Diary of a School Psychologist

Absenteeism and a Shift in Perspective

2012-01-31T23:04:00.000-05:00

So it has been a very long time since my last post. I know that I have at least one message to reply to and I have been very poor at doing so.

What has been going on since my last post? A lot of things. I won't go into painstaking detail. I had to adjust to being a single parent. I had to finish out last school year which I managed to do fairly well. It was the first times that I actually didn't have IEPs to bring home with me during the summer. I did some per diem work during the summer and then started the school year.

I have been extremely fortunate to have so many wonderful people in my life. In addition to the wonderful support that I have gotten from my friends and family, my coworkers were also incredible.

At first, keeping up with this blog did not seem important anymore since I had so much else to do. My heart was just not in it. Then as my life began to settle down, a wondrous thing happened. I found happiness again. I could go through a whole thing on the grieving process but I won't. But I'll say it again, I found happiness.

Even after I was happy again, I still didn't feel the need to come back here and write. A few months ago, I began to examine the reason for this. I started examining this because a very special person in my life asked me why I stopped writing it.

So the conclusion I came to had to do with a shift in perspective. When I seriously started the blog, things weren't going well in other areas of my life. Work was the only area where I felt competent. Work was a refuge...not that I tried to disappear into my work and remove myself from the rest of my life...but my hours at work were a distraction from the other areas that weren't so good.

Now that my personal life is better, I don't need work as a refuge. While I still want to be good at what I do, being a school psychologist isn't as much of a defining attribute.

I don't know if that sounds lame or not but that was my conclusion. I could provide other examples as proof of this but I think I'll leave it at that for the moment.

Where do I go from here?

I'm planning on posting again on the site. I know that I'm not even going to try to keep up the rigorous pace I foolishly attempted to do before. One post a day was just too much and, now, I don't think my professional life is that interesting (Do I know how to promote myself or what?).

To the person that sent me a personal message, I will get back to you soon, which is kinda relative considering how long ago that message was sent.

I think my next post or two will have to do with changing tests and the use of technology in the workplace.

A Personal Message

2011-04-06T21:20:00.000-04:00

On February 25th, 2011, after fighting metastatic breast cancer for less than a year, my wife of 8 years passed away at home.

The months leading up to her passing were not easy as her condition continued to deteriorate.

I hope to be able to return to this blog but I know it will not be with daily updates.

Very Brief Interlude

2011-01-11T10:44:00.002-05:00

I just tried to put my name into the school information system. I'm losing it.

Trying to get back on the horse

2011-01-10T19:27:00.000-05:00

Well, it has been a while since a proper post. As I noted, a lot of personal life stuff has been draining me which has led to my break in posting. I'm going to try to hit some of the highlights since I returned to work from winter break. Sadly, the unaccounted days from before the break are lost to the mists of time.

Last week, I had several IEP and initial planning meetings that I attended. Most of the initial planning meetings resulted in the recommendation to evaluate. I also started working on my steadily increasing load of evaluations. 'Tis the season.

Fortunately for me, I closing in on the tail end of the re-evaluations from my own caseload. Soon, it will just be initials and my coworker's caseloads. I'm also fortunate that I've been keeping ahead of my IEP meetings. I have all the meetings for this month already scheduled and next week I'll have to work on next months IEPs.

For most district, entering the new year means the beginning of IEP season. From about late February to May, the majority of IEPs come due. This is usually because IEPs have to be changed or adjusted to account for teacher recommendations for classes, which also come due at this time of year. I'm expecting to have to amend a number of IEPs at the end of the year to account for those students that had IEPs come due in the first half of the school year. Ideally, this will not pose a problem.

Well that is all for now.

Place Holder...

2011-01-03T21:04:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the absence. The week leading up to the winter break was a drag in more ways than one. The holidays were more exhausting than restful. And, of course, I caught my son's cold just before going back to work today. So I am feeling really lousy and plan to get some rest.

More tomorrow, if my head and joints stop aching.

Thurfriday

2010-12-19T20:29:00.000-05:00

So yeah, I flaked. It was a long week and I've been exhausted and recovering from illness.

On Thursday, I had several meetings to plan re-evaluations. No parents showed up but I managed to obtain participation by phone for both of them. The rest of Thursday was uneventful except for an extremely generous and unexpected gift to me and my family from everyone in the department. While I have alluded to dealing with some personal problems in my life, I may as well say it here now: my wife was diagnosed with stage four cancer in April of this year and it has been progressing rapidly despite treatment. That is who I was with at the hospital last Friday.

My coworkers have been extremely kind and supportive of me and my family. Even I am anonymous on this blog, I do want to say that I really appreciate the kindness and sensitivity that they have shown me.

Friday began with my getting lost on the way to an out of district meeting. It is really amazing just how rural some parts of New Jersey can be. I finally found my way, after a phone call. No parents. No one answered when we called home. We spoke about the student who had an incident the day before. The student backed down from another student and lost face and, oddly, wasn't in school today, either.

When I got back to my office, there was a message from the parent saying that their child was refusing to go back to the school ever again and that the parent was in agreement with this, even though they had only gotten the story from their child without talking to the school. Before I called the parent, I wanted to speak to the school to see if they had spoken to the parent. I left a message and didn't hear from them until late afternoon. I was informed that they had spoken to the parent and had an appointment to see the student on Monday at their home because the other parent didn't want the student to leave the school.

This OOD really seems to go the extra mile considering they are willing to make home visits.

That is where my day ended.

Feelin' like a new man

2010-12-15T20:03:00.000-05:00

Today was the first day that I woke up and didn't feel like something the cat dragged in...and with three cats, that's saying something.

Even so, I had my work cut out for me since I had four meetings to attend at three different locations, all in district. My first meeting was an initial referral conference for a student that I had done a risk assessment on at the beginning of December. The parent wasn't able to attend in person and participated over the phone. When I introduced myself, I said, "You may not remember me but we spoke a couple of weeks ago." The parent said they remembered my name and would never forget it. I joked that could either be good or bad but from the tone I sensed a certain amount of appreciation. I learned during the meeting that the student had been admitted to an inpatient unit. On the one hand, I'm glad the student is finally getting services. On the other hand, this student has now started their contact with mental health professional and I don't foresee this ending anytime in the near future. The student really struck me as having borderline traits and personality disorders are particularly difficult to treat.

My second initial referral meeting at the second school of the day was another complicated matter. The student is in a foster home. The child has a very complicated and sad background. It is a shame. The one thing that bothered me during the meeting was the teacher who was talking beyond her area of expertise. The teacher said that perhaps the student is blocking memories. I don't mind people playing armchair psychologist (hell, I make a living at it) but don't talk about it in a meeting with a parent.

The third meeting was a change of pace: an eligibility conference. Just prior to this meeting, a downed a breakfast drink for lunch. The meeting went well and was the simplest of them all. While the parent didn't want the level of service that was initially recommended, which would have required a complete change of school for the child, the student has been making progress. With the addition of accommodations and modification, the student should be alright.

My last meeting of the day was back at the second school and was my very own initial referral conference. This one was the most technically screwed up of the all. The student had been referred at the end of last school year, just about a year after they had been evaluated by the child study team and found ineligible. So at the time of the second referral, it was determined that the reports could be accepted since it was within a year and an additional neurological would be done. Then the summer came and we do not have a permanent team during the summer so there was no one to keep tabs on this. Add this to the fact that the board didn't approve the neurological evaluation until September and this leads to the current problems.

So at some point during the current school year, someone asks, "Whatever happened with X?" X being the student in question. I do some digging and find out that nothing ever happened with X. I speak to my supervisor because now the old psych and ed are out of date. I'm advised to treat it as a new referral and do a new psych and ed. So this is what I do.

During the meeting, I own up to the district's failure to get this done and inform the parent that the evaluations will be expedited. The parents certainly seem trusting enough and I hope that my manner put them at ease. We all part on amicable terms.

This brings me to the end of any significant activities for the day.

Is arsenic a good day time cold remedy?

2010-12-14T19:35:00.000-05:00

I woke up feeling like crap this morning. I wasn't feeling so hot last night either. But I had two eligibility conferences to attend and it would have been more of a pain to find someone to cover for me than just sucking it up and going to work. Otherwise I would have just crawled back into bed.

I swallowed two DayQuil and went to work.

I put together some paperwork and got ready to leave for my first meeting which was at an out of district placement. About 30 minutes before it was time to leave, I got word that the mother had called to cancel. I told the case manager who was also the case manager for the student in the afternoon, that if she could just arrange for that meeting to be canceled, I could go home and get some rest.

Since that wasn't in the cards, I decided to do some actual work. I went to my assigned school to do an observation on a 5th grader. So after 40 minutes, 15 of which involved watching the student attempt to put led into multiple mechanical pencils, I was done with that.

I also stopped off at the middle school to see the IT department supervisor and asked whether the district owns a copy of Adobe Acrobat so that I could convert the new Special Education Medicaid Initiative service logs into form-fillable documents. I got my wish and I'm scheduled for the installation sometime later this week. Yipee!!

After lunch, I wrote up my classroom observation and then prepared for my afternoon meeting. The meeting went off without a hitch and I returned to my office and finished out the day.

Missing Friday and the New Week

2010-12-13T20:37:00.000-05:00

So I wasn't at work on Friday due to an unforeseen trip to the ER which resulted in a two day hospital stay. Not for me.

So I was definitely not rested when I returned to work on Monday. There wasn't a whole lot to do today which was good since I was still exhausted and sore from sleeping on furniture that isn't meant to be slept on.

I finished paperwork for my meetings that are coming up in the next two weeks. I also finished an IEP and got it ready to be put in the mail. I wrestled with a photocopier that was determined to eat any piece of paper that passed through it.

I also did some counseling which was the most interesting portion of my day but nothing out of the ordinary enough to report.

Tomorrow and the rest of the week should prove more eventful. I just hope that my aches and pains go away soon.

Thursday Interrupted

2010-12-09T19:53:00.000-05:00

So while I was typing up a risk assessment report I was called to do another risk assessment. The student I went to see was one that I had assessed twice last school year. It was a fairly easy evaluation because of my knowledge of the student. In the end, the student wasn't sent out. In fact, when I looked at how things were going this year in comparison to last year, things had improved greatly. Now if the student could learn not to run their mouth when angry.

At lunch time, I was talking with some of my coworkers. We have a position on our team that is currently vacant. Two months ago, we interviewed folks for the position but then nothing. I floated the theory at the lunch table that the position was not going to be filled. That since we were functioning fine without the position being filled that it was saving the district money. I think I'm write, considering we were just asked to consider plans that would allow us to bring back more out of district students.

I looked at my out of district caseload, all two of them, and chuckled.

Initial or Re-eval?

2010-12-08T20:34:00.000-05:00

The small stuff that I did today involved "inviting" general education teachers to a series of initial and re-evaluation planning meetings as well as doing paperwork for the meetings that I have coming in the next two weeks.

Then I attended a re-evaluation planning meeting at one of my out-of district placements. The meeting was so fast that it took me longer to travel to the location than the meeting itself. By way of explanation, I did get lost on the way there and the parent participated by phone.

In the afternoon I attended a coworkers meeting. This was actually the second meeting for this student since the first time around the parent didn't show. Here is the situation: the student had been eligible in another district under preschool disabled. Due to family problems, the family had to move. They moved in the middle of the re-evaluation that would have moved them from preschool to Part B (everything above preschool) in the previous district and moved around a lot. So the time line is completely thrown off and when the family moved into our district, the parent requested an evaluation as though it were an initial. So it was processed through our department as an initial. Following that logic, we need written consent before we can start testing. This makes the parent's absence from the initial referral conferences problematic.

So during this meeting, as we were awaiting the parent's arrival (they never showed) I brought up the idea that the kid is actually still in special education because they were previously eligible. The problem is that the family moved before the paperwork was completed and the time lines are thrown off. So by treating this as an initial we may be denying the student of a Free and Appropriate Public Education. In addition, we can start the evaluation because, since the student is still in special education, we have implied consent since we only need written parental consent in an initial. The assigned caseworker was going to speak with our director about this way of thinking and see if it holds water.

Eligibility Tuesdays

2010-12-07T19:30:00.000-05:00

My day consisted of attending two eligibility conferences. One was an initial eligibility conference in which we did not find the student eligible. The parent was pleased that their child wasn't eligible. I wasn't sure how the parent was going to react considering they were the source of the referral.

The second one of the day was a re-evalaution. This one resulted in a change in classification. The student had been found eligible under the emotionally disturbed classification several years ago...for one incident...that, when taken in context, seemed understandable and not a reason to base that classification. Following our evaluations, we changed the classification to a more reasonable communication impairment.

The rest of my day was spend doing paperwork.

Tomorrow I get to go out of district for a planning meeting. A meeting for which I already know the outcome. All these meetings before the break are playing havoc with counseling.

A Case of the Mondays

2010-12-06T20:20:00.000-05:00

So now that my counseling is limited to the afternoons due to the students' schedules, I stayed in the office until after lunch. I spent my time by doing some work for my PLC and completing a psych report. I also contacted a parent and arrange an early initial planning meeting. Usually I have to give 15 days notice before a meeting unless you get consent from the parent before hand. This parent gave his consent although my initial date needed to be changed to accommodate their schedule.

In the afternoon I was able to counsel two kids. Only two because when I tried to get a third, every kid I attempted to get was getting tutoring from one of their in-class support teachers. Ah well.

The session that I did have with these students were much better than my previous ones. I finally got a chance to use the Aquarius card game. It was amazing how much their defenses dropped during the game. Or the opportunity to relate their behaviors in game to their behaviors out of game.

Following the counseling, I fielded a few more phone calls from parents and went home for the day.

The Winter NJASP Conference

2010-12-03T19:52:00.000-05:00

Well today was the day. Not only didn't I win any of the raffles (none of my tickets even came close) but I didn't even get a good pen. The one pen I got was stolen by someone.

Beyond that, it was a good day. I got to see a couple of good friends and former coworkers (both of which are the same people). One was the director of my school psych program, who was running a workshop on supervising school psych interns. The other was actually someone that I met working for psychiatric emergency services. Last year, he was nominated for NJ School Psychologist of the Year. Both of these people have been big influences on my professional development and it was great to see them again.

My morning workshop was on executive functioning. The presenter was the creator of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning. I thought it was a very good presentation. He was entertaining and informative. Some of the people that I shared a lunch table with felt that he was a bit condescending. While I think he may have been flippant, I didn't think him mean-spirited. Just that he didn't know much about New Jersey certification and license requirements. The presentation did make me want to get several instruments, not just the BRIEF.

I attended the workshop on supervising school psychology interns in the afternoon. You really need to think about being ready to be an intern supervisor because, while it may look like you get to foist work off on someone else, you are ultimately responsible for the work that the supervisee turns in. Still, I am curious about the experience.

All in all, it was a good day. I'm dreading what may be awaiting me at work on Monday but I'll deal with that then.

NJASP Conference Eve

2010-12-02T21:14:00.000-05:00

Today was my last day of work for the week. So I managed to get some stuff done that needed to get done before I left for the week. I made arrangements for a student schedule change, harassed a teacher to get a behavior inventory back; called the parent from Monday's meeting. It is funny how long ago Monday feels now. It feels really far away.

But for everything I accomplished, more work came my way. I assigned to several new initial referrals. Most of them had me signed on as the school psych but one of them is for a student in my grade so I'm the case manager of record for that one. So, before I left, I also had to get my other coworkers to commit to a date for the initial referral conference. So I can sleep tonight without that hanging over my head.

The interesting bit of conversation that I had today was with my coworker and office mate. We were discussing risk assessments. The part of this conversation that I wanted to talk about was how to make the assignment of risk assessments seem fair.

In any organization, there may be perceptions that some people get all the work while others don't. The people that feel "dumped on" may have this perception. Sometimes all it is is a perception. At other times, there is a bias at the level of distribution for whatever reason. At that level, it may be a perception of whose job it should be or of competence or capriciousness. And sometimes it is just a matter of being in the wrong place at the right time. Or the right place at the wrong time. Or...well you get my meaning and that is also a matter of perception. Some people, like me, love risk assessment (love is too strong of a word, but as I noted yesterday I have been finding them intellectually stimulating recently). Or at least just take it in stride as part of the job. Some folk are uncomfortable with them either because of lack of training or experience or both. Let's face it, being comfortable talking with a complete stranger about whether they have plans to kill themselves or someone else may not necessarily be "normal." And some people may just find the emergent nature of risk assessments disruptive to their daily routine. I'm sure that if you drew a ven diagram of these "factions" there would be a lot of overlap.

