you are ripe for the picking.  You really need to be able to say, "I'll get back to you" if you feel you might be being taken advantage of or when you are uncertain of what is going on.  But on the plus side, the behavioral healthcare setting has a long standing tradition of "trial by fire" and people that have survived in that setting can get used to a lot of stuff pretty quickly.

- And finally, from the research I have done I see it looks like the demographics in school psychology strongly lean towards women. Does this make a big difference or have you faced any problems with this in your career.
I don't know what it is like in your undergrad classes but I remember my undergrad classes in psychology and I was one of the few men then too, and that was 20 years ago.  Women have dominated education for a long time.  At one point, you would have found many more male school psychologists because it was almost considered an administrative position.  That being said, I have been a minority for my entire career: I was one of the few males working in a group home, on the psychiatric outreach team, and on the child study team.  It has not been a problem for me at all.  In some ways, it may even be a plus since you are a rarity and male students may be more comfortable meeting with you, just as female students may be less comfortable meeting with you.

Again I really enjoy the blog and if you could answer any of these questions I would greatly appreciate. Also any insight on the steps to becoming or tips you could give me would be great.

Thanks Again
Cameron
 Thanks again for the kind words.  As for tips, it really is an individual experience.  I have had a varied career that has served me well but that doesn't mean that the coworkers that have gone from undergrad straight to grad school and then into a school district are any less competent than me.  I just have more stories and after some years in the work force you get those yourself.  Looking back on how I got here, I wouldn't change anything that I did.

The only thing that I'm reminded of is this story: I went back for my masters in 1997 and I finished the masters by December of 1998.  It wasn't until 2002 that I went back for school psychology.  So it is December of 1998 and I'm in the last few days of the semester and I was talking with a classmate about graduation.  She asks me if I'm planning on going for my certificate in school psychology.  At this point, I had never even heard of school psychology and I was thinking of staying in the behavioral healthcare arena forever.  So I say, "Nah, I think I'm done for now."

So lets jump ahead to my Cognitive Assessment class and who should be the assistant for the class?  Yep, the same woman that asked me that.  She had gone on to get her certificate in school psych and now she was helping to teach the class.

I still got to where she was (not the assistant thing, the school psych thing), I just took a different route to get there.  And the crazy stuff that I saw in the meantime is enough to bore people for years.

Now onto Monday!

I get into work, check my email, type up some stuff in response to said emails, and head off to my school.  My plan is to finish getting my IEPs out, get this danged FM system out of my hands, finish scheduling some incoming students, and try to tie up some loose ends before my personal day on Tuesday (my son starts preschool; add proud parent emoticon).

So I get to the school and pull out the FM system.  I call the student and a teacher down to the classroom and we go over his FM system.  The kid has had it for several years so he knows far more about its function than either the special ed teacher or I.  In the end, I can't give it to him yet because it hasn't been charged yet and I can't find some of the pieces.  The student returns to his class and I frantically search for the rest of the pieces and I'm lucky enough to find them.  I then set it to charge and mentally remind myself to lock the door to my office whenever I leave because the last thing I need is for a $2500 piece of equipment to take a walk on me.

I finish organizing my the IEPs for the teachers and send out an email to let them know I'm in the building.  I also begin typing the IEP for the new entrant, particularly the summaries from the previous evaluations while wishing I had access to a good scanner with OCR software.

Around 10:30, I go to a classroom to observe.  It is a resource class with 4 students.  They are doing an activity where they have to act out vocabulary words.  Since the other three have to guess the word, I'm chosen as the "volunteer" when they need someone to act the word out.  I leave to attend a meeting with the principal which I find out has to be rescheduled because the principal had to attend another meeting.

It is getting close to lunch and I'm getting ready to go out and get something to eat when one of the teachers comes in to get their IEPs.  Once that is done, I get my lunch and eat with my coworkers back at the CST office.  Then it is back to the school.

I'm doing some work and the chest pain that I've been experiencing becomes more consistent and aching.  While I'm fairly certain that it is due to swinging my son around the other day and I'm not experiencing any of the other symptoms related to a heart attack, I really can't afford to be too careless with my health so I go see the nurse.  I find that she isn't in her office and I can't find her.  So I close up shop and go back to the home office because the transition coordinator is an RN too, and if I can't find her, I'm a short walk away from the high school which has two nurses.  The transition coordinator has left for the day so I head over to the high school and get my vitals checked out.  I'm more anxious over the prospect of having to go to the ER for a bogus heart attack scare than I am of actually having a heart attack.  My vitals are normal and the nurses agree that it is likely due to pulled muscles, although my office mate says that it is probably stress related.  This stress is not work related.

At this point, it is too late in the day to return to the school.  So I manage to schedule two students, one of which is due to start tomorrow, over the phone with the school secretary.  When the end of the day comes, I feel comfortable that I've managed to settle things for my day off.

I'll be back on Wednesday.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Department Meeting Day

This will be a fairly short entry.

Friday is our usual day for department meetings.  I get into work and have about an hour and a half before the meeting starts, so I head over to the high school to see the principal about the student from yesterday's entry.  The meeting goes well.  I admit to not taking all the stakeholders into account and assuming too much.  The principal plays it off as not big deal since the nature of the situation was unusual.  And that is that.