So back to the question of making the distribution of risk assessments fair. My first thought was to have a list of all the staff responsible for risk assessments and each time a person completes a risk assessment, they get a check next to their name with the goal of trying to make the check marks even out. Upon further examination of this idea, it has its flaws, such as actually relying on a person to keep such a list. It may also increase the feeling of being dumped on or the feeling that "I do more than you and I have the check marks to prove it."

My coworker brought up a better idea, hearkening back to our days in non-profit behavioral healthcare: the rotating on-call system. Assigning one person to be the primary and one person to be the back-up on-call for the week. I think it is a really good idea because it would free people from having to worry about having their week disrupted because people would know when they are on-call (thanks to a schedule) and could plan accordingly. It also takes the feeling of being dumped on away because everyone gets their time in the barrel and it becomes luck of the draw. On one rotation, you may have none while on another rotation, you may have one every day. Another benefit is response time: there is no wait to assign a staff member to the risk assessment because it is already decided.

This method might not work in all districts. The districts that I can see this being difficult for are the ones where staff is assigned and located in a particular school. This isn't an issue in my district because we all work out of a central office.

Well that is it for today. Tomorrow is conference day. I'll have to remember to bring my camera and take a few pictures. I also have to remember to bring some cash for the raffle. There are several interesting test kits up for raffle. Also I have to get some new pens...hopefully they have ones with black ink...can't stand blue ink...

Tis the Season

2010-12-01T20:31:00.000-05:00

With the return from the Thanksgiving weekend, we already seen an increase in the number of risk assessments. Four of them in three days. I wonder if the trend is going to continue.

So with this as a preface, I had a risk assessment, the fourth of the week so far. A middle school student with reports of suicidal ideation. I spent quite a long time on this one and didn't really come to a conclusion until I obtained collateral information from family members. In the end, it was what the student didn't tell me and their family did that led to my decision.

So I was thinking about the role of a school psychologists and how it relates to the risk assessment. During the assessment the thought crossed my mind, "I should just send the student out and be done with it." Within the confines of the school, it seems to me that the general feeling is that we are to decide whether another mental health professional needs to assess the student rather actual determining whether the student is at risk.

Part of this feeling may come from the fact that we don't actually have any power outside the school. We are only able to say that the student can't return to the school until they have been cleared by someone with the authority and license to do so. So does that absolve us from investigating further? Does it mean that we should just CYA (or COA)?

I don't think so. In my district, we have a relationship with the local screening center where we complete a report (a much briefer report than my actual in-district write up) and fax it to the center, as well as giving them a heads up call. So by digging deeper and asking more questions and seeking further information, we may end up getting information that won't be given to the professionals at the hospital. Either because the student/family may change their story on the way there or just refuse to discuss certain issues that may have been discussed in the school.

I'll also reiterate another piece of advice that I have picked up from the people that really trained me in risk assessment. Some excellent people indeed. That advice is: take your time. Don't let anyone rush you. Not the student; not the guidance counselor; not the principal. If you have questions, make sure you ask them. Don't feel like you have to fill the silence. You can take your time and think of your next question. And don't feel silly for asking the same question again, particularly if you something is bothering you about the first answer.

Like I said, it was what the student didn't tell me and their evasiveness that led me to ask further questions and seek out other sources of information that ultimately led to my decision.

Tuesday Full'a Nutthin'

2010-11-30T20:05:00.000-05:00

My day really began when I attended a staffing this morning. The major question of eligibility for this particular student was muddied by the fact that there had been major interruptions in their schooling. With that being the case, the student shouldn't be eligible for special education services since, legally, that becomes an issue since this may constitute an effect of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage. The catch is that if the student isn't eligible then they won't get the services they need for remediation if it is due to inconsistent schooling.

Among the other highlights of the day: we were given the new Special Education Medicaid Initiative service logs. On the upside, the forms are easier to fill out than the previous ones. More of a check off thing than having to really write stuff. On the downside, the new forms were only available as a PDF as opposed to the previous forms which were a Word document. So now I couldn't type my forms up.

Do you know what you get when you prevent a geek from being able to complete things in the way that he wants? You get an angry geek with a mission. After several attempts to convert the documents with free online PDF to Word document conversion websites, I finally downloaded a free trial of higher grade program which got the job done. I know I could have checked to see if our district had the full version of Adobe Acrobat but the turnaround time of finding out this information and actually getting access to it would have been stress inducing. And turning the PDF into a form would have been a time consuming, manual process. This program converted the form pretty instantaneously into a Word document that could be used right away.

Finally, I got together with one of my Spanish speaking coworkers and called a parent to see about making a change in a student's program. So I have some paperwork lined up for me to do tomorrow, as well as a need to arrange some meeting dates.

Two more days of work left this week. Friday is the big NJASP conference. I'm looking forward to seeing some old friends and former coworkers. If anyone reading this is going, let me know.

Excuses, excuses...

2010-11-29T19:47:00.000-05:00

I could say that nothing really interesting happened on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and I wouldn't be lying, but that isn't the real reason I didn't post. In all honesty, I just flaked due to the prospect of a four day weekend and the need to finish up season one of Leverage before it had to go back to the library.

Monday was another story altogether. It started off normal enough. I had to ask a coworker to cover for me at an initial referral conference because I had misread an email and accidentally rescheduled one of my own re-evaluation conferences for a time that was too close to cover both. And it was a good thing I did because the parents of that afternoon meeting were extremely punctual. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So after I got another psych to cover for me, I started packing up my stuff to go to the school with the expectation that I would have several hours to do paperwork and perhaps get a little counseling done. As fate would have it, that was not to be. About 10 minutes after my arrival at the school, I get a phone call from my boss to go to another school for a risk assessment.

The situation was interesting. The triggering incident didn't even happen in school. It happened the day before at the student's home. The student had gotten into an altercation with a sibling. After the altercation, the student had gotten a weapon with the thought to do harm to the sibling but didn't because the parent had intervened. No one was hurt.

The thing that was interesting was that neither the parent nor the student could keep the story straight. Details of the story kept changing. The only constant was that the student had gotten a weapon. Since this was the first time something like this had happened, I recommended the student follow up outside the school to determine if they were a danger to themselves or others. At the time of my interview, I didn't think the student was a danger to harm themselves or anyone else. And from my experience with mental health screening, I'm fairly certain that a screener isn't going to think so either. So my decision was partly a "cover my bases" thing but not completely.

I felt that the behavior indicated an escalation in behavior. In the world of siblings, arguments and fighting are pretty common place. Even in the world of just being boys, if my childhood was any indication, I would have a fight with my best friend. The type where we would end up rolling around on the ground wrestling each other because we were upset. Then go into our respective houses, angry. Then five minutes later, we would call each other up on the phone and say, "Wanna go out and play?"

But when something standard like a sibling fight over standard stuff occurs and the reaction is to get a weapon with the thought of doing bodily harm then something has changed and it needs to be looked at.

Now the other thought that occurs to me with this is: since the student is already connected to services outside of the school, why wasn't this brought to those service providers attention? Why come to the school?

I have some thoughts on that too. Or rhetorical questions, actually. Is the role of the school in the community changing? Should schools become a mental health resource? I know that there have been some school districts that have had mental health centers as part of their district, even having such centers open after school hours. I don't know how I feel about that. Part of me thinks that there does need to be some sort of boundary and definition of roles. Or, at least if these boundaries are going to be blurred then administration needs a better understanding of what is being taken on.

After this my morning went on fairly smoothly. My meeting arrived, as did the parents. As I said, it was a re-evaluation planning meeting. With this we reviewed the previous testing. For anyone reading this that isn't a school psychologist and is thinking of becoming one then consider this: Are you able to tell someone bad news? Or tell them news that will be hard for them to hear? That may even make them cry?

It was one of those situations. Unless you have been with the family since the student was first found eligible, you really don't know just how much the parents know until you talk about it with them. Even then you don't know how much the parents may understand.

This student had cognitive limitations and I had to discuss this with them and I also started discussing working on a program that is going to meet the needs of the student and prepare them for life outside of school. It could have gone one of two ones: the parents could have left feeling that I was placing a limitation on their child or they could have left feeling that we were going to develop a plan that would help the student meet their potential. I hope it was the latter. I know how angry I would be as a parent if I felt someone that doesn't know me or my son was putting a limitation on what my child could do.

In Search of a Title

2010-11-23T20:06:00.000-05:00

I don't know how people come up with titles for daily blog entries. Maybe I'm just beating a dead horse.

Most people at school are in Thanksgiving weekend mode. I know I feel that mood teasing at my mind. Even so, I had a bunch of stuff to get done and I actually managed to accomplish some of it.

I put in a call to a mother whose child was in an short-term care facility (STCF). My purpose was three, maybe even four, fold. First, to find out how the student was; second to inform her that the STCF hadn't called me back and this was likely due to HIPAA and I would need a release to get them to talk to me; and third (okay, I guess it was three-fold) to discuss scheduling a re-evaluation planning meeting.

From my call, I found out that the student had just been discharged and was returning to school; that the mother was irate with the STCF; and that she was able to proceed with the re-evaluation planning meeting. So we worked out the details after a few calls with the out of district school and I wrote up the paperwork.

I finished writing my risk assessment from the other day. I also started another psychological report. In addition to this, I completed my assessment of the student from yesterday so I now have that one in the hopper.

Due to scheduling conflicts, I still didn't get to contact a Spanish speaking only parent since my potential translator was tied up with other stuff. In the afternoon, I did some paperwork stuff, which included faxing psych and ed reports to a neurologist that was seeing a student of my for an evaluation. In turn, the neurologist sent me a rating scale to give to teachers. I also sent out a letter, and the copies of my risk assessments to the proper administrators.

In the late afternoon, I helped a coworker deal with our IEP software...thinking about that program raises my blood pressure. Then I attended the staffing for a student that I evaluated and we found that the dear child still qualifies.

And so ended my day.

Catchin' Up

2010-11-22T19:40:00.000-05:00

So the weekend passed without putting up the Friday post, so I'm grouping Friday and Monday, together.

To be honest, not a whole lot happened on Friday. I did the risk assessment that had been scheduled the previous day. The student wasn't a risk to their self but was a very angry, young person. And very suspicious of adults, so I made sure I was very straightforward. Most of the conversation revolved around his trust of counselors since the student was going to be taken to outside counseling again by their parents. I talked with the student about addressing the ground rules for confidentiality with the counselor so they could begin with a clear cut understanding. Building trust with this student will be a long haul. Lucky me...I was just assigned as the student's in-school counselor.

That was the highlight for Friday. Today, I started my evaluation of one of my students. I got a good way into the assessment before sending them on their way. Then I sat in on an IEP meeting for one of my coworkers. After that, most of the morning was shot and I had to return to the office for a Thanksgiving day party for the alternative program in my department building. It was more a political thing than something I really felt like doing today. On the plus side, I did get a good meal. After this, I banged my head against a psychological report and managed to come out of it with something resembling English. The Flesch grade level of the report was a bit higher than my usual but it was the actual simplicity of the report that drove it up, I think.

When I type my reports in Word, I run the spell and grammar check with the readability options turned on. This gives me the percentage of passive sentences, as well as the grade level and Flesch-Kincaid reading level. If you've never done this, you should try it. I remember a presentation at an NJASP conference where a speaker there said you should try to keep your reports grade level at around the 10th grade. By way of comparison, some report sample text from the Essentials of WISC-IV Assessment (Essentials of Psychological Assessment), when typed into word and assessed came out at the 18th to 22nd grade level. So watch out for the jargon in your reports and think about who is going to read your report: parents.

Following this I started the risk assessment write up from Friday and finished my day staring at the computer screen.

Thursday Flagging

2010-11-18T20:15:00.000-05:00

After my last two days, I was pretty tired so I tried to concentrate on paperwork. I worked on the Excel sheet for my PLC group. I managed to break down the 5th, 6th, and 7th grades for the last two years. After I finished it, I saved it as a pdf and sent it out to the folks in my PLC group.

Following this, I went back to work on my psych reports. This required me to go back and crunch some more numbers on a BASC-2 because of the teacher's unwillingness to commit to responses on a series of the items. The hardest part for me on any of my psych reports are the social/emotional sections. I just need to take in all the information and I have to feel inspired to write it. I have to get a picture of how all the information comes together. I'm almost there with this one report.

At the end of my day, I got called to come over to a coworker's office. I was told about a student that needs to have a risk assessment tomorrow. We discuss the student and the various things that they have been doing and saying that have been setting staff on edge. So first thing tomorrow, I'm off to see that student.

Catching Up

2010-11-17T21:49:00.000-05:00

I know I said that I wasn't going to post on Monday or Tuesday since I had some personal business to attend to on those days. Technically I'm actually sticking with what I said since I didn't post on either of those days but some of my plans changed on Monday and I actually went to work for half the day.

On Monday, I really didn't get to do much of anything that I had planned. I ended up in a parent meeting for a coworker that ended shortly due to the parent being unhappy with what was being said. The parent left, threatening to see us in court. My one interesting interaction was with the case manager of an out of district placement. One of my students attends this placement. They were actually placed there by the district. It is a very therapeutic placement. So something happened with my student where they had not attended in several days and I got a 5 day letter. So I was following up on it. I had left a message for the mother and hadn't received a callback and I called the case manager. The case manager said that she couldn't tell me anything about what had happened due to HIPAA laws. I found this very unusual. Considering that we are responsible for the student's educational program and are the ones providing the payment then some incident that leads to the student not being in that program would seem to me to be fair game for sharing information. It would seem odd that we would need HIPAA release papers signed to share the information with us. Or at least odd that that isn't standard practice.

On the other hand, this placement doesn't just receive students from school districts. They have a residential component to their program and receive DYFS placements and referrals from non-educational agencies. So that might be where the difference comes in and that extra layer of confidential arises. Still, this is the first time I've encountered this.

So that pretty much ended my Monday.

I returned to work today to find that I had to reschedule a re-evaluation planning meeting for the second time because the rescheduled time was next week when the teachers had half-days. So I rescheduled that. I also called a parent to find out if they had met with a neurologist for an appointment, just to see if I would have to harass the neurologist to get the report. The parent told me that the appointment was scheduled for next week.

I was also a little trapped at my office today. I didn't have my work keys with me, so I was nervous about going anywhere and getting locked out. So I stayed in the office and did the follow up work that I mentioned. Also, I finally spoke with the parent of the out of district student and got the information. This resulted in speaking with my director and making a follow up call to find out information about education for the student while they are not attending the out of district placement.

I also worked on the report of one of the three psychological evaluations that I completed last week. The good news is that I am almost done with that report.

Finally, I attended an eligibility conference and worked on calming the parent who became upset when reading the section of where I reported the results of the BASC-2. This is the problem with the law that says that we must provide the parents with copies of our reports 10 days prior to the eligibility meeting. As much as you may try to avoid using the jargon of the profession in a report, and I have been taught and believe that you should try to avoid it as much as possible, when you report the names of scales, there is almost no avoiding it. So you are sending out information that uses words like "depression" and "anxiety" and "hyperactivity" to people that don't know the instruments and whose understanding of such words are formed by popular culture. Everyone has an idea of what "depression" is. Just not what it may mean on the BASC-2.

When I think about it, I know there are somethings that I need to work out for my reports to try to avoid this in the future. I just have to make the time to work that out.

Finally, I'm going to talk about what happens when your personal life begins to impact your professional life. This is a particularly important topic for this profession and any helping profession. Again, I'm not going to go into too much detail since this blog has been about the profession.

Someone very close to me is very sick. This has placed a great deal of stress on me in my personal life and the days that I have taken off, such as Monday and Tuesday, have been related to the care of this person. The situation and the stress related to the situation has made it difficult to focus at work, particularly when the situation originally arose toward the end of last school year. This situation was the reason I didn't work during the summer.

At this point, I'm just going to say that in a helping profession you need to be aware of how your personal life impacts your professional life and how your stress level may make you more prone to acting in a rash manner. You need to be aware of your triggers and insecurities so that you can guard against overreacting or not reacting when you should.

As time goes on, I can only see the stress of my situation increasing and I have to remain aware of how this is impacting me at work.

Delayed Friday

2010-11-13T19:41:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the delay. Friday was a bit tiring after work.

I got into work and did a Google Maps search for the school I was going to. I found that the school was much closer than I expected so I killed some time with paperwork. When the time came, I drove out to the school and met with the student. Due to the nature of the student's disability, I completed the WISC in record time. Much less than the two hours that I allotted for it.

Once I got back to work, I found myself with much more time than I anticipated. I found that work had become something of a ghost town due to a number of people being absent or at trainings. I had a number of hours until my afternoon appointments, both of which were set for the same time. Just one of those funny little things. In the end it was okay. One of those appointments was canceled.

My remaining afternoon appointment was our first professional learning community meeting. I'm sure somewhere in the posts from last year, I mentioned this. Last year, they had been put on hold for a number of reasons but they have started up once again. Unlike many of the groups from last year, my group has remained pretty much intact and we even gained a new member.

Our topic remains the same: risk assessments. This year was interesting because, thanks to my personal improvement plan, we now have data on risk assessments from the past two years. We took a look at the data and saw that there was actually an increase in risk assessments from '08-'09 to '09-'10. The most interesting thing was that the "bubble" of risk assessments in the grades of the first year continued and increased in the second year. So we decided to take a look at that group in particular to see if there are any common factors. We also saw somethings that were to be expected like the spike of risk assessments during December and May. We concluded the meeting with delegating tasks and scheduling the next one.

The Thursday Push

2010-11-11T19:54:00.000-05:00

I'm going to be out of work for a few days next week so I've been making a push to get a lot of stuff done this week. By stuff, I mean testing. So I finished that one student yesterday and tested a whole other student today. They were the ones that set off my rant. Tomorrow, I'm taking a field trip to an out-of-district placement to test another student. At least I'll feel I'm ahead of the game in one area of my job.

I was actually surprised that I finished with the student today. I went back to my office and finished scoring the student from yesterday and then started scoring the results from today's student. Beyond that, there was very little to report.

I spoke with my director about a couple of issues I had come up. I inherited an initial referral that was started last year but slipped through the cracks of summer, so I have to treat it like an initial referral. So I have to speak with the guidance counselor and principal about that ASAP. That will be tomorrow's project after my road trip.

Just stop the lying...

2010-11-11T15:03:00.000-05:00

[rant]I recently started using the School Motivation and Learning Strategies Inventory (SMALSI) with students this year. I figured that it would be good to get an idea of students' study and classroom habits since the academic difficulties that students have may be due to poor school skills than an actual deficit, or it may exacerbate the deficit.

Now I know the best way to administer an inventory is to let the student fill out the inventory on their own. Have them read it themselves and "x" out their answer. But after a number of experiences where I spent twice the time to administer explaining what a word was or rephrasing the statement, I have started to get into a habit of reading the statements to the student. This has also allowed me to ask the students follow up questions. I've done this with the Conners and BASC as well. It is easier than looking over the entire protocol after they fill it out and asking follow up questions.

I've tried to preface this sort of thing by telling the students that I'm not there to judge them. I'm not going to get angry with them. I'm not going to go tell teachers that they hate them. I just want to find out what is going on.

So students: lets just stop the lying. I know you don't do your homework between classes or at lunch time. I know you don't copy your notes over later on so you can understand them. I know you don't review the questions at the end of the chapter before you read the chapter. How do I know? Because I didn't do it either. And if you did, it is very likely we wouldn't be meeting.

I also know that you don't copy down everything the teacher writes on the board; I know you forget your homework; I know you put off doing your work in class. How do I know? Because I was watching you not copy notes from the board and getting reprimanded for not turning in your work. I watched the teacher stand over you and direct you to do each question while trying to get you to stop talking to the student next to you.

Can we, please, just stop the lies?[/rant]

Flaws with Fluxx

2010-11-10T20:29:00.000-05:00

I started my day by going over to my assigned school and doing some counseling. I have a few compensatory sessions that I need to do with my students in counseling but I feel weird seeing them so soon after just seeing them two days before. I meet with some of them and then one of my coworkers comes to the school to test one of my students and I end up vacating the office in the school so they have a place to test.

I return to my other office and do some paperwork. Yesterday, my office mate and I tried Fluxx to get used to the rules. I still think it is a good game to play with students but some of my students have reading comprehension issues and may have difficulty with reading some of the rules. So I took a look at some other card games that are out there and found another one by the same company.

Aquarius by Looney Labs is a simpler game. In some ways, it is like dominoes. From their website:

Each player is given a secret goal card of one of the five elements. Element cards are played on the table connected like dominoes, with each player trying to win by connecting seven panels of their goal. Action cards allow players to shake up the action in six different ways. The game is fast, fun, colorful, and easy to learn - with enough bluffing and strategy to keep adults engaged.

So I picked it up today and tried it with my office mates. It was a much smoother game with less rules and very little reading involved. In addition, there is a good level of strategy added to the game with the action cards. There is even a preschool level of play in the instructions. My social worker coworker gave some other things to observe during game play: frustration level, cooperation, and I'll add in executive functioning.

In the afternoon, I finished testing the student I started yesterday. I also got a request for information from our county juvenile detention center asking for information on a student of mine that is now in their care. I photocopied the needed documents to mail out.

Super Tuesday

2010-11-09T20:22:00.000-05:00

Alright, it is a week late but I needed something catchy for a title.

I started my day by torturing a...I mean testing a student. My goal had been to test two students today but I only got the one and I still have to finish this one up. So now I'm hoping to finish the one I started on Thursday and begin the second one.

After my testing session, I received a call from a guidance counselor that one of my students had said something unusual in a very brief conversation just before the counselor went into a meeting. The counselor was calling to see if I would like to meet with the student because they were going to be in an I&RS meeting for the rest of the day. So it was important enough to call me, who is not in the building that day, but not important enough to postpone attending this meeting to explore further with the student themselves.

Maybe I'm being a little critical but if the student had been a general education student would the counselor have taken the time to meet with the student? There is a feeling in education, at least in the districts that I have worked in, that special education students don't belong to the general education. That they are ours.

Just as their is this perception, people in special education both rail against this and promote it, depending upon convenience. Or so it seems to me. I know I have been guilty of this.

I did end up going over to see the student and it turned out to be nothing. A five minute conversation would have resulted in this conclusion. A few simple questions. Although I may have known what questions to ask while the guidance counselor may not.

I returned to the office later on after lunch. I did some paperwork and looked up some information on students that I'm testing. I also arrange my first field trip of the year to an out of district school to test a student. I get to travel on Friday which will be fun.

I ended up accomplishing a few things today so I feel pretty good.

Back from Break

2010-11-08T19:35:00.000-05:00

The weekend was at once too long and too short. I returned to work with a plan to keep up with my counseling and evaluations. I checked my calendar for the day and saw that I didn't have anything scheduled...or thought that was the case. So I went over to the middle school to complete my second classroom observation before heading to my school for counseling.

During the observation, my phone went off. It wasn't a call, and it was on vibrate, and I saw that I had a meeting to attend in 5 minutes...at another school...crap. So I ran back to my office and got what I needed for the meeting. I keep all my appointments on my cell phone. It is the only way that I have been able to keep track of appointments. I really dislike planners that I have to write in. I like having something that I know will always be with me like my phone.

So after a brisk run and a quick drive over to one of the elementary school, I arrive to the meeting just in time to find out the parent is running late. Well I needed to burn the calories. Probably the most exercise I'll get all week.

The meeting went well and I went on to my school. My counseling went alright with only one student absent. I spoke with the guidance counselor about some old referrals from last year. I did some digging to get information for her and I also found a lack of information. I decided that I needed to return to the office to have access to the actual files. At that point it was lunch time so I took my leave from the school.

While I was picking up lunch, I stopped at a local comic book store to pick up a card game to play with my students during counseling. The game that I researched was called Fluxx by Looney Labs. Its an interesting little game without any of the usual gamer themes (dragons, zombies, etc) that I usually like. The idea is that it starts out with a basic rule, draw 1 card and play 1 card, and some of the cards modify the rules. Some cards dictate what the goal of the game is and some cards are actions. So the rules are all on the cards and learned through play and the rules and goals of the game change during play.

While this isn't a therapeutic game, I could argue that it involves executive function and adaptation.

So after returning to the office, I type up my classroom observation and then look into the students whose names were given to me by the guidance counselor. I find that two of them were never referred by I&RS and one had seemingly fallen through the cracks during the summer. I managed to have a brief talk with my director but this requires a longer face to face than time allowed. So I'll have to address it tomorrow.

Friday Comes Early

2010-11-03T18:09:00.000-04:00

Today was the last day of the week thanks to the NJEA Convention this weekend. I started my day with some paperwork and then a trip to the middle school for a classroom observation. I got to learn how to round numbers again which was as much fun as observing the student. I had intended on going to another classroom to watch another student but then I realized they had lunch next period. So I had gone back to my office with the intention of going back a period later but I lost track of time. By the time I realized it, the student didn't have any good classes in which to watch them. The road to Hell...

So I wrote up my observation and did various other tasks throughout the rest of the day. One of my office mates received a phone call from a mother whose child (now a 6th grader) was declassified several years ago. The mother just had a 504 planning meeting yesterday and was in somewhat of a panic that the plan wouldn't be sufficient for her child's needs. After a speaker phone conversation among the three of us, we helped the mother decide to request a child study team evaluation. I told her that the worst that could occur, without knowing anything about her child at the moment of our conversation, was that we would do the initial referral conference and decide that an evaluation wasn't warranted at this time and might make additional modification suggestions to the 504 team.

Following this I gave my director a heads up about the incoming request.

I was also doing some research on the DSM-IV and was looking over APA DSM-V Development website. I thought there was some interesting stuff in there, including the new Non-Suicidal Self-Injury diagnosis. While I know nothing is finalized and the diagnosis of disorders is beyond the purview of my position, it still had some interesting ideas on the reorganization and the change in diagnostic criteria. Since my entire professional background before working in a school was in behavioral mental health, I still geek out about this sort of thing. It is also interesting to see the comparisons to the old criteria and the rationale for the changes. Thanks to the internet, it is almost like looking at the beta test results of a video game.

If you are in the Dirty Jerz and work for a school, have a good long weekend.

When did kids stop dreaming?

2010-11-02T18:13:00.000-04:00

So there wasn't a whole lot new or unusual to report today. I got my cubicle wall so now I have a little more privacy as well as space to hang stuff up. I did some counseling and got some paperwork done.

I met with this one student who doesn't have counseling in their IEP but there have been reports about problems with this student. Inattention, making noises in class, not completing work. So I was talking with the kid to find out his take on how things are going and the reasons. While talking to the student, I asked what they wanted to do when they grow up. The response: I don't know.

I starting to find this to be a disturbing trend. While I don't think my upbringing was typical (I had more than my share of loss in my early years), I'd like to think that I was typical at the same age for ideas of wanting to be something when I grew up. Astronaut, firefighter, policeman, a Duke of Hazzard, whatever. But the thing is: I wanted to be something.

I'm finding more and more kids that don't have any idea whatsoever. Is it a part of upbringing? Is it a sense of hopelessness? Does it have to do with not having a sense that you can be something? If it is, is that a product of the family environment? A product of the economy?

When the most recent recession started, there was an increase in referrals for risk assessments in my district. A large number of them were in the school in which I'm now stationed. I don't know if there is any correlation.

So I went home tonight and asked my child, who is three, what he wanted to be when he grows up. I hope I can engender some idea that he can be something when he grows up and that it is okay to dream.

Monday Observation

2010-11-01T21:42:00.000-04:00

More precisely, my observation. As in the first of my three observations for the school year as an un-tenured staff member. That was really the highlight of the day. My director sat in on one of my IEP meetings. The really awkward part of the meeting with the observation was that it was a bilingual meeting so my coworker was present to translate for me. So even though I ran the meeting overall, I felt that I didn't say much because Spanish seems to use a lot more words to explain something and the parent needed things explained several times.

I don't know how I did because I haven't met with my director yet but when I got back to my office building, I couldn't get my key into the door due to a malfunctioning lock and I thought to myself, "I didn't think the meeting went so bad that they changed the locks on me."

I found out that I won't have to move again so that was a relief. Other than that, not a whole lot going on. I sent out an invitation for a re-eval planning meeting. This is going to be a short week because my district, like many in NJ, is closed on Thursday and Friday for the NJEA convention.

Happy Halloween

2010-10-29T19:38:00.000-04:00

My first day full day in my new digs. Today was also a staff breakfast/lunch and the school psychologists were in charge of putting the lunch together. Of course we stuck with the Halloween theme but we ignored my original suggestion of making focusing on Freudian fears due to the potential for sexual harassment lawsuits and stuck with a more traditional theme.

Even though my coworkers are anonymous as far as this blog is concerned, I just have to give praise to our youngest fellow school psych who did a great job organizing the affair. She took on a job that I wouldn't have touched with a 10 foot pole and handled it with aplomb.

So since we didn't have a staff meeting today due to the overflow of the big move, I went over to see a student on my caseload who had freaked out the speech therapist during their re-evaluation. I met with the student and learned that the kid is a bit sensitive and is definitely not the type of kid who should be watching 1000 Ways to Die especially at 11 years of age. Sheesh, really? C'mon. I was watching Enter the Ninja & Revenge of the Ninja and at that age, and I certainly shouldn't have, and look how messed up I am.

Well, practically the whole school, students and staff, were dressed up for Halloween so I felt a little underdressed when I was over there. So I made sure to tell any staff member, in my best deadpan, that asked that I was dressed as a serial killer and they look just like everyone else. I like to scare the normals.

So I returned to the office and had lunch with the department and then I got annoying news.

A friend of mine had been asking me why I had been dreading the move so much and I told her that I knew it wasn't going to go smoothly considering all the potential IT and maintenance issues. To be honest, it went rather smoothly yesterday, aside from being yelled at by someone for something that was my fault and largely their deluded misconceptions (Can you tell this person got under my skin?).

But all was not to be well. So this afternoon, I'm told that there is a good chance that I'm going to have to move again because the person that yelled at me yesterday (who is the head of the alternative school program) dropped hints that they were planning on using the area where my office space is set up as a place for having students fill out paperwork and meet with teachers, which now makes my location inconvenient due to the confidentiality issues involved with my position. This person had not mentioned anything about this prior to the move. My thinking (paranoid as it may be but, as we know, just because your paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you) is that this person was so incensed that we moved in yesterday that they just made this crap up. And considering that I heard them, upstairs, this afternoon, saying to someone else, "If you're nice to people, you get screwed. That's what happens when you're nice to people" I find it hard to believe otherwise.

So now I'm probably going to have to empty out my new desk, which I just got organized yesterday, which is really amazing for me, and move into a smaller location than I was before.

The Big Move

2010-10-28T19:38:00.000-04:00

Well, today was the day of the big move. To give you an idea of just how big this move was I have provide a link to a visual. The initials have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty.

So you can see that there was a lot of movement going on today. Me and LZ had to move first to make room for JJ and SD. Since LC was going to the same place we were going, they were moved at the same time. Then furniture had to be moved from the cabin to the new place and to my old place. Everyone had to take their phones and computers. The phones had to come with us because of the voice over internet phone system that we have as each phone is programmed for each user. Since all the computers and phones had to be dismantled, they had to be reassembled again. I helped all my coworkers get phones and computers back together, which was a blast. I've done this several times now. It is actually kinda comforting to work on a problem that you know has a solution as opposed to problems that don't have definite fixes.

Then while I was trying to assemble my work area, our new neighbor (who works upstairs) came in and flipped out on me. They started yelling that we weren't supposed to be moving in today. That it wasn't supposed be until tomorrow. I replied that I was told over a week ago that we were moving today and that men showed up at my office with hand carts and started moving my stuff. The person went on yelling and a moment later, I decided to leave the field of fire and went back to my place of origin. I told my supervisor what had happened since the other person was a supervisor as well.

So after lunch and helping a bunch of people with their computers, I went back to my new digs and finished moving into my desk. The yeller came down and apologized but I remained cool toward them. By the end of the day, I managed to get situated. I am beat. I'm getting too old for this stuff.

Wednesday Recovery

2010-10-27T20:21:00.003-04:00

I woke up this morning after a night of coughing and trying to sleep in an upright position. I really don't know if what I had would really be considered sleep but I dragged myself into the shower and tried to simulate life and went to work.

At first, I didn't think I was going to seek to interact with the student population (i.e. counseling or testing) today and I sought out some form of paperwork to do. Unfortunately, my productivity from yesterday had bitten me in the butt and left me with very little that I could do. I coworker had kindly brought me a box which I filled with books in about 2 minutes and I sought out other things to write/type without success.

Then I was present/involved in a discussion about a special breakfast that we are having this Friday. It was this conversation that finally drove me from the building and sent me packing to the school, where I proceeded to counsel every kid that had it on my caseload. I'm going to have more about this in a later post about office politics. I was trying to write about it today but I'm finding that it is rambling on and I'm not too sure where it is going. So I'm going to cut it and paste it into another post to be completed at another time.

After counseling and doing what little paperwork I could reasonably find, I finally had the teacher training for the FM system. It was actually very interesting. I learned some things about how to keep the FM system in working order. I don't know if anyone else in the district knows any of this and I don't even know if it is something that I'm supposed to be responsible for. I'll have to talk with my boss about this.

Tomorrow is the big move. I hope I don't get my fingers smashed with something heavy so I can type about it.