Back at the office, I check my email and do some paperwork.  I get a schedule for several initial referral conferences and dutifully put them on my calendar.  Then it is meeting time.

During the meeting we discuss mandatory trainings before moving onto staff and building issues.  And suddenly there is the first risk assessment of the year.  One of the other staff that knows the family of the student gets chosen for it.  But really, we didn't make it past the first week without a risk assessment?  Really?

Meanwhile back at the meeting, we are talking about building issues, such as secretarial staff preventing us from using photocopiers in the schools, scheduling issues, distributing IEPs, etc.  Really light and trivial stuff.  We run out of time because the room we meet in is used as the lunch room for the alternative program and the students are on the way down.  So it is an early lunch for us.  My office mate has to leave early for personal reasons and asks me if I could follow up on something for her.  I call the audiologist that did an evaluation on one of our students to ask if there is a model of FM system that they would recommend.  There isn't.  I'm told that the student needs it for amplification for a central auditory processing problem and not for hearing loss.  So I then take a look at the models that are in use in our district to identify the most reasonably priced model.

After eating and such,  we are back in the meeting.  Here is where we learn about the goings-on of the county directors meeting.  We talk about about Naples schools, which are private schools aren't certified as special education schools but take special ed students.  The hang up is the amount of paperwork that needs to be completed by the district and then signed by the commissioner of education.  In other words, a hassle and a to be avoided unless absolutely necessary.

We also hear about the changes that are occurring in the county educational services commission, many of them that are beneficial, such as contract with other public district to house programs, which provides a greater opportunity for least restrictive environment.

Finally, we hear about other districts approaches to going paperless and the issues that they have had and that we are struggling with.  Many districts, ours included, hope to be paperless by next school year.

After the meeting, I go back to my office and spend the rest of the day doing paperwork.  Well, 5 days down, 177 days to go.  Have a good weekend!

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Meetings and Not Getting Work Done

I head straight to my office and grab an IEP for photocopying.  Once I do that, I return to my desk and go over the paperwork that I need for my meeting later this morning.  I start printing stuff out that I think I'll need.  As I'm doing this, I realize that I need to grab something from another room.  I leave my office just in time to see that a parent I was expecting has arrived.  I ask the parent to give me a minute while I locate a place for us to meet.  I snag the "reservation" book for one of the conference rooms and quickly jot down my name.  Then I get my parent.  We sit down and the parent hems and haws for a few moments and then tells me the concerns that they have regarding one of the special education teachers that her child has this year.  She is worried that the teacher is too scattered to adequately educate their child.  The parent also says that the teacher revealed the scores of a proficiency assessment that the class took to the entire class.  I listen attentively and when she asks me what she should do, I tell her that she should allow me to deal with the situation.  That I will visit the classroom several times and see if there is any reason for concerns.  The parent is hoping that her concerns are unfounded and that it is partly faulty reporting by her child and partly the chaos of the beginning of the year.  This parent does trust me because I was the case manager for another of their children and she leaves feeling a bit better.

I return to the paperwork grind after turning in a recommendation for board approval for a related service.  As my meeting time approaches, I speak with the LDTC and social worker about the meeting.  As I've indicated in previous posts, this is a situation where the student was evaluated earlier this calender year and at that time the parent declined eligibility.  Now the parent has supposedly changed their mind but we still have to treat it as a new referral.  After some thought, I've decided to be prepared for an initial referral conference, eligibility meeting, and initial IEP meeting.  While it isn't 100 percent kosher, it seems a bit needless to hold things up unnecessarily.  Little do I know that this will come back to bite me in the butt later today.

We have the meeting and there is no additional information that warrants additional evaluations.  The student is still eligible and the parent is amendable to eligibility.  So we discuss this as well as the education plan.  A short time later, I get a call from the guidance counselor to help plan the student's schedule.

I return to my office and help my office mate organize her IEPs.  Then disaster strikes in the form of a 3 second power outage which results in our losing the phones and internet for more than 2 hours.  After futile attempts to get some sort of work done with out access to any of our files, the IEP program, or phones, most of us decide it is time for lunch.  Lunch turns from mildly amusing to outright hilarious and the humor turns blue and someone tries to tell us about an out of district school that they can't remember as they try to describe its physical appearance.

After lunch, I gather my stuff and head over to the school.  I had told the special education teachers in an email that I would be there at 1pm for them to get their IEPs.  I also know that my office mate has a meeting there at 2pm and that I will be kicked out of our office for her meeting, so I bring something with me to store the IEPs in for the interruption.  On my way out, the LDTC that was in the meeting with me this morning gives me a heads up that our supervisor has been getting an earful from the principal about the student returning to school and that my supervisor will want to talk to me when she returns from the administrators meeting.  Sigh.

I get another great parking spot (I'm worried about how I am going to pay in the karmic sense) and get to the office.  The guidance counselor tells me that two teachers had been by about half an hour ago and I wonder to myself which part of 1pm was misunderstood.  I shrug and get ready for any teacher that may take me up on my offer.  In the time that I'm there, two of the teachers comes by and I also speak with my supervisor over the phone about the meeting from the morning.  I explain my reasoning for my actions and she asks to speak with me in person tomorrow.  Once the school day ends, I gather my things and return to the office and decide to see my boss before I leave instead of waiting until tomorrow.