Death Warmed Over

2010-10-26T19:25:00.000-04:00

That is what I woke up feeling like but I dragged my sorry butt into work anyway because I need to hold onto my sick days. I figured I would just isolate myself from the world and finish typing up the psych reports that I have outstanding. I also wrestled with taking a half-day and going home early but at a certain point in the cost-benefit analysis, it just seemed like a better option to stay at work and bear on through the rest of the day.

One thing that was waiting for me was a bunch of IEPs that I had submitted to my director for review. This may happen in other districts and it isn't necessarily a bad thing. Most of the notes on them were more for future benefit but I did see my boss about them and cleared that up. Then I fixed any clerical errors that were present and went about my day.

Today was the last interview for an open position in our department. It will either go to a social worker or a school psychologist. The last interview was a male school psychologist. In the end, I continue to be the unique snowflake of the department since this one didn't make the cut.

In the end, I finished my two psych reports, printed them out, made copies, and sent them out in the mail. I can't be absent tomorrow since I have a meeting with some teachers in the afternoon so I'm off to get some rest and hopefully feel better tomorrow.

Thoughts about the Move

2010-10-25T20:00:00.000-04:00

Just a quick rundown on Monday activities before I get on to the subject of my title.

I finished torturing...I mean testing a 5th grader today. The student was a real trooper. I got all of that stuff scored and got to see the School Motivation and Learning Strategies Index in action. While it was a little bit of a pain to score without the software, it was still interesting and I'll have to see if it will be of use. I ordered it because I got to thinking about the number of students that get referred that don't necessarily have a learning problem as much as not knowing how to learn or study or prepare for tests. The SMALSI is probably something that Intervention and Referral Services should be using but...

After this, I finished up two psychological reports after going to pick up my last outstanding survey from a parent. So that was two down and two reports to go. Then I have more kids to test. Overall, it was a fairly productive day.

I also found out that one of my students that ended up being court ordered into a residential substance abuse facility had eloped and was now back in juvie and will likely be there for the better part of a year, if not sent to another facility for treatment.

So onto the meat of my entry.

I started thinking about the year so far and it seems very disjointed. Perhaps this is more my perception than anything else but since this is my diary, I get to spew my view. As I've mentioned, in a few days, me, my office mate, and another coworker are moving out of the building where our department is located and moved into a building that is about 10 yards away. The reason for this move is that the "temporary" trailer that has housed three other staff people for much longer than the word "temporary" implies are being moved into the regular building and the trailer will be demolished. Apparently, being a trailer is a thankless job. I wouldn't recommend it as a career move.

One odd thing to note is that the third person that is being moved out with me and my office mate wouldn't necessarily be impacted by the move. This third coworker is part of another series of moves that is occurring. Along with her, several other people are having their offices switched around for reasons that aren't necessarily clear. The reason I'm being moved with my office mate is because we are working in the same school this year but if the logic for my placement this year is followed, I will not be working in that same school next year. Either way is fine with me. I've known my office mate for 13+ years having worked with her in my previous year.

Two of the other people being impacted by the move are my current office neighbors who have been sharing an office together for over 2 years and, in a way, have become like family to each other. From a morale point of view, I don't think that their separation is a good idea.

I think these impending changes are impacting the...communication isn't the right word...the flow of socialization within the department. One part of it for me may be that I already have an alternative place to work, the office at the school, so I already feel a bit of a disconnect from the department. I imagine that this disconnect is going to become greater after the move since my "home" office won't even be in the same building as everyone else.

I've already worked for program that was the black sheep of the company I worked for and it was a bit like being picked last for dodgeball. I get the feeling that this move is going to lead to being forgotten by the social environment unless I/we make a concerted effort to remain involved and remind folks of our presence. The people in the trailer already know a bit what that is like, especially since most folk already refer to them as the "cabin people", not in the redneck/ hillbilly sort of way but more in the "they are distant and different" sort of way.

The change in office mates for other people is also going to impact things. I think about one of the theories of group development and what is going to happen as we adjust to this new system. I hope that we have time to go through them before any other changes take place. Otherwise we are going to be always a bit off our game. Even though we do not have to make the types of group decisions that this theory applies to, the social environment will definitely be impacted.

DYFridayS

2010-10-22T20:40:00.000-04:00

Our department meeting had a special guest today, a representative from DYFS. We had provided a number of questions ahead of time but the representative didn't seem to prepare responses for them. While I know that anything having to do with people has to be handled on a case by case basis, the rep could have looked up the law upon which decisions were based in order to answer the questions.

The few things that I was able to learn during the meeting included:

Even when a child is in a foster home, the parent(s) retains the right to sign consent for evaluations and the initial IEP.
Based on a recently passed law, when a student has been placed in a foster home in a different town, the district of their original residence remains responsible for their education. In addition, their is a stronger requirement that the student continues to attend the school of that town in order to reduce the disruption in their education.
There is no law against corporal punishment in New Jersey.

It was difficult to get definitive answers on anything.

Later in the day, I finally obtained two of the surveys that I needed to complete two psychological evaluations. So I spent the rest of the day working on one of the reports and packing for the big move next week.

One final note, I had promised an additional update from the professional development day. Well, I was looking over my notes and the material from the law presentation and there really wasn't anything additional to add.

The lawyer that presented on behavioral intervention plans didn't tell us anything that we didn't already know and the cyber-bullying part really didn't have any ground breaking news beyond the fact that the law really hasn't caught up with technology.

Have a good weekend.

Thursday Fun

2010-10-21T19:36:00.000-04:00

I solved my Excel problems when I got into work and now I feel comfortable that I have a spreadsheet that can tell me when I need to have re-eval planning meetings completed as well as being able to tell me that date based upon whether the student's IEP lapses before the actual re-eval date. It is still a little crude but it is functional for me.

I get an email from a teacher that tickles me pink. The teacher basically asks me if I could look at all the IEPs for the students in her resource class to see if they have "calculator" as a modification for the NJ ASK. First, I don't know who she has in her resource class. And B, she has all the IEPs. My response summarizes this and then tells her that she can email me the names of the students that don't have it and she thinks should. I also mention that 90% of my students have their IEP meetings scheduled before the NJ ASK and if they need it, it will be put in there at that time. I double check with the special ed supervisor to make sure that my response wasn't crazy. The supervisor didn't think so.

I talk with the coworker that asked me to attend an initial referral conference in their place. I ask my coworker if their reticence to ask me had anything to do with my seeming compromised due to my personal problems. My coworker stated that wasn't the case and that I always seem "present" (my word) at work. So that is a relief.

Later in the day, I attend the above meeting. The kindergarten student has been referred due to behavior problems in school. Angry outbursts, inability to remain still, below age performance on tasks in class. The meeting was at the end of the school day and the student was brought to the room where we had the meeting so the parent could take the child home. The kid is brought in and immediately starts crying. The teacher brings the student out of the room for a moment and returns with the student who is continuing to cry, falls upon the floor and flails about, starts trying to crawl away and escape the room.

I think the child may be eligible.

I return to the office in time to accompany my coworkers/fellow moviees to the place we are moving our offices. Word has come through the grapevine that we are going to move next week. This is later confirmed by an email from our boss that we will be moving by the end of next week. So we visit our new digs again and look around. My two coworkers are the ones making plans as to where they will be and I will go in the default location, which suits me fine. We spend some time talking with one of new housemates and get the grand tour...or a grander tour because we have already been over once. This leads to the end of the day.

Department Meeting Friday!

Wednesday Testing

2010-10-20T20:21:00.000-04:00

So I pick up my gear from the office and head over to the school. Some student in the common area outside the school tries to look in the file box I'm carrying (yes, I'm very high tech; I constantly look like I'm moving into a new office or have just been fired) and asks if he can help me carry the box into school. At first I wonder if I look that old that I would be assumed to be enfeebled but then he reveals that he just wants to help me because he thinks it will earn him a ride on the school elevator. Again, this leads me to wonder if I look so incapacitated that I would need to use the elevator to carry one box.

Once I'm in my office, I endure the torturous school announcements and then call a student to my office for testing. I torture the poor child for about an hour and a half and then send them back to class. I'm about half-way through the evaluation and plan to finish it up by next week at the latest.

Following this I contact a few parents to get those darn survey forms back and I actually have success in speaking to them. I look at the time and determine that I have caused enough damage in this school for one day and head off to another school to finish up the testing with the student that I had to call DYFS about.

My fears that the student would turn and run away from me as soon as they see me turn out to be unfounded. In fact it is just the opposite. As soon as the kid sees me, they say, "For me" with an eagerness that I'm not used to. While I'm walking to the room for the assessment, the student says, "I wish we could do this every day for like the next ten days." And this is even after the kid attended an assembly that morning. Boy, I feel special.

As an aside, if you ever want to get a boost to your self-esteem in this field, do a classroom visit to a kindergarten. You'll feel like a rock star.

So I don't know what happened between the last time I saw the student and today. When I try to find out if there were any visitors (aka state officials) at their home, the student seems completely oblivious. The kid is also more hyperactive than an appropriate simile for someone being hyperactive (thanks again for the joke, David Thorne; for someone, this just makes me laugh). I finish the evaluation and return the kid to class.

I then return to the office and start another psych report that I can't finish because I don't have surveys back. So that means I now have approximately four psych reports in the hopper, none of which I can finish due to missing information. I also get assigned two more psych evals. Such is life.

Oops, I just remembered that I forgot to log in a risk assessment from a colleague. Note to self.

The afternoon involves getting some stuff organized and calculating dates for re-eval planning meetings. This also means playing around with MS Excel. While I'm doing that a fellow school psychologist asks me if I can cover an initial referral conference for them tomorrow. The manner in which they ask me makes me wonder how my coworkers are seeing me these days due to my personal difficulties, which also makes me wonder if I have an inaccurate view of myself during this time.

I'm thinking about asking my coworker about this tomorrow.

Delayed Mundane Monday (I Flaked)

2010-10-19T06:42:00.000-04:00

I forgot to do my post last night, which is not a good sign.

It was a sign of being too tired and whole lot of nothing going on today. So I'll just hit bullet points:

Tried to test two kids. The one in the morning was absent; the one in the afternoon wasn't easily located and may have been in gym. And trying to take a small, hyperactive child out of gym is like trying to take a puppy away from a dog lover.
This freed me up to write up three risk assessments; scores some subtests; and try to make sense of a psychological report that I'm trying to write.
I reached out to one parent who had emailed me with concerns about their child's performance in a class. I did this after I spoke with the teacher.
I called two other parents and didn't get a response. The first parent was to set up a neuropsychiatric evaluation and the second was to obtain a survey that I need to complete one of my psychological reports.
I also started the frame work of an IEP I need for in November.
I also took a look at my upcoming re-evaluations and determined latest date that I would need to hold a planning meeting.

And that is it.

I'm out tomorrow (or today, considering I'm writing this on Tuesday). I'll be back on Wednesday.

Musings from Friday

2010-10-15T19:38:00.000-04:00

Today was department meeting day and, aside from a double header risk assessment which was really pretty mundane, the highlight of the meeting to me was something a coworker brought up during the meeting.

The subject involved the I&RS team at my coworker's school reporting that they were seeing an increase in ADD type behaviors and was asking if there was a simple screening tool that they could use at the general education level to assist parents when they go to see their child's doctor. Now putting aside the part of the screening tool and the issues regarding qualifications to administer and interpret, the real issue that sprung to my mind and the mind of the transition coordinator was the rumination of whether the ADD type symptoms is something that is going to become the norm in students. Meaning that it may not be a disorder.

This made me think of some things that I had read in transhumanist science-fiction. While the idea of something in science-fiction having an application in the real world may rub some people the wrong way, I do subscribe to the belief that science-fiction provides an area to explore uncomfortable subjects in a safe environment. Such as exploring racism using alien races.

In addition to this, transhumanism isn't just something from science-fiction. It is a movement that is involved in a number of areas: social, political, economic, technological.

So the particular piece of fiction that came to mind involved the idea that as time went by and biology and technology becomes more integrated and indistinguishable from each other, and as the internet evolves and we reach a point where we may be constantly in contact with it then part of the definition of intelligence may involve our ability to mentally multi-task and be able to access multiple sources of information.

With that idea in mind then ADD may not be a disorder but an evolutionary step.

If that is the case then perhaps it isn't the students that are the problem but the teachers. Not the teachers but the educational institutions.

The final thought I had was that it is a shame that the current generation has to teach the coming generation because it is not a level playing field. The coming generation always has a leg up, technologically. I grew up in a time where I got to see cable TV and the internet has gone from practically nothing and has exploded. The availability of information now is astounding.

I think back to my previous career and I think the type of psychiatric outreach program that I worked for wouldn't have been possible prior to the invention of cellphones and pagers. There is no way we would have been able to respond to changing situations as quickly as we did without it.

The amount of information that children are exposed to these days is astounding and it must be difficult to adjust or manage that amount of information. It is difficult and numbing for me. Perhaps the malleability of young minds are better suited for it but it is having consequences that appear to be a disability to a fading society or age. In addition, the generation that is in school now may be that transition period that is going to have the toughest time of it because they are a part of two different technological ages.

Even so, I can't help think that something is being lost. Some sort of depth of being or loss of introspection. But perhaps that is just the inclination to think that the time that you occupy was better than the age that is coming.

Thursdee

2010-10-14T18:17:00.000-04:00

My work day begins with a trip to a day care to evaluated a child before their third birthday. I was in the company of an LDT-C and a speech therapist. We decided to do the evaluation all together because we weren't expecting to get much since the child was reported to be non-verbal and diagnosed with FAS and PDD. Sadly, we weren't disappointed. Although it was a happy discovery that the child was no longer a biter and was actually much more social than we expected. Standardized testing was not possible and attempts at informal assessments didn't meet with much success either. We returned to the office with the plan of combining our observations. I'm just waiting to get a couple of survey forms back before I can write my stuff up.

Since I was on a testing kick, I decided to go see another student and start that evaluation. I get to the school and see that they have their book fair. I manage to resist the pull of new sci-fi books and go to the classroom and start my observation. Following the observation, I find a spot to test and go get the kid. The student is amazed that I know who Wolverine is and that I like Superman. In doubly impress him when I'm able to talk about Dragonball Z and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The testing session goes pretty well. I'm doing a house-tree-person when the student starts talking about being beaten by one of their parents. I explore the subject some more with the student but I already know what I have to do. Since it was getting toward his lunch time, I bring him back to class after ensuring that he isn't injured and make the call to DYFS. I make sure to get the DYFS worker's name and ID number. I also make sure that the building guidance counselor is aware of the situation.

Following this, and a quick in the car lunch, I return to the office and find multiple survey forms in my mailbox. I stop by and tell the case manager of the student that I just started testing and tell her about the call to DYFS. We both comment about that may impede the progress of our assessment since the child's parents may hold it against the district. After that, I sit down and do a ton of scoring. By this time, there is only a few minutes left in the day and I copy and past some graphics into my psych report. This is the only cheating I really allow myself when I write a report. I'll cut and paste the charts from the scoring software reports.

Tomorrow, we return to our regularly scheduled department meetings.

Observation

2010-10-13T21:04:00.000-04:00

I started off by going to the school and observing a student in their classroom. I went to the classroom and motioned for the teacher to come to the door. When I asked the teacher if the student was present, she immediately turns to the student and starts to call out their name. I tried to hush her before she does so and I'm still not sure whether my cover was blown or not. The situation wasn't any better because I really didn't even know what the student looked like because our school information system doesn't have their pictures in it yet (today was picture day). So I end up observing the wrong student for the first couple of minutes until the teacher gets the class going well enough that I can get her attention and get an ID on the student.

In the past, I've had several observations where there was a far more interesting student to watch in the class than the one that I was there to observe. It really makes you wonder just how good the referral process is and has caused me to say to myself, "Why hasn't anyone mentioned this kid?"

But that is not the case today. As a whole, the class was pretty mundane and there really weren't any outstanding behaviors.

Later in the morning, I returned to my home base and settled in until 2:30pm when I was scheduled for an initial referral conference. I spent the time between doing some house cleaning in preparation for the impending move because I just know that word will come down from on high suddenly. I find a lot of interesting little, inherited, knick-knacks in desk. My desk was the former desk of two school psychologist, one of which had been in the district for 30 years. It is amazing what you can find. I manage to suppress most of my hoarding tendencies and actually get rid of some stuff.

I also manage to complete most of a psychological report and I call the teacher that I returned the surveys to yesterday to explain why she got them back. Now all I need is for the teacher to complete them properly and the report will be done in an hour...okay, maybe a bit more if I get hung up on the the social/emotional section.

I submit my paperwork to attend the state school psychologist conference in December and I also put out a couple of emails to colleagues to see if they are going. If any of you are attending, I'll be the one wearing glasses...