We discuss this situation and the outcome again.  My reasoning for his return to the school as opposed to another placement is that the student has already been punished for the actions from last year and that one of the other pupils that the student had difficulty with has left the state.  In addition, the eligibility category did not relate to the infractions and, clinically speaking, the attitude the student has is not a disability even if it is a maladaptive belief instilled by the family culture.  My supervisor does see it my way but also has to see it from the principal's point of view as well.  In this case, I think I should have looked at it from that point as well.  Live and learn.  I tell my boss that I will go see the principal tomorrow and allow him to vent at me.

In thinking about it a bit more now, I will definitely hold a 30 day review.  I think I forgot about working within a system this time.  I'm not saying that I would have done things differently but I think paying attention to the system and listening to all the stakeholders as a whole would have made things move more smoothly.  That doesn't mean the student shouldn't get a fair shake though.

My mistake was in assuming.  You know the joke so I won't go into it.  If you are too young to know the joke then it is a shame that it has gone out of common knowledge as hackneyed as it may be.  I assumed that all the administrator that were involved were on the same page and apparently the principal may have been left out of the loop.

More fun tomorrow: Friday is department meeting day!

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

(Suggest a Title for Today) or the Voltron Episode

I don't feel inspired today so I'm finding it kind of hard to select a title for today's entry.  If you would like to suggest a title for it, please leave it in the comments sections.  If there is more than one, I'll choose the one that I like the best and change it and give you bragging rights.

Let's see, where to begin.  I get in and prep some stuff for a trip to the school.  I put everything in my very professional looking cardboard box that was acquired from the room where we store paper for the photocopier.  I leave a voicemail for the tech guy to box thank him and remind him that my email still isn't working.  I then head off to an initial referral conference at one of the other elementary schools.  I get there a little early and find that the parent is waiting already, which is a nice thing.  I explain to her that everyone else is on the way and the case manager for their student has all the paperwork.  Once we are all assembled (I have the geek urge to say, "assembled, like a child study team version of Voltron but I'll resist; "And I'll form the head"), we meet with the parent and learn that not only is this the students first formal education but English is not the first language and the student has been tagged for ESL (English as a Second Language, for folks outside of education).  The family only speaks Spanish in the home.  The parent explains that their child has problems finding the correct words to use in both Spanish and English.  Prior to coming to school in our district, the student attended a daycare/pre-school in another town.  We explain that the limited exposure to English at the previous school and the exposure to Spanish at home may be confusing for him.  We also explain that since their child is tagged for ESL and is just now having exposure to organized education, we cannot do an evaluation.  The student needs the exposure to the curriculum to see how he responds.  We check to make sure that there isn't a hearing problem and the most recent physical reports that the student's hearing is normal.  We also go over the procedure to follow if this concern continues.  The parent seems satisfied with the outcome of the meeting and the meeting breaks up (and we separate into our different lion shapes).

Following this meeting, I go to my assigned school.  I do some labeling and filing.  I discover that the remote desktop trick that my tech friend arrange for me works like a charm and it seems that he fixed my email while I was out.  Now that I have access to my email, I send him a thank you.

I just have to say, this remote desktop thing is awesome.  I have access to all my icons on my office computer, which mean I can even use my scoring software from a mile away.  On this day, technology is truly my friend.  The only problem I encounter is that if I try to print, it will print out in my office.  Still, I think it is awesome.

I send an email out to teachers telling them that I will be available tomorrow to pick up IEPs.  I would have liked to be available for them today but one of the emails I get tells me that I have to attend a meeting that afternoon back at my office.  I also see an email from my supervisor, asking me to stop by and see her about the initial referral meeting that I have tomorrow.

So I finish up at the school and return to home base (Arus?) after picking up lunch on the way.  After lunch, I head to my meeting but first meet with my boss about the initial referral.  I discuss my approach to the meeting, to treat it as an initial referral meeting and see where it takes us.  My supervisor also brings up the student's brother, who I also tested during my first year in the district.  This student may also be coming up for an initial referral again.  I explain that unlike tomorrow's student, this one would need a whole new battery since the testing was over a year old.

After this, I go to the meeting and wonder why I'm there.  I learn that the teachers that I was there to meet with didn't bother to come to the meeting.  This leaves me a little miffed but I do get the opportunity to talk with the supervisor of special ed teachers about a possible parent issue that may come to her attention.  I tell her that I'm just warning her and not to be surprised.

After this, I return to my office and complete an IEP and go through my case load to double check how many of each IEP I'll need.  This brings me up to quitting time (I don't have a Voltron themed ending for this).  Good night, all.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Sometimes I Feel Like an Acoustic Guitarist.

I spend half my time tuning up and the other half playing out of tune.  So today was the day I was tuning up.