The initial referral conference rolls around. It is another interesting case but it is difficult to see how it is education related. The young child has food eating issues that don't seem to be related to a medical condition and aren't necessarily something that would have an educational impact. We agree to do the evaluation to see if there may be an education impact.

That brings me to the end of my day and I head on home. Tomorrow is some fun and frolic with testing. I'm going to also try to do part three of "I fought the law..."

Tuesday Summary

2010-10-12T19:46:00.000-04:00

A quick one today. I really didn't have much interaction with the outside world.

I completed compiling my list of testing modifications for my students and submitted it to the testing coordinator. Two things to note on that: if a student needed a calculator, I had to make sure that it was in the testing mods and the classroom modifications. As the school year progresses, I'll have to double check when I do each IEP. I don't think it will be too hard to remember to do so since it is now my screen saver.

The other thing was that a coworker asked me if there was a way that our IEP software could pull that information from the IEPs. I told her that I had already thought of that and it could do so but with the current screwed up state of the software, no dice Chicago.

Following that, I got back some surveys, a BASC-2 and a Vineland-II, from a teacher. I just don't understand why people can't take a moment to read the directions. They are very clear. But no, the teacher left most of the Vineland incomplete and enough of the BASC to make it worthless (and a huge pain) to enter into the scoring software. So the teacher gets to have them back with a note attached.

In the afternoon, I attempted to work on my coworker's spellcheck enabled form-fillable document. After about ten tries, I growled and cursed in frustration and gave up. I did everything correctly and got it to work but everything went to hell when I saved it. The macro would just disappear. Extremely frustrating.

Tomorrow, I'm off to the school again and I'm going to see about doing a classroom observation and try to get some more paperwork done.

I fought the law and the law won (Part Two)

2010-10-12T12:03:00.000-04:00

The training was broken down into several sections. The first was sort of a "top ten" list of things for CST members to be aware of. I don't see any copyright or trademark imprints on any of the hand-outs so I may risk quoting directly from the text (although doing so from something given to me by lawyers almost seems like chancing it; hopefully they would start with a "C and D" before getting really legal on me).

Email
As I mentioned yesterday, email was one of the topics. The presenters made sure we knew that any email that has a student's initial or name in it could be subpeona'd for a due process hearing. With that being said, be respectful and professional in all your email correspondences. Keep them brief and avoid long narratives and inappropriate references to the student. It seems very much like common sense but, apparently, common sense goes out the window more often than you would think. Being the jaded person that I am, it doesn't go out the window more often than I think.

The presenter also touched upon our requirements for responding to emails from parents. That each email should be treated as a separate written response and we have 20 days to respond to them. That doesn't mean we have to respond to each email separately and that we don't have to respond by email, we can make a phone call or send a written letter. Along with that, if you don't respond by email, make sure you keep a copy of your response or log the phone call somewhere. In the case of the latter, some school information systems and IEP software systems have the ability to log such interactions.

PLAAFPs
My favorite from this is something that has been repeated over and over again. Saying something to the effect of "Mikey is a pleasure to have in class and he works very hard" is useless and meaningless in a court of law. PLAAPFs need to be broken down into what the student can do and has trouble doing and it needs to be operationalized. "Mikey is able to complete two digit computations but has difficulty completing three digit computations" tells much more. The information in a PLAAFP should be completed with the thought that one day, it may be read by a judge or lawyer. Be honest, not cruel, but honest and concise.

Rationale for Removal
This is a section of the IEP that has plagued people at times. The best advice from the presenters was to be specific because it may help another party in the future and to give strong supporting examples.

Uncooperative and/or Abusive Parents
Don't take it personally. If anyone else was in your position, they would suffer the same as you. Maintain your professional demeanor. And you don't have to take abuse. If someone is verbally abusing you over the phone, you have the right to end the call by telling the person that they are being verbally abusive and that you are ending the phone call. After that, make sure you tell your supervisor.

Accommodations and Modifications
Avoid laundry lists. Again, keep in mind that a judge or lawyer may read this one day and ask a teacher, "How do you have time to provide all these everyday?"

Due Process Hearings
When the presenter asked the audience about their experiences with going to a due process hearing, most people said it was a horrible experience. Some said that it was humiliating. The presenter said that it should not be a bad experience if you are prepared and prepared correctly by the lawyer. In addition, if the judge refers to you as "credible" in the judge's opinion, that is the best praise you can expect to receive.

I fought the law and the law one... (Part One)

2010-10-11T20:36:00.001-04:00

Today was professional development day. So while many people had the day off, I went in for some training. Fortunately, it was a better, and more applicable, training than on some previous professional development days. Possibly because the child study team went out of district this time.

It has been my experience that when you are the minority in the district (and next to teachers, almost every one else is the minority), you often get shoe-horned into trainings that have little to nothing to do with your profession. While one training on differentiated instruction may be nice, when you go to the same thing several years in a row (I'm taking dramatic license here) it gets to be a bit much.

So what is a child study team/department of special education to do? Well your options include pushing the department agenda and getting the organizers of ProDep to get a special presentation just for the department; get someone from the department to do a training of some sort; or head out of town if you are lucky enough to find an applicable training on the same day as your district's day (and the district is willing to spring for it).

So today's out of district training was on interpreting special education law. I had been to similar a training last year and I was pleasantly surprised to see one of the same lawyers that did the presentation last year. The great thing about this lawyer, aside from some of the truly horrific and preposterous stories he had to tell, was his dry humor. I likened him to Bob Newhart back when he did stand-up.

I plan on recapping this training in a couple of posts or side posts. I'm doing this for a number of reasons: first, today and tomorrow are a bit busy for me personally; and second, I need a little time to organize my notes.

So not to leave you high and dry, I'll mention some of what you can expect in the next few days: email, PLAAFPs, parents, and bullying.

I'm sorry if this seems like a bit of a non-post but my private life calls.

Publishers are reducing the number of picture books...

2010-10-08T20:43:00.000-04:00

I saw this sad article today in the New York Times.

Publishers are reducing the number of picture books that are being produced in favor of more text-heavy books for young readers. The article says it better than I can.

A Flat Friday

2010-10-08T20:40:00.000-04:00

Without a department meeting today, it was business as usual. It was very quiet at home base as there were a number of absences in addition to the boss.

I started my day at the school by meeting with a special education teacher and the Wilson Reading teacher. The SE teacher had been receiving communiques from one of my formidable parents and we met to provide some encouragement and reassurance. The main message was that it was the teacher's classroom and as long as their decisions were based on sound, educational choices, the teacher would have all the back up they could get if the parent went above their head. When I returned to the department, I made sure to talk to my supervisor, who oversees the special education teachers, and filled her in on the situation. My supervisor echoed the message of the meeting and asked me to remind her to speak with the teacher at the next SE teacher meeting.

For the rest of the day, I worked on several projects:

I started the psych report for the 1st grader;
worked on compiling a list of testing modifications for the district testing coordinator;
fielded a call from the parent that didn't show for their child's IEP meeting yesterday;
completed the IEP for said child;
organized some more risk assessments that I found misfiled in my drawer;
and worked on a MS Word project for my coworker (trying to figure out how to get MS Word to spellcheck a form-fillable document)

That is really about it for today. Monday is our final professional development day. Our department is going to a training in another district. So Monday's post will be about that field trip.

I'm off to read a book...

IEP Day

2010-10-07T21:09:00.000-04:00

My day starts off with three IEP meetings. Two of them are actual meetings while the last one is an attempt but two thirds is actually a good turn out. One is done over the phone since the parent reported that they never received the invitation but the letter was sent to the correct address. The other one was with the parents that showed up on Monday. In the case of the latter, the funny thing is that they showed up three days early but, today, they showed up 10 minutes late. Even the parents joked about it. Still, it was good times.

I have an interesting discussion with the parents of the second meeting. One parent works for the state child protective services (okay, okay, I'm blatant about this being a New Jersey blog. I'll just call it DYFS, it sounds like Dreyfuss without the "r"). This parent asks me the process of referring a student for an evaluation, particularly in the case where DYFS is the custodian/guardian. I explain that we have had the DYFS caseworkers make the written request in lieu of the the parent (wow, "lieu" didn't get a red underline, I thought that was an iffy guess on my part).

I think I'm starting to grok the idea of having the office in the school. I've been amazed at how productive I've been since spending time there. It has really reduced a lot of distractions for me. Not only was I able to have the IEPs for these meetings 90% prepared but after the two meetings, I was able to finish those IEPs and have them ready to print out.

I think my original distaste for having an office in a school came from my previous district where students constantly showed up out of the blue and the administration was constantly calling for my presence for the most minor things. "Can you come down here? X got kicked out of class for not doing what Mister/Misses Y told them to do." Really? How about working with the teacher on better classroom management strategies? Or give the student a detention. The situation doesn't warrant a debate. Sometimes students just need to be told the rules.

So since I'm in a school/district where the administration has a clearer vision of discipline and boundaries, these sorts of situations don't come up nearly as often. Sometimes, just the reverse occurs: "You suspended them for 15 days and didn't call me? I have to do a manifestation determination to see if this is related to their disability." But this doesn't happen nearly as often as the former did in my previous district.

So, as I said, I'm actually able to get more work done at the school. And thinking about my eventual move to my new office, perhaps the isolation from the rest of the department will also benefit me.

After my meetings, and doing the related paperwork, I return to home base (although having multiple offices makes it difficult to keep them straight when I'm writing about them). I speak to my supervisor about the application for services from a parent. The one that I mentioned yesterday that had the wording "physical basis." I show the application to her and she has the same reaction: that looks like something that a medical doctor needs to sign. She advises me to talk to the director. So since the director is out until Monday, I call the agency that gave the parent the application. I make sure that this hold up won't cause the application to expire. Once I get that reassurance, I call the parent and explain the situation. The parent is very understanding and I tell her that I will call with an update as soon as I speak with the director. Now that I think about it, I'll have to call the agency again just to get clarification about their application form.

I should note that I looked over the student's evaluations and previous IEPs and don't see anything in there that makes me think that they would technically be eligible for the services from this agency.

After lunch, it is time for another IEP meeting. This one isn't mine, I'm just along for the ride. My coworker likes to bring someone along because she is still getting used to working in a school environment and likes to have a sounding board when uncertain about the law.

My presence came in handy because there was a question about how to discontinue occupational therapy: did the student need a formal evaluation or was the report from the OT stating that the student had met their goals and was recommended to discontinue enough. I used the precedence that speech therapists had done the latter (wow, I'm getting some mileage with "former" and "latter" today) in the case of students receiving speech. The only times that this really triggers a formal evaluation is in a case where a student that is eligible under communication impaired is determined to no longer need speech. Then we need to evaluated to see if the student continues to be eligible for any special education services under another category.

The meeting is a long one. Mostly due to the fact that the parents need a translator. For the newbies out there that don't speak a second language: if you are going to have a meeting that requires a translator, count on that meeting taking up to twice as long as an average meeting.

Following this, we return to home base and I finish out the day printing IEPs and putting the out for copying and mailing. Overall, a good day.

With my boss away for a long weekend, we do not have a department meeting tomorrow, so the inmates are running the asylum. Toga! Toga!

Just kidding.

I Had a Snappy Title But I Forgot...

2010-10-06T19:26:00.000-04:00

First thing this morning, I finished testing the student from yesterday. She was a real trooper, once again. After that, I went to my assigned school and did some work. I'm really amazed at how much paperwork I'm getting done when I go there. A lack of interaction really does wonders for productivity.

I get a call from my office mate who tells me I should return to the office because we are going to see our new digs. I was planning on returning any way, so I go back and see the new place. On any other day, I probably would have been impressed but I'm just not feeling it today. It is nice and it doesn't seem like it will be a bad move. Most importantly, there will be room for my books. On the downside, I'll have to clean out my desk since it won't be coming with me. I'll have to start the purge.

At lunch, we talk about the move. We also talk with the people moving into my current office. We kid one of them about purging her stuff. She goes on about having 20 years worth of protocols stored in her office. We tell her that she can get rid of 13 years of those protocols but she is resistant. I tell her current and future office mate that she will need to do a "Hoarders"-style intervention.

After lunch, I speak with my boss about the risk assessments. She tells me that she hasn't been holding back on giving me assessments because of questions regarding my clinical skill but because she inundated me with risk assessments and evaluations that it impacted my ability to complete my other work. This makes me feel better.

Oddly enough, I get called in on an odd situation/risk assessment and back up one of my coworkers. It was one of the more interesting situations. The main question that it raised was: when does religious belief become a psychiatric concern?

A very touchy situation. In this case, the student has reported seeing spirits of relatives in the past. This time, she reported the student reported that they haven't been sleeping because of being visited by malign spirits that give bad dreams and have physically shaken them awake. The rest of the family has also experienced similar events at various points and recently had their home blessed. The family is part of a church where this is completely acceptable to believe. The church has also identified the student as being gifted or blessed with the ability to interact/perceive the spirit world.

The student does not have suicidal or homicidal thoughts; no thoughts of harming themselves; no problems as far as school is concerned, aside from fatigue from poor sleep; no racing thoughts; no disruption in peer or teacher interactions; no problems with personal grooming or hygiene. When speaking to the family, they are aware of the situation and plan on taking the student to the pediatrician regarding the sleep problems.

While there may be religious pre-occupation from my secular standpoint, it is not unusual in the context of the family and their religious beliefs. The student is not a danger to themselves or others and the only impact appears to be the sleep disruption, and the family is taking appropriate measures.

I tell my coworker, who brought me in on this, that she sure knows how to show a guy a good time. I go back to the office and finish printing my paperwork for tomorrow's annual reviews.

A Short Tuesday

2010-10-05T21:26:00.000-04:00

I just spent the last hour and a half cleaning up the sludge in the basement. This sludge was the result of the plumber snaking a pipe under the basement floor. Needless to say, I'm eager to put this day behind me.

There isn't much to talk about today. I did a classroom observation and starting testing a 1st grader today. I don't remember first grade being that organized but then again, I don't remember much of last week either.

I managed to get through about half of the evaluation before it was time to bring the kid back for their snack time. The student was a real trooper. When I brought her back for snack time, there was still 10 minutes to go. The kid said we could go back and do some more but I didn't want to get caught up in a subtest and have her antsy for snacks if it ran over.

The room that I used for the testing was good but had the downside that the back room was used for another class and the teacher that used it didn't seem to have any sense of volume control. When you are in a room that is about the size of your average non-master bedroom, I don't think you need to shout when you are standing two feet away from all your students. It wasn't even like the teacher was shouting at them, she just talked loud enough for it to be shouting.

For the rest of the day, I managed to get a significant amount of paperwork done. So far, I have had exactly one teacher give me PLAAFs (Present Levels of Academic Achievement and Functioning; replacing the older and much snappier PLEPs) for my meetings on Thursday. That is a turn out of one third. An email will have to go out first thing tomorrow.

Toward the end of the day, one of my other special education teachers stops by my office at HQ and shows me a piece a paper that a parent had sent in, asking the teacher to fill out. The paper is asking for certification that the student has "physical evidence of a visual or perceptual disability." It is for the student to receive services from an outside agency for dyslexia. I tell the teacher that I would have to speak to my supervisor first or the agency itself. The one thing that makes me leery is the "physical" part of the statement. That smacks of medical diagnosis which isn't me. I'm not going to prevent the student from getting the services that his parents are seeking but if the agency needs a medical doctor's signature then that is what they should get.

At the end of the day, I get a chance to speak with my supervisor about the risk assessments. I ask if she has been hold back on giving me risk assessments. She states that she has been doing so but she doesn't have time to talk to me at length and would like to speak to me tomorrow. She assures me that it has nothing to do with my personal life. I respond, "Well if it professional, that makes me even more concerned." My boss tells me not to worry. I go back to my office, worrying, and speak with my officemate/confidant. I tell her that I'm worried that our boss is concerned is concerned about my clinical ability. She says that it isn't that: that our boss recognized that she had given me so many risk assessments and so many evaluations last year that it severely impacted my organizational abilities and I was swamped at the end of last school year. So our boss doesn't want to do that to me again. I tell my confidant that I hope that is the case.

I'm not the type of guy that has a lot of male pride. I have more geek pride than anything else. I don't have a big competitive streak. I don't go in for a lot of the "measuring" contests that are stereotypical for my gender. The one thing I do have a hang up about is pulling my weight. I don't like to be coddled or feel like I'm being coddled. Although finding out that I was being coddled and not having recognized it might bother me more. So I have that feeling at the moment.

The whole pulling my weight thing was probably the thing that made it difficult for me to be a supervisor in my previous career. I believed that I had to do as much work, if not more, than everyone else on my treatment team, which made it difficult for me to delegate. In addition, I had to do the dirtiest jobs because I felt if I did them then it would be hard for my staff not to do them. So I went to the worst neighborhoods and saw the most difficult clients. That is my biggest hang up. Professionally.

Questions from Andrea

2010-10-04T22:21:00.000-04:00

I just noticed someone posted a comment on the October 1st post. Andrea writes:

Hi!

I, like Cameron from last week, really enjoy reading your blog and learning from it. I'm currently a 2nd year graduate student in Florida, and I'm thinking about leaving Florida after I graduate to return to NJ where I'm from. I have a few questions I hope you can help me with.

Thanks for reading. I hope that it is helpful.

I'm planning on becoming a NCSP during my third year, which NJ accepts, but I'll still need to learn the state laws and how things are done in NJ. Do you have any good resources for learning information like that? I don't want to have too steep of a learning curve if/when I return to NJ.

Reader friendly resources are few and far between. The two core sources are the NJ Administrative Law for Special Education and Parental Rights in Special Education. My standard line for parent meetings where these two sources are given to parents is that the former is written by lawyers for lawyers while the latter is the easy reading, abridged version. Sadly, there are no clear, concise versions of the law. I'm sure it is no different in other states. I've been in department meetings where even the emphasis placed on certain words can seemingly change the entire meaning of the sentence.

Another source of information is the Rutgers Special Education Clinic. This site consolidates a number of things, such as forms and other information. It even leads to the law search engine with a hint on how to search specifically for cases related to special education.

Another option, if you have the funds, would be to audit a class in special ed law at one of the New Jersey universities. When I was in my program, I know there was at least one student in our special ed law class that was sitting in after passing a similar class in New York. They paid a reduced rate for auditing the course. That being said, check with your university of interest first.

Another question I have is about Response to Intervention (RTI). Florida moved to using RTI for determining the need for special education services, instead of the discrepancy model that a lot of other states use. That means that a lot of school psychologists don't really have a place in the school anymore, and that's a major reason why I want to move back home. Which model do your schools use (I'm guessing the discrepancy model) and have you heard anything about the state switching to RTI?

The official stance of NJ special education law is that it really doesn't have a specific stance. The most recent re-authorization of special ed law in the Garden State was in 2006. At that time, the basic statement was that district did not have to be tied solely to the discrepancy model. There really hasn't been much talk about it since. That being said, the state is already gearing up for another re-authorization so who knows what it is going to come out of Trenton next. The general feeling, which I stated on Friday, is that the state is going to try to adhere more to the federal guidelines.

There has been more pressure on regular education to provide support and intervention before referring students to the child study team but even then there hasn't been a lot of follow through (from what I have seen) on using empirically researched interventions prior to referral.

The role of the school psychologist pretty varied in New Jersey. The main role is case management, along with all the meetings and paperwork that requires. In all honestly, case management is the primary role of all three primary specialties (school psychs, school social workers, and learning disabilities teacher-consultants). School psychs still do plenty of testing; we do plenty of counseling, and we do risk assessments.

This also changes from district to district. I know of some districts where case management is top priority because each team member may have 90+ students to oversee. Other districts: the school psychologists don't do any risk assessments. So if you are looking to interview in New Jersey, you may want to keep these things in mind and think about the type of district you want to work in.

I will say that with the current economic and political environment in New Jersey, working in education may not be as secure as it used to be.

Thanks for any help you can provide,
Andrea

Again, thanks for reading and if you have other questions, I'll be happy to try to answer them. Good luck this semester.

That Sinking Feeling

2010-10-04T19:56:00.000-04:00

Well, I popped on while I was at work this morning to make notes for today's post and saw that another person has started following me. I just wanted to say to her and everyone else: Thank you!

So my first bit of business at the school is to sit in on a meeting with two students (one of which is a student on my caseload), the principal, and the dean of discipline. The two had a fight on Friday, the students not the principal and dean. The parent of my student is in as well. The meeting pretty much comes down to "don't do it again and knock it off" as well as two day's detention for each. That is about what I expected. I would have even been okay with a suspension. I fully support having students in special education, even ones that are behavior disordered, experience the discipline system of the school. Society is not going to give them a break once they are out of school.

Once I'm back in my office, I begin to feel the cold seep into my bones. Since it is before the 15th of October, there is no requirement to turn on the heat in the building. It is hard to believe that a little over a week ago it was still pretty warm out. It is like the 1st of October came and someone threw a switch.

I try to keep the cold out of my hands by typing up some IEPs for Thursday. As I do, someone comes into my office and tells me parents are here for their meeting. Oddly enough the same parents that I just received the meeting RSVP. I go out and tell them that the meeting is actually scheduled for the 7th. I also tell them that I would do the meeting right now if I was able to print anything out and if I had the teacher feedback. They understand and agree to return on Thursday. At least I know they'll attend.

Once I'm back into the special ed software, I begin to notice something: all the documents that were created before a certain date are just gone. Letters, IEPs, etc. Gone. I also notice something else: when we open a new IEP on a student that has had previous IEPs done in the system, the program pulls a lot of the text from the previous IEP into the new one. So I see that when I open the new IEP that isn't pulling from the IEP that I see under the archived documents (which is the most recent IEP) but it is pulling from some invisible IEP from the year before that is among the missing documents. I let out a few expletives and comment on the lineage of this program and how it is related to an ass (the donkey type, not the body part, although I could say that too). I shoot off an email to the software company and CC our office manager. Then I continue to work on the IEPs.

Somewhere between the time I start on the IEPs and finish the IEPs, the server for the special ed department goes down like an appropriate simile for how something goes down. I know it is down because I lose access to my remote desktop and all my calls to the office go straight to voice mail. I manage to find a workaround to access the special ed program and continue to work on IEPs. It is amazing how much work you can get done when you don't have access to the internet.

After I finish the IEPs, it is time to go observe a class. I sit in on a resource class and watch how it goes. I saw this class a few weeks ago and I notice the teacher has changed the seating arrangements. It is difficult because it is an English class that is in a science lab classroom. So instead of desks, there are those large lab tables. The four kids in the class are so spread out, it is almost like each student is having a separate class. The class itself is alright and I really can't argue with the content but the atmosphere has lost some of that cohesion.

Follow the observation, I return to my main office. After lunch, I do a lot of prep work. I also agree to go to a parent's home for a social history with my office mate. We are used to home visits because we both did that sort of thing in our previous career. It isn't something that is normally done in a school district.

I also get some testing stuff prepped and make plans to test a student tomorrow. I also remind myself to seek out my boss to talk about some office issues. As I've alluded to, I'm going through some difficult times in my personal life, and I'm getting the feeling that my boss is taking it easy on me when it comes to risk assessments. I need to speak with her about that because if that is the case, I'm not in agreement with it. At this point, I know my judgment isn't impaired. At some point down the road, the stress I'm under may increase and I may need to pull back but now is not the time. But that discussion will have to wait for tomorrow.

Lawyers, Students, and Money

2010-10-01T19:52:00.000-04:00

Without the Money. But this was the closest I could come to a Warren Zevon reference. At least two out of the three apply.

Work begins with a visit to my assigned school to meet with my newest student and his mother. They are much more prompt than the parent from earlier this week. We talk about his previous program and changes to the program now that the student is in this school. The parent is in agreement to have their child in a smaller setting for language arts. We get through the meeting and I hand them off to the guidance counselor for their orientation.

I return to the office for Department Meeting Friday. We are having a special guest today: our district special education lawyer. She has come at our director's request for a Q&A session. Among the subjects discussed are the next re-authorization of IDEA; the proper use of the amendment letter and when amend instead of revise (the former not requiring an actual meeting or new IEP); using a draft during an IEP meeting and being able to use the "sloppy" IEP as a final copy.

The most interesting is the rumor regarding the re-authorization: that the social worker and LDTC specialties will be eliminated since the school psychologists can do the educational evaluations (and in other states they do) as well as the social history evaluation. The lawyer advises everyone not to get nervous about this because so much changes so quickly during the actual re-authorization that such an idea is unlikely to happen. Even if it did: there would be such a lack of school psychologists that you wouldn't be able to find enough people to fill the gap.

We also talk about risk assessments and whether our risk assessment reports should be a part of the student's special education record/school record. Some think that it should but I'm on the side that it shouldn't. Those that think it should feel that it should go with the other CST evaluations. My contention is that those evaluations are used to determine eligibility and a risk assessment isn't. In addition, a risk assessment may involve the revelation of drug abuse which then add a whole other level of confidentiality the likes of which don't apply to the special education record.

The main concern by the staff that are for putting this information in the permanent school record feel that it would be helpful for those specialties that conduct risk assessment to be able to find out if a student has been the subject of previous risk assessment. I am all for this. When I worked as a mental health screener in psychiatric emergency services, our first step when receiving a call was to look up the client in our system to see if there was a previous history. But there are other, more discreet ways to do this in a system where risk assessments are not our primary focus.

I bring up that I had recently taken all the risk assessments that were in my possession and had been done in the last two years into a binder for just such a purpose. I did this because I had been called twice so far to see if someone had been seen previously. So now this information is accessible to the staff that is responsible for risk assessments. In addition to this, we all agree to put a note in the computer system when a student has been evaluated.

After our department meeting, which takes most of the day, I return to my office and my office mate reports that she had received a voice mail message from the student liaison (read dean of discipline) from the school we are assigned. Apparently, one of my students got into a fight today. The student's parent is coming in on Monday morning. So it looks like I have my Monday morning planned out for me. Enjoy the weekend.

Scheduling and Such

2010-09-30T19:29:00.000-04:00

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.

They Just Keep Coming...

2010-09-29T20:42:00.000-04:00

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.

IEP: The Saga Continues

2010-09-28T22:13:00.000-04:00

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.

Meetings, Meetings, IEPs, and Meetings

2010-09-27T22:55:00.000-04:00

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.

Department Meeting Friday

2010-09-24T20:35:00.000-04:00

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.

Long Day, Poor Memory

2010-09-23T20:51:00.000-04:00

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.

Teachers, Risks, and Computers

2010-09-22T20:13:00.000-04:00

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 Q&A

2010-09-20T21:23:00.000-04:00

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.

Department Meeting Day

2010-09-17T19:44:00.000-04:00

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!

Meetings and Not Getting Work Done

2010-09-16T20:47:00.000-04:00

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!

(Suggest a Title for Today) or the Voltron Episode

2010-09-15T21:23:00.000-04:00

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.

Sometimes I Feel Like an Acoustic Guitarist.

2010-09-14T21:38:00.000-04:00

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.

First Day...with Students

2010-09-13T20:22:00.000-04:00

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.

Flashback to Last School Year

2010-09-11T20:10:00.000-04:00

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.

The Day Before The Real School Year Starts

2010-09-10T22:16:00.001-04:00

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!

Department Meeting & More Tech Support

2010-09-08T20:01:00.001-04:00

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.

First Teacher Day Back

2010-09-07T20:53:00.001-04:00

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.

The Recap

2010-09-04T19:40:00.001-04:00

Since this is the start of season 2, I'm going to give a recap about myself and my qualifications as a school psychologist in New Jersey. My first season was interrupted much like that TV season a few years ago that ended due to the writer's strike. I hope to make this season through to the end.

I am entering my 6th year as a school psychologist. Prior to this, I worked for 10 years in mental health field with adults suffering from severe and persistent mental illness (SPMI). My career in mental health started in a residential program. After a few years of that, I went on to work, in various positions, in a psychiatric outreach program. I ended up in a supervisory position, which was one of the worst decisions of my life. I decided to change careers for three reasons: 1) a large number of the clients that I served in the outreach program had, at one point, been in special education; 2) if I wanted to advance any further in that career, I would have to be in a position that was completely removed from client contact; and 3) being on-call 24/7 was wearing thin, really thin.

So I went back to school. The two most common types of school psychologists that I have seen are those that have always been involved in psychology in their academic career and those that were classroom teachers and then went back to school to become school psychologists. I am definitely in the former category. My undergraduate degree is in psychology. My master's degree is in psychology. And I have what is know as an educational specialist certificate in school psychology. At the moment, there is no doctoral program in my future. Besides not having the time or energy to go into such a program, it really wouldn't do much for me that I'm not already doing. It would not greatly impact my salary; and I don't have the discipline to enter into private practice, although if I did I would probably only do psychological evaluations and not therapy. For me, being a school psychologist working in a school provides me with the right balance of autonomy and oversight. At least the district that I am in provides me with that balance.

I have worked in two districts since I have been a school psychologist. My first district was a vocational high school district. Working in a vocational high school is an interesting experience because it is a combination of working in an out of district placement and working in a public school. Vocational schools get to choose their students but are held to the same standards as every other public school.

My current district is a regular pre-K to 12 district. When I entered that district, I started in the 8th grade. Last school year, I moved up to the 9th grade. This year I am working in the upper elementary school.

So that is my basic CV without giving too much away. As I've said before and I'll say again here: my goal is to give a picture of the daily working life of a school psychologist. Due to confidentiality, I try to maintain my own anonymity as well as the anonymity of any of the students and families that I work with. This may lead to some frustration on the part of my self and anyone that may be reading this as I may not go deeply into the details of some situations and speak in generalities. I do try to voice my own thoughts on the situations that I find myself encountering. I also try to provide information on being a school psychologist in New Jersey, on the special education process in New Jersey, and on clinical situations. I also try not to talk about my coworkers. The good news is that I love working with the people that I work with so this makes it easy. The times that I may mention them will be when I think a situation that they have encountered may be interesting for this blog.

So what can people expect this year? Well, let's see, the two that come off the top of my head are:

I've never been case manager for students in the 6th grade. So getting the lay of the land with this group will be interesting. Some folks say that with the lower grades, you end up working more with the parents and teachers than you do with the students. At this grade, I'll have to see where it leads because it is sort of a larval stage between child and teenager.
I've never worked on a daily basis in the school that I am assigned. I've worked with some of the administration and teachers before when I've conducted risk assessments and psychological evaluations but working in the same place every day is a different thing.

Beyond that, we'll see.

If anyone that is reading this has any questions that they would like answered, please feel free to ask. Depending on the subject, I may not be able to answer it but I'll try to point you in the right direction.

Also, if you like my blog, please feel free to recommend it to others. I noticed that I picked up two more followers. Thank you for choosing to follow me, Dr. Beam and Denyse. And yes, I follow my own blog. It was the only way I could figure out how to leave comments on my own blog.

Only two more days to go until the fun starts.

New Look & The Bookstore

2010-09-03T22:13:00.000-04:00

I've updated the look of the blog a little bit. I've added a links to the national and state school psychologist organizations. As time goes on, I'll add a few more links, such as the state department of education's section on special education and the Statewide Parent Advocacy Network, which is a resource for parents with children in special education.

The other thing is that I created a bookstore through the Amazon Associates program. The books that are in my bookstore are all ones that I have personally come across that I have found useful as a school psychologist. Some of them are the updated versions of the books that I own, such as the Clinician's Thesaurus, 7th Edition: The Guide to Conducting Interviews and Writing Psychological Reports (The Clinician's Toolbox).

Part of my reason for doing this is to provide resources to people that read the blog. The other reason is to support my own book habit. If you purchase something from Amazon through my bookstore, I get a small percentage. You are not charged any extra for your purchase than what Amazon usually charges.

Well, only three more days to go before school starts. See you then.

T-Minus One Week and Counting

2010-08-30T20:33:00.002-04:00

It is the last week of summer vacation. Next week, many teachers and other school staff (myself included) will re-enter schools and prepare for the onslaught. I've been trying to think of a few more posts to make in the interim but I've got nothing.

I'm torn because I am looking forward to seeing my coworkers again but the situation that led to my silence is ongoing. I am glad I took the summer off.

So unless I come up with something between now and next week, I'll have my first post of the new school year on the 7th of September.

Games with Kids

2010-08-25T19:09:00.007-04:00

I wanted to plug a couple of interesting games that might be useful to use with kids in both the classroom and the counseling room.

The first one is Happy Birthday, Robot! This labor of love by graphic designer and game designer, Daniel Solis, is touted as "a storytelling game for families and classrooms." I'd explain it further but I think the video tells it best.

I bought the game when it was being funded through Kickstarter. It is a really great game and one that I am looking forward to playing with my son when he gets older. I also think that it would be great for special education students that have trouble with the process of writing. If you're looking for a game to help teach collaborative storytelling, this is a great game.

The only thing extra that a teacher would need are about 10 to 15 six-sided dice. Blank dice that are modified for the game can be purchased at most educational supply stores or regular six-sided dice may be used.

Happy Birthday, Robot! can be purchased directly from Evil Hat Productions (don't be scared off by the name).

The next game is one that I like to use as an icebreaker for group counseling with kids. It is called Rorschach: The Inkblot Party Game by Bucephalus Games. From their website:

This uproarious party game brings players together to look through Rorschach tests-inkblots, trying to match answers with the other players to score points. Try to match your crazy interpretations with as many of the other players as you can!