I get to work and immediately begin photocopying some IEPs.  When I check my voicemail I get information about the student that has been trying to register in the district.  I find out that the file is still missing several things before the student may finally be registered.  I call the parent's cell phone number and leave a message detailing what they need to do and who to contact and to give me a call if they have any questions.  Then I send out an invitation letter to an initial referral conference.  Following that, I begin to go through our IEP program and look at each of my student's IEPs so that I can print out the modifications/accommodations page for the regular education teachers.  Once those are printed out, I head to the copier and make a sufficient number of copies.  Then I take some time to get them organized.

Its at this point that I finally encounter my office mate for more that a minute.  She asks me what I'm doing and when she hears the progress I've made, she gets miffed.  She's fallen behind me for a change.  I explain to her that I've had two previous years to get a system going for myself while this is really her year starting the school year.  This does nothing to reduce her miffedness.

She still isn't able to get to this work because she has a social history to complete and she is looking for a place to meet with the parent.  I tell her to use our office since I'm heading over to the school.  A short time later, I'm driving over to the school.  On the way, I stop at the high school to see if I can obtain a copy of the master schedule so I can see when teachers have their preps and such.  I won't necessarily need it much this year since I'm stationed in an elementary school but I need it for the initial planning meeting that I have coming up on Thursday, and since I had my shoes on, as my father would say, I tell the high school CST staff that I'll bring back copies for them.  I get to the guidance office and meet the new secretary.  I don't accomplish my goal because the master schedule has some changes that need to be made.  I decide that I'll email the secretary to see if I can get it emailed to me once the changes have been made.  Well, off to the elementary school.

I get to the CST office in the school.  And let me stop there for a second.  Depending on how child study team members are placed in a district, you may find space at a premium.  Not having a "place" is more the norm when you are a child study team person.  If I count my internship site, I have technically worked in three districts. 

In my internship site, the child study teams were based in the schools they worked in for the most part.  The high school CST had an office all their own but it was one small room with three desks.  If they wanted to test, they needed to either use the conference room in guidance (which usually had something going on in it) or a small room in the nurse's office or borrow the office of an absent guidance counselor.  For the purpose of holding IEP meetings, we would have to reserve the guidance conference room ahead of time.  During the summer time, they had access to any spot in the building that didn't have maintenance people cleaning it.  I've heard that since the remodeling of the high school, the child study team now has their own suite of offices which include a place to test.  Good for them.

In my first (paying) school district, each CST member had their own office.  While offices varied in size, most of our offices were just big enough to test in and I would push my office to the limit and cram people in there for IEP meetings.  But at least I didn't have to worry about trying to find space.  At times, it was standing room only.  The benefit to this was it led to meetings ending sooner as it became uncomfortably warm or played on people's claustrophobia.  Just kidding.

In my current district, conditions change depending on the school you're assigned.  During my first two years in middle and high school, again, space was at a premium.  There were conference rooms in the guidance offices of the middle and high school but they were often booked.  So that made trying to find space to test or have counseling difficulty.  And then, even if you had reserved a space, there were often times I would get over there and find that my reservation had been overrun by someone else.  Testing was also an issue but the CST building was close enough to the high school and middle school (less than a block away) that it was often easier just to bring the student back to that building and either test in your office (if you were one of the lucky few to have your own office) or find a little cubby hole to test in.

Now let us jump back to the present.  The school that I am currently assigned to is a rarity.  The child study team has their own office and there are additional rooms that the speech and Wilson reading teachers use that we are able to use on the days that they aren't there.  So that means I have a space to keep my stuff on the days that I am at the school and I don't have to feel like a vagabond.

So the point I'm trying to get at is if you are going into this field be prepared to feel like an interloper in most of the places that you go to.  Try to find out which rooms are free during what periods.  Try to learn if there are little used places.  I've held counseling and testing sessions in the room where the textbooks are stored.  Don't be too proud when you need space to get your job done.  Sometimes these space restrictions may be done by controlling administrators but it is usually just a matter of every available space being in use and no way to add more.

So once I reach my office, after getting an incredibly awesome parking spot, I unpack the IEPs and the mod sheets and get them organized.  While I have great office space here, the parking is the real downside.  There have been several occasions where I've thought it would be better for me to walk the one mile from the office to the school than to spend the time looking for a parking space and then walking two or three blocks to the school. 

Then I not only go through my IEPs but my office mate's as well and compile a quick list of related services.  I do this because earlier in the day the speech therapists asked for a list of the kids that have speech since everyone knows that the IEP program is not (yet) the most reliable place to access that information.  When I check what I get from my quick scan of the physical IEPs and compare it to the information that is on my case load list from the IEP program, there are quite a few missing.  I do a few more random things and discover that I can't really do much more since I still don't have computer access at the school.  So I leave the school and return to my office.  Only I can't return to my office because the social history is still going on which is unusual.  My office mate is usually done with her interviews in about an hour.

So I try to get what I can done, which isn't much.  I visit the speech people and attempt to install a scoring software program on their computer but neither of us have administrative rights.  Following that, I head back upstairs and see that my coworker is finished and I sit down and begin to work.  If my office mate was annoyed before, she is now in the angry range and doesn't even want to speak to me.

Lunch comes and goes.