The object is to not only match your answer with each other player but to also have a unique answer. I do think it is a great icebreaker game. It can be obtained through pretty regular channels, such as here at Amazon.com.

That's all for now.

Remember, I plan on being back to regular posts starting after Labor Day.

The Highest Compliment (An Aside)

2010-08-21T22:17:00.002-04:00

I guess with two posts in one day I'm just making up for lost time. If I count all the days that I missed since February, it looks like I owe about 70 to 80 posts. But I know that isn't going to happen.

So this is just a random thing. Two short stories from the lost time.

While others in my profession may think differently, I don't think that what we do as far as creating a psychological picture of a person is particularly amazing or surprising. While we may spit out numbers from cognitive assessments that mostly don't mean much to the parents or students, what we tell them about how their child functions really isn't something that surprises most parents. If you live with a person their entire life, you get a pretty good idea of how they function.

I think the amazing part comes from being able to generate that picture from only seeing the student for two or two and a half hours.

The highest compliment that I have received from a parent after they have received my report or had me go over it with them has been "that sounds exactly like my child."

Now another story. I had a particularly difficult and delicate case for the past year and a half. It was the end of the school year and I had a second IEP meeting with the parents to hammer down the student's schedule for the next school year. During the meeting, one parent begins to talk about one subject area where they felt the services that were provided were subpar and a disappointment. The parent went on for a few minutes and then stopped and looked expectantly at me, awaiting my response.

Now I'll skip to the next day in order to get to the punchline. I'm in my office and one of my coworkers who was also at that meeting comes in to talk to me about a different subject. Before my coworker leaves, she says that she just had to tell me about the stroke of genius that I had during the meeting. That when I said the thing that I did, she had wanted to hug me right there in the meeting because it had just completely shut the parent down and ended the argument that the parent was looking for.

So what did I say? I said, to the parent, "I don't have a response for that." This wasn't a stroke of genius. I really didn't have a response. From my point of view, I remember a long pause and my thoughts were along the lines of "what am I going to say, what am I going to say, oh crap, everyone here is going to think I'm a complete loser and incompetent. This is where they found out how incompetent I am..."

So it was not a stroke of genius. I just couldn't think of anything to say.

Blog-Fading & A School Psychologist's Summer Vacation

2010-08-21T07:04:00.002-04:00

Blog-Fading...
Well, like Marty McFly, I've turned translucent as I faded from sight and the few people who read this thing have probably gone away. Although, I'm amazed that I actually picked up one new follower in the past week. While it may look like two new followers, one of them is actually me. I accidently ended up following my own blog in an attempt to do something else. Now I have to figure out how to un-follow myself.

Anyway, thanks to a friend that I haven't seen or heard from in ages and who has been reading my blog without my knowledge, I've decided to get back into this. As I noted below, I stopped writing my blog due to some personal issues that have been putting me through a wringer. Those issues are still ongoing so there will likely be periods of time that I skip. I'm going to try to use this as a hobby.

So what I'm trying to say is I'm back for as long as I can be. So what can you expect? Well, I'm going to do this post now which will include a bit of "diary" stuff. Then I will probably disappeared for another week or two. Then come September, when schools all over New Jersey start up and the faculty and staff have their first day, all bright eyed,bushy tailed, and eager to start the school year, I'll start with regular posts.

So without further adieu...

The End of the 2009-10 School Year & What I Did on My Summer Vacation (Work Wise)
When I last left off, I was in the middle of IEP season. Depending on the sort of district you work in, you may have IEPs scattered throughout the school year but the two districts that I have worked in have had the trend of once January passes, IEPs begin in earnest. Things were going along well enough. I had IEPs scheduled for March and then I got sick. This had the impact of causing me to be out of work for several day and causing me to have to cancel two days of meetings. Now that was bad because that meant I would have to reschedule about 10 or 11 meetings. Spring break also got in the way. So more lost days that I couldn't do anything. Just before spring break, I got some very bad news.

This bad new impacted the rest of the school year. I had to schedule IEPs for days that I knew I was going to be in but this is hard to do because, by the law, you have to give 15 calendar days notice of a meeting to the parents. This was hard to do because I didn't know where I was going to be in 15 days. So I had to put off a lot of stuff. The end result was that I was still doing IEP meetings in June, right up until a few days before the school year ended. The majority of my coworkers were done with their IEPs by the end of May and just finishing off the paperwork so that they could go away for the summer worry free. Such was not my fate.

So now we reach the end of the school year. So if you aren't a school psychologist, you might be wondering how things work for the summer time because the legal timeline for referrals does not stop just because everyone has gone home for the summer. Once someone has been referred to the child study team, we have 20 days to have an initial referral conference where it is decided whether testing will occur or not. Then from that point, we have 90 days to complete the testing and have an eligibility meeting. For students in special education that have been referred for a re-evaluation, we have 60 days to complete the re-evaluation and have an eligibility meeting. In addition to this, there are often issues that come up during the summer that requires someone attention since coordinating things between the district and out of district placements is a colossal task.

So what do districts do. That depends on the district.

Option #1: Several child study team positions may actually be 11 or 12 month positions which mean those staff members actually work during the summer and get a certain amount of vacation time during the summer. This has the benefit of ensuring some continuity of care since the staff may know what is going on from the rest of the school year.

Option #2: Hire staff within the child study team to work the summer on a per hour, per diem or per case basis. Again, this has the benefit of continuity of care. The only real downside to this is a financial one and that is really only if you care about it: the money you are paid doesn't go toward your pension. But this is a contractual thing and I have even heard that some people that are hired on as an 11 or 12 month position may have some sort of stipulation in the teacher contract that the pay from working in the summer doesn't go toward the pension.

Option #3: Outsource the summer work. Particularly the evaluations. The particular county educational commissions have school psychologists, social workers, and LDTCs that do evaluations. They are hired on a per case basis. My district has used them during the school year when we don't have someone that can do the evaluation in a particular language. They do the assessments during the summer. The danger with this is one that has started rearing its head again. Just like outsourcing food and janitorial services, some district have looked at outsourcing child study teams. There is a rumor that a town in Monmouth county is doing that this coming school year. Most of their child study team has been RIFfed (Reduction in Force for folks at home; or just fired; RIFfing is the easiest way to eliminate tenured staff). I heard about this when I was training to be a school psychologist. It has been tried before and with budget issues in New Jersey, it is coming up again.

My district does a combination of #2 and #3. I took part in option #2 last year but not this year due to the aforementioned problems. So this left me with having to do my IEPs at home during the summer which, thanks to the miracles of modern computing, I was able to do. But working from home stinks with a capital "inks." With a young child at home, who doesn't nap, it is hard to get work done. And then there is the lure of all the things you would rather be doing.

I did get my paperwork done eventually. And I went to work for two days to print out the IEPs and put them together with the paperwork from the meetings.

And as far is work is concerned, that is how I spent my summer vacation. While the extra money from working during the summer would have been nice, it was really necessary for me to stay home this summer and I don't regret it for a moment. The last time I was home for the summer was during undergrad.

Blog On Hold

2010-08-11T14:35:00.002-04:00

While it is obvious that nothing has been happening here for sometime, it is because life got busy and then a personal hardship/tragedy/whatever hit. This still is not over and until it is I can't see myself posting anything.

And if you happen to be a certain someone who I reconnected with over the phone AND who was reading this thing, please drop me a PM so that we can stay in touch.

Christie's Announcement

2010-02-18T21:00:00.002-05:00

I saw in the paper that Christie told school districts to expect a 15% decrease in state aid. That has a lot of folks running scared. I'm even concerned about my job. While many of my coworkers who have more years at the job than me say that I shouldn't be concerned and that we are needed, I've never seen myself as essential. With such an decrease in aid, that is a lot of money to shave out of a budget. Okay, it is actually more like an amputation than a shaving.

While some of my coworkers say that we are needed and the job can't be done with less, there are lots of districts where the caseload is much higher. Our caseload is fairly light in comparison. We range from 40 to 50 on average per case manager. I know of districts where there are 70, 80, even 90 per case manager. Now in those districts, case management is almost the entire job with very little in the way of doing your job title. I've heard that sort of position referred to as being an "IEP machine."

With that being the case, I don't consider my position secure at all. Getting rid of one or two positions would redistribute the caseload to those levels.

But I'm still hopeful that I will have a job come September.

Catching up again; The Great Snow of '10; and The Aftermath

2010-02-18T20:30:00.002-05:00

Well since my last post was two days before the snow storm that turned a four day weekend into a three day weekend. So let me play some catch up.

Tuesday, February 9th
I get into work and start doing some prep stuff for the day. 9:30am rolls around and off I go to Piscataway Regional Day School which is an out of district placement that is part of the Middlesex County Educational Services Commission. I have a student interviewing there for a placement. The interview goes exceedingly well and I find out that my student is almost guaranteed a spot at the school. By the time the interview is done, its lunch. Since I'm in the area, I use my lunch hour to stop by my old job and visit my former coworkers. It was nice to see them again and we talk shop for a bit after the personal catching up. I also get to meet my replacement which turns out to have been a classmate of one of my current coworkers. It was funny to meet my replacement. She made the comment that she had moved the furniture around in "my office" to which I replied "its your office now."

After that, I race back to homebase and rush over to the high school for an eligibility conference. I go over my psychological evaluation and stay until the meeting is done. I then head back to my office, thinking to myself "how are we supposed to get all this snow when it is such a nice, sunny day." Once I'm back at my office, I have enough time to gather some stuff together and then it is off to a meeting at one of the elementary schools. One of my coworkers who is a bit new at the school district thing gets thrown a bit by some questions. I attempt to help out and answer the questions as best I can. I end up having to leave that meeting before it is over because of a middle school/high school special education teachers meeting that involves some training on our IEP software. I attend the meeting and assist with some technology issues, helping teachers log on and such. I also learn that school has already been closed for Wednesday in anticipation of the snow. Follow the training, it is quittin' time and I try to beat the snow home.

The Great Snow
The snow comes and closes school on Wednesday and Thursday. We already have Friday and Monday off dues to Presidents' Day. The plus side is the extra days off. The negative side is that I wreck myself with some shoveling and then come down with the worst cold/illness I've have in a year.

Tuesday, February 16th; Wednesday, February 17th
I'm grouping these two days together because there really isn't a lot of difference between them. While my fever has passed, I sound awful and can't say more than a few words without coughing. So I restrict myself from actually interacting with students and concentrate on paperwork. I manage to get my first round of March IEP meetings scheduled, the invitations written and mailed. I also get several IEPs finished. I get official word that my student was accepted for Piscataway Regional Day School and do the request for board approval, since the board meeting is on Wednesday.

I get assigned to determine whether a student is a danger to others for something that happened back in July of last year. The student is new in the district and this needs to be done before the administration is going to allow the student into the high school. Sigh.

Thursday, February 18th
I do some paperwork before going to visit another school district to see their life skills program. It is in a much larger district. Their high school has twice the population as my district. The program is interesting and seems really successful. The three of us that went dream what it would be like to have such a program in our district.

Back at homebase, I continue my paperwork blitz after speaking to our transition coordinator about the statements to use in the transition pages of the IEP for one of my students. I also call the parent of the student that I have to assess for danger to others. The father blows up at me because I am the first person to present this information to him. I incorrectly assumed that an administrator would have already informed the family of this requirement. Sigh.

Follow lunch, I spend the rest of the day writing IEPs and head for home.

Special Post: Risk Assessments

2010-02-08T21:31:00.002-05:00

Risk assessments. If you are a school psychologist in New Jersey, you are mostly likely going to be involved in a risk assessment at some point. If you have read my blog, you will have likely gotten the gist of what a risk assessment is. For newcomers, I'll give a brief overview of what a risk assessment is in a school.

In school, a risk assessment is an evaluation to determine if a student is an immediate danger to themselves or others and, if so, to have their parent/guardian take them to a private psychiatrist or psychologist, or mental health screeners at a local psychiatric emergency screening center to be evaluated further.

Most school psychology programs don't provide formal preparation for this sort of thing. I know that my program didn't and the programs that my coworkers attended didn't prepare them either. We've all had the training to conduct an interview and a psychological assessment. We've had classes in psychopathology. But this doesn't prepare you for the situation that you may encounter.

These situations may be extremely emotionally charged and involve subject matter that may be uncomfortable for both the examiner and the student. For the school psychologist dealing with a risk assessment for the first time, the responsibility may feel overwhelming. If you were fortunate, you may have had the opportunity to be present for risk assessments during your internship.

While I'm not a risk assessment guru or anything, I have had the benefit of a great deal of experience. So I'll give some advice that has been given to me:

Don't be afraid to ask the student if they had thought or planned to kill themselves. You aren't going to implant the thought in their head.
Take your time. You have all the time in the world to ask your questions or formulate your questions.
Don't be afraid of the silence between the questions. Don't feel like you have to fill the silence.
If you have the benefit of working with other school psychologist or school social workers in your district, don't be afraid to consult with them.
And finally, follow your gut. If you don't feel comfortable letting the student return to class and go about their day then don't. Now it may seem weird to talk about comfort in these situations but it is something that comes with time.

One day, my coworkers and I were talking about risk assessments and inter-rater reliability. I had said that if each of us had the opportunity to assess the same student in the same exact situation separately, we may all come up with different decisions.

Again, the reason behind this is that there isn't any consistent training between the eight of us that have the responsibility. We also talked about a way to provide training to new staff members: such as having the new staff member attend assessments as an observer; then as the main interview but still accompanied by another staff; and then finally on their own.

As I said at the start, this may be the most difficult responsibility for a new school psychologist but it is something that you can become proficient and confident. Most importantly, you should seek additional training in this area.

Monday, February 8th

2010-02-08T21:17:00.002-05:00

I arrive at work and start work on the psych report from Friday. In the background, I'm hearing the sounds of my coworkers socializing, the whole how was your weekend thing. Stupidly, I begin to feel a little morose. A lot of the talk sounds much like "girl talk" so I don't try to include myself. So its another stupid instance of feeling status of the token male.

I go to the office of a coworker, one that I had worked with in a previous career, and hang out with her for a bit. I help with some IEP software issues. While I'm sitting with her, one of my supervisors comes in and I immediately sense a risk assessment coming, just by the look on her face. She tells me that she has one of the high school guidance counselors on the phone who has a student in her office. I speak to the counselor and grab my cheat sheet and head over to the high school.

The student reports that they had made two attempts to kill herself the day before. The end result is that the student needs to go out for an assessment at psychiatric emergency services. The two main things that lead me to this decision, aside from that the student reported making attempts, was that the student said that if they hadn't been interrupted they would have completed the acts; and that when the student was in the moment of the attempts, she wasn't afraid and that "it felt right."

Following the wait for the parent to come in and pick up the student and my explanation to the parent of the decision and the follow up, I return to the office and have lunch.

After lunch, I spend time beating my head against a report and speaking with my office mate about normal child development and how being in this line of work makes it hard to tell what is normal. I joke that I'm very good at telling what is abnormal and that if I were to encounter a "normal" student it would be so out of my experience, I would probably just classify it as a category of abnormal that I hadn't encountered before.

Follow this, I do a little paperwork and put some stuff in the mail and head for home.

Friday, February 5th

2010-02-07T21:20:00.002-05:00

I get into work, grab the WAIS IV and head to the high school to test. I complete my psychological evaluation in record time. The whole thing in less than an hour, including the BASC, interview, and projectives. The student didn't even test out that quickly, he just responded quickly.

I return to the office and spend the rest of my day scoring and writing. I also contact a parent about an appointment on Tuesday for an out of district placement.

I'm scheduled for an appointment at 11am but the family doesn't show until 11:30am. This is somewhat frustrating and there are times when this happens that I almost feel like saying that I don't have time to meet because of another appointment. But I actually need to get this meeting done so I suck it up and get it done. This is another student that needs an out of district placement, bringing my total to three. I need to arrange home instruction for this student until a placement is found.

I get through the rest of the day and nearly complete my report. Next week will involve appointments and creating meeting dates for February IEPs. It is also a short week. Busy, busy, busy.

Thursday, February 4th

2010-02-04T19:48:00.002-05:00

Another day and time to get some work done. I get into work, grab a WAIS-IV and head off to the high school to test a student. I get over there and can't find a place to test so I find the student and bring him back to my office which is a block away.

The student has been classified as communication impaired but there isn't any recent speech information. I had been wrestling with the idea of using the Wechsler Non-Verbal but since I didn't know the results of any recent speech evaluation I figured I should stick with the WAIS. But the fates intervene and I run into the speech person assigned to do the eval. She informs me that the student still qualifies for communication impaired and tells me the preliminary results of her evaluation.