After lunch I figure out how to make a report to pull information from our IEP program.  This helps me make two spread sheets which assist in making file labels and getting an accurate report of related services.  When I not only do this for myself but my office mate, this seems to alleviate some of the stress she was experiencing.  Although she is mad that I learn how to do this today and not yesterday, when she spent 45 minutes writing file labels by hand.  I chide her for her impatience.

Around this time, our regular tech guy comes around.  He is the one that trusts me enough to give me administrative rights on my computer.  Sort of like Andy Griffith giving Barney Fife that one bullet to put in his gun and hoping he doesn't shoot himself in the foot with it.  Honestly though, I don't mess with things that I don't understand.  It is just such a time saver to be able to install my scoring software without having to wait for them to come over.  And to be honest, it saves him time from having to come over just to log on as an admin and hit install.

I mention my computer quandary at the school and ask him if there is a way for me to be able to access the files in my office from the school since my files are also on a server.  He does me one better and gives me a way to log onto my office desktop from the other school.  In my continuing act of kindness and fair play with my office mate, I ask him to arrange the same thing for her.

Following this, I discover that the adjustments that were made to my desktop to achieve this computing feat may have done something to my email.  And of course my tech friend has left the building by the time I discover this.  My theory is that it has something to do with the proxy server IP but I'm only willing to theorize and not test it out.  Remember the one bullet I mentioned (in comedy, that is referred to as a call back).

And please, let's not get alarmed about the mentioning of a gun and bullet in a school related blog.  Context, people, context.

Monday, September 13, 2010

First Day...with Students

Before we begin today's post, I'm going to flashback quickly to the opening day for teachers.  We are listening to all the building improvements.  One of which involved the new buzzer system that was installed at all the school buildings.  We were told that we press the button and then someone will come on the speaker phone and ask, "What is your business?"  I leaned over to a coworker and said, "As long as they don't ask me, 'What is my purpose?'  If they did that, it would probably throw me into an existential crisis."

So I get into work and start to gather my things for the trip to my new school.  I check my email and voicemail and only get a small amount of information for the student that entered into the district last week and isn't considered registered in my school.  I get an FM system for a student and put that with the rest of my stuff.  I leave a phone message and send an email to the parent of the initial referral I mentioned in Friday's post to try to nail down a meeting date.  When my coworker gets in and gathers her things, we head over to the school.  Once inside, we begin organizing IEPs and trying to get information on teacher schedules.  We also discover that we do not have any computer access.  I don't have a login for the computer and her old login doesn't work.

The parents of the student that just entered the district show up at the child study team offices across town and I ask the secretary to direct them to the school since I rode over with my coworker in her car.  I make another attempt to gather more information on the student's file but only succeed in leaving a voicemail for someone.  The parents and the student arrive at the school and I bring them back to the CST office.  They tell me where they last left off with the registration process and I tell them what I have attempted to do.  I agree that it has taken a  ridiculous amount of time to register them.  I also discuss the IEP that is due soon, as well as the re-evaluation.  Of course, the parents would like to do a formal re-evaluation (additional CST testing) as opposed to a functional evaluation (review of previous evaluations, use of teacher observations, standardized test results, etc.).  Overall, the meeting went well and I hope to have better news for them tomorrow.

Following this, I go back to the task of organizing IEPs so that I can distribute them to teachers.  My coworker and I banter back and forth.  I've known my coworker for about 13 years, going back to a time before either of us worked in school.  I liken my relationship with her to police partners, like on Law & Order.  We have spent so much time together and seen so much crazy stuff that we just talk about anything.

We head back to our main office for lunch with our coworkers.  The parent I left a message for about the initial referral conference has returned my call, confirming the appointment.  I return her call to let her know that I've received her confirmation.  Then it is back to the school.

We finish putting the IEPs in place and have a list of things that we need to bring back to the school tomorrow.  We go back to the office and I finally speak with the registrar at the board office and I'm told that the student's file may be missing something but they need to check what it is missing.  I'm told that they will call me back.  I wait for 15 minutes past the time I usually leave for a return call but at that point I have to head out due to other obligations.  So I guess I'll find out tomorrow and maybe I can affect some sort of change.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Flashback to Last School Year

I'm putting this up because it was a significant incident last school year.

Toward the end of last school year, a teacher in one of our elementary schools was killed in a car accident.  The school psychologists and social workers were mustered and sent over to the school the teacher taught at the day after this occurred before the students and teachers found out.  I was one of the first people in that morning and I was one of the first people sent over to the school.  I was also fortunate to have gone to a training on just such a situation the previous school year and that training served me well, personally.

The response to this incident went very well.  We made sure that all the staff were informed at the same time and then all the students were informed in their a specially convened home room session.  We had a lot of the district counseling staff present for both teachers and students.  We made sure that we had rooms available for distraught students and staff.

Several years prior to this, a similar incident happened where a staff member actually died on school grounds during the school day.  One teacher that was present in the school during the current situation was also at the previous incident.  She came to some of us and told us that the manner in which this situation was handled compared to the past situation was a hundred times better.  That it had been handled with care and sensitivity for both the staff and the students.

My part in this situation was a very small part.  I provided information that I had gathered from the training that I had attended.  Without sounding prideful, I think that information was accepted and acted upon.  But the people that did the best were the school staff that were immediately affected by the teacher's death.  They had a difficult task to do and they accepted it without reservation.

I would also like to thank Dr. Robert Macy who provided the training that I attended through the Traumatic Loss Coalition for Youth.  They are a great organization and if you have the opportunity to attend one of these trainings, particularly one provided by Dr. Macy, you should do so.

Friday, September 10, 2010

The Day Before The Real School Year Starts

I walk into the office and find that the VOIP phone system and internet is down so that limits my options greatly.  So I head to the beast that is the basement mess and finish going through old testing supplies.  I make some judgment calls based on the fact that we have newer instruments that do the same thing as older instruments and choose the more recent norms.  In some cases, it is easy to decide since some of the older instruments are also incomplete.  I finally whip some of the shelving into shape and organize the various cognitive assessments into neat rows.  Feeling somewhat satisfied but still in need of more space for protocols, I return to the surface world and find that the phone/internet access still hasn't returned.

Now this wouldn't be such an issue if it weren't for the fact that I need information from our SIS and IEP programs.  This is definitely a downside of the computer age.  Fortunately, I'm saved from feeling like a lazy dog by a meeting with several of my coworkers about a student that was on my case load last year.  Despite attempts on my part to finalize an out of district placement by the end of last school year, we have to come up with a plan for the student by next week.  After a review of the student's recent history and everything that has led to where we were at that moment, we come up with a plan that could have the student in the out of district placement that accepted the student by the end of next week.

During this meeting, the phones and computers return, which is really helpful for the meeting.  After that, I return to my original plans for the morning: seeing who is due for IEP meetings and re-evaluations.  As I'm doing this, I check my messages and receive a message from a parent saying that their student had transportation last year and now they don't have it and they are wondering why.  I get a slight sinking feeling.  There was a big push last year to end any unnecessary transportation.  I didn't have to go through this purge because all the students in need of transportation that I had last year had extremely legitimate reasons to have transportation as a related service.  My first thought is that this is a parent that has "forgotten" that they had a meeting about this last year.  I know, I know, Cynical.  I look up the student and see that their eligibility category would certainly make them eligible for transportation.  I finally figure out that the student fell between the cracks when one case manager left the district and the new case manager didn't realize that the student had transportation since the IEP had already been done for the year.  After that, it is a simple matter of writing up the transportation form and calling the district transportation supervisor.

This is where I'll start my public service announcement: Be kind to your district transportation supervisor.  They have a truly thankless job.  They get harassed by parents and case managers alike.  Depending on the size of the district, they not only have to organize the routes of district owned vehicles but they have to coordinate and contract the services of multiple private bus companies.  Being on good terms with the transportation supervisor means that they won't immediately be on the defensive when they see your phone number.

So when I call the transportation supervisor, who just got the job after the previous supervisor retired, I give her both my congratulations and condolences on getting the position which I think set her at ease.  Fortunately, she knew about the student I was talking about because the mother had called her as well.  She tells me what she needs and I tell her that I will get it to her which I do.  I then contact the parent and tell her that things are all set for Monday.

Following lunch, I get handed a packet of information on a student that has just moved into the district.  I check the SIS and find that the student still isn't active.  I call the guidance counselor for the school the student will be attending and find out the procedure for new entrants.  After that, I attempt to call the school secretary who is responsible for creating the student's schedule and leave a message.  Later in the day, I hear my office mate call the same person and leave a message.  This person either isn't in or is not available.  It is looking like this will have to wait until Monday.  As I'm looking over the IEP from the student's previous district, I see that not only is their IEP due at the beginning of October but so is their re-evaluation.  Lovely.  There is one time line already blown if the parent wants to test.

In between this and the next event below, I manage to look through all the dates for my students' IEPs and re-evaluations.  I also take note of all the documents in the IEP software that need to be finalized.  The two IEP programs that I have had experience with, Tracker by Contour Data and TIEnet by Maximus, require that once you have finished a document (be it IEP, letter, what have you) it has to be finalized or archived.  When this is done, it turns the document into a read-only document and can no longer be modified.  Then when you create a new version of the document, you can pull the information from the previous document into the new one.  Well, Tracker has this idiosyncrasy that it will only pull the information from the most recently archived document.  So as I'm looking at lists of documents that need to be archived, I see IEPs from 2009 that haven't been archived while the 2010 IEP for the same student has been.  So that means, unless there is some intervention from Contour Data, when those documents are archived/finalized, the next time I open a new IEP the information from the 2009 IEP will be pulled instead of the much more useful, recent information from the 2010 IEP.  Sigh.  I'll deal with that another day.

I go to my mailbox and find several new initial referrals that I have been assigned.  As I look at them, I see a familiar name that I evaluated last year and last thought had been expelled.  I visit my supervisor to find out what is going on with this one.  I'm told that the parent now wants their child to be in special education and that the expulsion had only been for a year.  I'm also told to treat it like a new referral: separate initial planning and eligibility conference.  Since the evaluations are less than a year old, we can accept them.  In a Monty Python moment, I considering not accepting psychological evaluation that I did.  I send out an email to the folks that were involved with the case last school year to try to get a handle on a date for the meeting.

By the time I hammer down a date and time with my coworkers, it is almost time to head home.  I make some notes for things to do on Monday, acknowledging the fact that I'll be at my assigned school that day as well.

Have a good weekend!

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Department Meeting & More Tech Support

So I stumble into my office, look at the remaining mess on my desk and decide to tackle the mess in the basement instead.  I print out copies of the purchase orders that I submitted at the end of the school year and go downstairs to check the items against the POs.  I'm pleased to see that everything, including the WAIS-IV Scoring Assistant and the SB5 Scoring Assistant, is present.  I then begin stuffing packets of protocols into the appropriate file cabinet folders and quickly discover that I need more room.  I curse a few times, nothing very colorful, and then attempt to find other office supplies to scavenge to create the needed space.  Scavenging is a time honored practice.  One person's trash is another person's treasure.  It is the only reason that I have a bookshelf in my previous district, after the bookshelf that had been in my old office had been taken by one of my future coworkers in that district.

My search is a failure, although I do scout out several locations to move all of our testing supplies.  I wouldn't do this without first consulting my fellow school psychologists.  I return to the mess in the basement.  Look at it, look at the mess where everything had been neatly placed at the end of last year and then I retreat to ponder.

So I return to the mess on my desk and begin the weeding process anew while I gleefully install the WAIS-IV Scoring Assistant.  I did not order the WAIS-IV Scoring Assistant and Report Writer because I believe in the Star Trek attitude toward technology (not that I'm that big of a Star Trek fan): technology is there to help, not replace human thinking.  While I believe that when you are learning to administer the tests, you should learn how to score them manually so that you have an understanding of the scoring process, once you are proficient, scoring them is a waste of time.

I also consider installing the SB5 software but since I have not used the SB5, I skip it.  I've been trying to hold off on learning the SB5 in hopes that one of my coworkers will administer it to me so I can finally find out my IQ.  Although now that we have a second kit, my desire to examine it is weakening.  While I usually stick with the Wechsler stuff, I have used other tests.  I think the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children, Second Edition, is an interesting test.  Although all the freakin' easels bug the hell out of me.

After the installation is finished, I put the software in an interoffice envelop and attach a sheet with my fellow SPs' names on it so that it can be passed around and we can all install it.  In between pressing buttons to continue the installation process, I've been weeding papers into four piles: file, trash, shred, and pass on to someone else.  By the time the department meeting rolls around an hour and a half after my arrival at work, I can see the top of my desk.

I take my seat in the humidifier that is our giant meeting room and the meeting is in session five minutes later.  Our supervisor reports that this is a preliminary meeting since there is too much to cover in one session and she doesn't want to keep us all day.  The meeting is surprisingly short.  We get the most recent versions of our student lists, hear about the new requirements for submitting items for board approval, and find out about the 30+ kids that need to be evaluated (I did mention in another post that the clock doesn't stop just because school's out for summer).

We also find out the strides that have been made with our department going paperless as far as IEP distribution within the district.  In years past, we have had to provide a copy of each students' IEP to each of their special education teachers.  In addition, guidance counselors get a copy for each of the special education students for themselves and so the regular education teachers may review the IEPs.  In addition to this, if they have a related service (OT, PT, Speech), that provider gets a copy.  So that means about 5 copies of each IEP per student.  So 5 copies at 14 pages (if it is double sided) per student.  Then multiply that number by about 480 or so.  So (5 x 14) x 480 = 33600 pieces of paper every year.  That is not counting the parent copy, or the revisions that may crop up.  So you can see the benefit of going paperless.  Or as paperless as possible.  Especially in a system where most teachers are willing to cut each others throats for a ream of paper by the time April rolls around.  Last year, teacher in my district high school were cutting legal size white paper to letter size because that was the only thing left to use in the copiers and printers.  I grabbed up a bunch of the cuttings just to use as scrap and note paper because at least it wouldn't go to waste.

As I said, there had been strides.  We finally got the okay from the company that runs our school information system (SIS) to let the company that runs our IEP system insert the IEPs into the school information system.  This way, a teacher can log into the SIS, look up the kid and access the IEP.  There are still kinks to work out such as ensuring that only teachers that have a particular student have access to that student's IEP.  My thoughts are to follow human nature: if a person doesn't have to do something, they probably won't.  If a teacher doesn't have a particular special education student in any of their classes, they are most likely not going to look at that student's IEP.  On the other hand, if a teacher doesn't have a student and really wants to see their IEP, they will most likely find a way to see it.  Both of these rules apply to most types of information, in my opinion.

I am still impressed at how close we may be to going paperless, which will save a lot of work for case managers in the organization and distribution of IEPs to the teachers.  I know other districts have ways of dealing with this and all districts struggle with it every year.  It is one of those things that each district has to figure out what works best for their setup.  Some districts just have a copy in guidance and a command is given to the teachers that they must go down and read it and sign that they read it while special ed teachers must make their own copies.  To each their own but going paperless will be a saver.

So that ended our meeting.  I went downstairs and help the speech therapists and one of the LDTCs get their computers and phones set up.  I'm hailed as a hero by them.  I have just enough skill to be dangerous.  I tell them that if the tech guys come by and everything is working great, they can say that I did it.  If something isn't right, I had nothing to do with it.  While they think I'm tech savvy, I think of the old saying, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

I went back to my office and finished a few paperwork projects and got ready to visit my new school assignment.  I've been to the school before but me and my office mate were bringing stuff over to "move in" for the year.  My office mate had a strong desire to make it feel more homey and decorate while my feeling is that I'm only going to be there for a year and I'll do my traveling case manager routine.  To continue with the going paperless thing, I don't feel the need to have copies of my IEPs printed out if I have access to a computer that will allow me to get the information when I need it.  If I can get the IT guys to mirror my office desktop at the school, I'll be golden.

We get to the school after a quick lunch.  We unload a bunch of stuff.  My office mate puts everything where she wants it.  I don't interfere with this because it is one of those things that is a really small blip on my radar.  We go to the main office and meet the new secretary.  The place is empty because most of the teachers are in a seminar.

Once back at home base, I start a few projects to finish on Friday, answer a few questions that the case managers that have inherited my kids from last year have, and then I pack up for the day.  We are off on Thursday so Friday will be more fun and frolic, minus most of the frolic.  Then the school year begins in earnest on the 13th.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

First Teacher Day Back

Well, it started today.  I got to work and saw the mess that was my office.  There were several reasons for this. Over the summer, my office was spackled and painted.  To do that, all my furniture was moved out or around.  I was also getting a new office mate and so my huge bookshelf which was able to accommodate my books was removed and not replaced, so all my books were displaced.  Finally, my desk was covered in boxes full of counseling and testing materials: Wechsler protocols, Conners protocols, the new SB5 and SB5 protocols, the social skills training program, and the SMALSI.  The good news was that the psychologists got all the things we requested.  The bad news what that it was occupying every useful space on my desk.  Put I could live with that.

So after a little small talk with one of my coworkers, I went to work on moving the testing equipment to where we keep it.  So I head to the common office area in the basement and discover that my office wasn't the only place to have work done.  The basement offices got new carpet.  And they needed it after the flooding from last March.  So everything got moved around down there too...and all the pre-existing organization of our testing supplies was shot to hell.  Sigh.

So all the new stuff got put into a pile for the moment until I can go through it and organize everything.  I think I'll be starting that task tomorrow.  Why me?  Because I took it upon myself to do it when I came into the district.

So now it is almost time for the opening "ceremonies."  A number of my coworkers are heading over to the auditorium and I meet up with one of them and head over myself.  We go to the traditional area where the child study team sits during this yearly ritual and it begins.  All over New Jersey, if not the United States, teachers have gone, were going, or will go through the same thing.  What physical plant type stuff was done during the summer, what stuff is outstanding, who was hired, what sort of educational initiatives and goals are being targeted during the year.  That sort of thing.

Then there was the obligatory address from the union presidents, especially since this is a contract negotiation year.  The one thing that the union leaders didn't address, which I found interesting, was the 1.5% healthcare give back that we voted for last school year before the budget, the details of which were still being worked out when we went on summer vacation.  I was for the give back because most other work place pay into their healthcare coverage and this is something that is going to happen eventually anyway and if it helped save jobs and programs last year, it is all the better.

So after this, I went back to my office and met with a paraprofessional aide to go over their duties.  Then I dug around the mess that was my desk, traded witty comments (or poor attempts at) with my office mate, and went out for lunch.

After I got back from lunch, I tried to organize some of my books and actually threw two of them away because of the dated material.  They were WISC-III, WAIS-III, and WPPSI-R stuff.  I'm a bit of a bibliophile and throwing books out is tantamount to heresy for me but I needed the space.  I have older books in my office that I keep for historical reasons, like a really early copy of the DSM back when homosexuality was considered a disorder.  It is good to have a reminder of where your field has come from just to keep things in perspective and it makes a mediocre conversation piece.

While I'm organizing my books, I'm called into my supervisor's office.  It is there that I'm informed that I will be moving my office sometime in the next 3 to 4 months to another building altogether.  I also find out that my new office mate will be moving with me.  The reason is that some temporary office space (read trailers) that have been more permanent than originally expected will be demolished.  So those folks need to be moved into the building.  Several of them will need to be in the building due to certain program needs.  So since I'm not one of those people, I'm being moved.  My office mate is excited by the prospect, saying that we are moving up in the world, joking that we are moving from an apartment to a house.  I'm going to miss being around my other office mates and this looks like it is going to be a long term thing.  This makes me feel that we are going to be cut off from the culture of the rest of the department.  But I'll survive.

After this, I continue to go through several drawers in my office and clear out stuff that I haven't touched in two years.  I help another coworker set up their computer which was dismantled when her old desk was replaced with a new desk.  I meet with a coworker who has inherited my students from last year and go over the kids, pointing out which ones will need translators for their parents, and who may be more work intensive.  I suddenly look up and see that it is time to go home.

Tomorrow will involve our department meeting.  I hope to get in early enough that I can begin the organization of the testing supplies.  There may be more computer assembly needed in the basement.