I decide to do the WNV since his impairment in the areas of speech and language would skew his verbal comprehension score and thus his overall full scale scores. The student is very interesting and artistic. I have to say that the student provided me with one of the best human figure drawings I have ever seen. This is the only student that has ever drawn a human figure drawing using formal sketching techniques.

After completing the evaluation, I meet with a student who recently lost a parent to a sudden illness. Very sudden and unexpected. There was really not much else to do other than offer the student an opportunity to talk and let 'em know that I was available if they wanted to talk.

I return to my office and begin to work on a the psychological evaluation I just completed. I amaze myself by finishing the report in a little over an hour. Just in time to go to an eligibility conference.

The eligibility conference takes a turn for the surreal. I was only supposed to interpret my psychological evaluation but the case manager gets called away for a sudden...something and I'm left running the meeting. I don't begrudge the case manager, it was just weird. In addition to this, the parent was 30 minutes late and the meeting had to be conducted in Spanish. I get through the meeting and return to the office for lunch.

Shortly after this, I find the psychiatrist that is visiting to do psychiatric evaluations today. He is seeing one of my students in the afternoon. This psychiatrist is really good. He is old school psychiatrist. He actually knows how to conduct projective testing. Several teachers that know the student come over and meet with the psychiatrist as well. It is almost time for me to leave so I head for home after I get the student and the doctor situated.

One more day before the weekend. Tomorrow, I have to test another student and meet with a new student that just moved into the district.

Wednesday, February 3rd

2010-02-03T19:46:00.002-05:00

Snow this morning but not enough to delay an opening much less close the school. Oddly enough I'm happy about this because a closing would just screw up my time tables.

I get into work and meet makes some last minute preparation for my field trip to an out of district school for my two annual reviews. I also arrange for transportation for an interview at another out of district placement next week. Now I just have to contact the parent.

Following my preparations, I take a look at my list of evaluations, currently a total of 8 due within the next two months. Two re-evaluations and six initial referrals. Ugh. And it will only get worse before the end of the year. I gather and organize the protocols and make good intentions to test some folks tomorrow. And we all know where good intentions lead.

Now its 10am and time to go on my outing. I bringing a coworker with me. She is new to the whole child study team thing, so I brought her so she could see this particular school.

We get to the school right on time but the students aren't. An investigation leads us to discover that the town that the out of district school is in had a 2 hour delayed opening. So the contracted bus company follows some sort of personal guideline that if it isn't safe for the town's buses to drive in, it isn't safe for them. We do get word from the mother of my second appointment that she is on her way with the student. I also know for a fact that the guardian of my first meeting isn't going to come.

My first student has emotional problems and is cognitively limited. The guardian has just signed rights to DYFS and the student may be moving out of the district to a foster placement. This student hasn't been doing well this year because of the instability in the student's home life. It is a rather sad case.

The second meeting is a much happier affair. A year ago, this student was having aggressive outbursts in another out of district school. This year, the student hasn't had many of these outbursts and is much happier and doing school work. This meeting also involves transition since the student will turn 14 within the time of this IEP. I meet the student and discuss education and work goals for after graduation. Overall the meeting goes quite well and is somewhat inspiring.

It is now 12:30pm and time for lunch. Following lunch, I get back to the office and find out the whole world has been looking for me, if the world consisted of the two supervisors and the AT coordinator. I manage to catch up with two of the three and it isn't anything earth shattering.

I finish out the day with a conversation with my office mate, who, sadly, will be leaving in March for what is hoped to be greener pastures. After that, I head for home.

Uhm, it was a hiatus...yeah, yeah

2010-02-02T19:18:00.002-05:00

Ok, it was more like exhaustion and laziness. The past few weeks have been very busy. Without trying to cover all of the things that I have done, I'll try to just give the highlights:

Arguing over the price of a neuropsychological evaluation after the agency doing the evaluation gave me one price at the beginning of January and then getting a call a week before the evaluation that the price is now even more.
Testing and report writing.
Arranging psychiatric evaluation for a student that made a threatening/intimidating statement regarding a teacher.
Attending eligibility conferences.
Testing and report writing (yes, I know I put this here twice).
Risk assessments, ye gads, the risk assessments.
Counseling.
Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork.

Nothing too exciting, aside from the argument with the vendor and arranging the psychiatric evaluation.

I'm very sorry for my absence but I've been emotionally and intellectually drained by the end of the day.

Now for today: Tuesday, February 2nd (Groundhog's Day)
Well the groundhog came out and saw his shadow, so 5 more months of school.

Anyway, I get in this morning after being out sick on Monday (yes, I really was sick). Surprisingly, there was only one phone message...but 16 freakin' emails. Fortunately, about 6 or 7 of those were immediately deletable. Following a review of the emails and a few responses, I get ready for a meeting with an LD and the teachers of a particularly sensitive case to get the information about what exactly the student has been able to do. While waiting for the meeting, I call an out of district school to arrange an interview for another student of mine in need of a placement. I get a date, now I just need to arrange transportation and call the parent.

Just before the meeting is about to start, one of my supervisors comes to me and starts off with those fateful words, "There's a kid in the middle school..." A risk assessment. When asked, I express the importance of my being in the meeting with the teachers. My supervisor accepts this and tries to find another person for the assessment. My meeting begins and we start getting information from the teachers.

About 10 minutes after the meeting starts, my supervisor comes in again and has been unable to find anyone else. So off I go to the middle school. The student supposedly threatened to do bodily harm to another student using a weapon. I do my thing and determine that the student didn't say that he wanted to use a weapon. He just wanted to fight the other student. Apparently, another student started the weapon rumor. This other student has a reputation of trying to stir up trouble between other students.

So I get back to my meeting which is now in full swing. My only issue about missing out on a good portion of the meeting is that I received this student toward the end of last year and everyone else (by which I mean the LD assigned to the case with me, my supervisors, and the transition/assistive technology coordinator) has years of experience with this student and the family. They've all known the case forever. I'm the newcomer and I feel like I have to play catch-up all the time. Fortunately, I'm a quick study.

Anyway after the morning meeting, I prepare paperwork for my two out of district annual reviews on the 3rd.

I also learn that I was assigned a new student who just moved into district. The student has been in out-of-district (OOD) placements in the past and will need to go to one again. I contact the place the student went to before moving from NJ to NY. They tell me they have a placement but the director really didn't feel the student fit into their program. This is a heavy duty psychiatrically based program. For them to say that...oh boy.

A little bit before this, I get a call from another OOD school that I sent an application packet to for my third student that may be in need of an OOD placement. They tell me that they don't think this student is the type that would work well in their program. I agree, it was a long shot anyway but I was looking for an OOD placement that would benefit someone of unusually high intellectual abilities and thought of them. But the acting out behaviors would be too much for them.

Before the end of the day, I make several phone calls confirming appointments and trying to speak to DYFS caseworkers before heading home for the day.

Friday, January 15th

2010-01-16T19:47:00.002-05:00

I got to go on a field trip to an out-of-district school in North Jersey. I was interpreting a bilingual psych eval. First, it isn't easy to relate the findings of someone else's report because you don't have the memory of the testing. Second, it isn't easy to do so in a way that an language interpreter can understand. You need to able to operationalize the subtests and not use jargon. I've had a fair amount of practice with this but it was more difficult this time around because it wasn't my assessment.

It was nice to get out of the district and see a school that I haven't been to before. It was also interesting because it was a block away from the home of a client from my previous career. I had always thought that school was a Catholic school.

After the meeting, I returned to the office and got about three quarters of the way through the report I started on Thursday. The office was a bit odd today because everyone was giddy with the thought of a three day weekend, even though we all just got back from break.

I spoke with the assistive technology person for our district about getting speech-to-text software for a student of mine and was told we should do a full assistive technology assessment on the student before proceeding.

Quitting time slowly rolled around and it was time to head for home. See you on Tuesday.

Thursday, January 14th: A Whole Lotta Counseling

2010-01-14T18:06:00.002-05:00

I got into work and went immediately to the high school to get some counseling done. The month is ticking away and I have to get in my quota so I'm at least only partly drowning. I manage to see 5 students today. I actually think some of the sessions went quite well as for the quality of my focus. I really can't tell if I'm making an impact or not.

After 16 years of work in the area of mental health, I've come to take any little success as satisfying. If you're the type of person that likes to look back on the work day and say, "I did/made/accomplished X today" then you may want to consider a different field because you may find this type of work frustrating. There is no sense of finality or completion. It is an ongoing thing. If you are alright with that then you will probably be alright with this sort of work.

I go back to the office and start my next psychological report. I wrestle with some "layout" issues before I'm actually able to begin typing. It is during this time that I'm struck with the little instances of melancholy that I sometimes experience being the only male as my female coworkers talk amongst themselves. I assuage this by putting my earbuds in and listening to some geeky podcasts. The report writing carries me through to the end of the day.

Wednesday Recollection: I had a conversation with a coworker yesterday about our views of the workplace. She rails against the system for not being organized and more efficient. I tease her for holding to the concepts of rationality and logic and continually explain to her how much happier she'll be once she lets go of those concepts and accepts the irrationality and chaos of human organizations. We actually had a semi-serious conversation about it. Her viewpoint is admittedly altruistic and she feels that things need to be brought up to a level and that organization and efficiency and a system that makes sense is achievable. I believe that such a thing is possible if all the stakeholders in the system are willing to make the change and get behind it. That it needs to be a district wide change that is supported by the administration. I've seen too many "corporate" fad come along to have much faith in such change. The Covey trainings, TQI, what have you. When you see so many come and go, it is hard to be a believer.

Anyway, I pointed out to my coworker that a school district has an even harder time instituting such changes because, in a corporate setting, if people don't tow the line and follow the corporate philosophy, those people will either leave or be asked to leave. Tenure prevents this. Sure, the administration could make the employee miserable by moving them around the district but it has amazed me just how much misery school employees will tolerate because of the number of years they have in the district and the fact that they can't be easily fired. Hell, there are some that stopped caring when they got tenure 18 years ago. So I think that breeds a certain level of intellectual immobility that is not always found in a corporate organization.

This may sound bitter but I don't think I'm bitter. I think individuals are capable of great good but organizations end up creating situations where the people may keep the status quo because it provides them with something, whether it is comfort of knowing what to expect, or power, or other side benefits.

More Catching Up...

2010-01-13T19:50:00.003-05:00

...both at work and on this blog.

Monday, January 11th
Five initial referral conferences. That was my day. Of those five, three of them gave consent for testing. These five were referred to us by the administration as part of pre-expulsion hearings. This is not a practice I endorse but I do as I'm told.

The first meeting involves two of the five...siblings. This meeting starts 40 minutes late because the family arrives late. This is the one family that doesn't give consent by the end of the meeting.

The second meeting is a phoner because the mother never received the invitation to the meeting. This parent "welcomes" the evaluation because they know their child needs help.

The third meeting takes place after lunch and this one is interesting because the student is clearly not being truthful about what led to the pre-expulsion hearing. The parent agrees to the assessment.

The final meeting of the day actually involves a family that I was involved with last school year. I evaluated the older sibling of this student. At that time, the parent was leery of the evaluation and did not agree to eligibility. The student did not do well after he came back to school due to a number of behavioral and legal issues that arose. This time the parent not only agreed to the evaluation but seemed like she would agree to eligibility if it came to it. The theory that I have heard the administration throw about was that they think the parent is hoping to save this child.

Tuesday, January 12th
I make a huge effort to move some of the paperwork off my desk. I get to a point where I can see some of the top of my desk. I also start pushing through a psychological report so that I can move onto another psychological before I get assigned the three initial evaluations from yesterday. By the end of the day, I'm disappointed that I didn't finish the report but I am very pleased at getting some desk space back.

Wednesday, January 13th
I go over to the high school and middle school to schedule some space for counseling in the coming weeks. I also see the teachers of one of my more needy students and speak with her a bit about an assignment that she had tried. The student is cognitively impaired and the teacher had tried an exercise involving things that are the same or different. The problem that I saw with the assignment was that the examples that were given weren't good.

The examples involved too many variables within each example which would be confusing to someone with poor abstract thinking abilities. The first example of the same was two soccer balls that were different colors. The next example which was used to demonstrate different was a butterfly and a soccer ball. Then the next example of the different was two butterflies, each a different color.

My issue with the examples is that first example of same, the different color soccer balls, is almost the same as the second example of different, the different color butterflies. This can be very confusing for the student. Too many variables.

Following this, I stopped by the high school library to get training on the new phone system that is coming into the district. As far as technology goes, it was pretty cool. My only concern is that it is going to run the the computer network and our network infrastructure has a history of being spotty. Last year, it was down for a week.

I get back to the office and deal with some minor stuff and I also manage to finish my report from yesterday. I copy it and attach a letter to it and send it off to the parent. Tomorrow, I start my next report.

Friday, January 8th

2010-01-09T06:26:00.003-05:00

So little snow on the ground yet it seems to cause so many problems. I'm late to work because two of the major routes out of my town are jammed with traffic or completely closed off by the police for some unknown reason (At the end of the day, I learn that a transformer had blown on the latter which is what led to all the traffic on the former). The problem with being late to work is that I had an annual review meeting scheduled for 8am. I get to work at 8:05 and get over to the high school by 8:10. The family and students are there. I go to the conference room where we are meeting and find all the teachers there. I was expecting 2 maybe three but not all the teachers. I feel really bad for being late to my own damn meeting.

The meeting is a bit of a tough one. It remains cordial through out but the constant theme is that the student is capable but needs to put in more effort...or in some cases, some effort. The student is classified due to emotional issues, although complying with class expectations is the largest issue. Each teacher has their say and there is a lot of discussion about accommodations, modifications, and behavioral interventions. The problem is that you can implement anything you want but it all comes down to whether the student is going to put any effort forward. Every time something is brought up and presented, the student talks about why it wouldn't work for him. It becomes so...frustrating?...that I address this by pointing out this continued response from him (and this is also another common theme for this student: being argumentative or contrary). I add that I would appreciate that the student provide some constructive criticism or if the student is engaging in this nay-saying because they doesn't want to follow through with any of the suggestions that the student would just say they don't want to do it so that we don't waste our time continually throwing out ideas. As expected, the student denies that the latter is the reason they keeps nay-saying but the student pauses and stumbles out some words just a little too much before getting their response out which indicates to me that I hit the nail on the head.

The meeting comes to an end with only a few things decided thanks to the student's nay-saying. It is very difficult to implement any sort of plan in the case of students with this sort of problem because so much hinges on the buy in from the student. And when you have a student who isn't willing to compromise, or put in the work, or doesn't allow anything outside themselves to motivate them or give any sort of indication of anything that does motivate them (if they are even introspective enough to be aware of such a thing) there isn't much you can do.

Following this meeting, which ends up lasting 2 and a half hours, I go back to the office after speaking to a guidance counselor about the student whose parents I met with on Wednesday. It turns out that even if this student enters the school, they won't get credit because they have been out of school for almost half the year. When the guidance counselor spoke to the mother, she was angry about this, obviously. But it isn't a decision that the guidance counselor can make and, since it isn't a special education issue, it isn't an issue that I can effect. The main problem is that the student had attended school in our district last year but there was an ongoing residency investigation. During the summer, the courts had decided that the family did not live in the district and told them that their child could not attend school in the district. Since then, the family had made repeated attempts to register the student in the district again but did not provide the proper documentation (for whatever reason) and did not put their child in school. My opinion on the residency issue doesn't really matter. I do my job once I'm told a student is on my caseload. I do believe that the family didn't live in the district. I base this belief on the fact that every time I sent a letter home to the family at the address they claimed was theirs, I would get it back from the post office with a sticker saying this person does not live at this residence.

I return to the office for the staff meeting that I'm already late for. The meeting actually breaks for lunch about a half hour later. At lunch time, I'm involved in a difficult staff for a student due to conflicting psychological reports. Since it is a bilingual psychological report, it was completed by a consultant for the district. After looking at the information, we decide we need to speak with the consultant and, since she was the one that did both the previous and current psychological evaluation, have her comment on the discrepancy. We try to call her and end up leaving a message.

The afternoon session of the meeting goes on for another hour and we finally break for the day. I try to do a little paperwork before leaving for the day but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I then take another road home.

Feeling Sickly

2010-01-07T17:42:00.002-05:00

I haven't been feeling up to snuff these passed few days so I've gotten behind once again. So here is my catch-up post.

Tuesday, January 5th
We are back in the building. Theoretically speaking, the heat was back on but I still had my jacket on for most of the day. I decided to actually do some psychology related work and went to the high school to test a student. I manage to get him tested in one sitting (I love the WAIS-IV, it really flies by and gets rid of that stupid Matrix Reasoning discontinue rule). Following this, I return to the office to prepare paperwork for my Thursday, Friday, and Monday meetings. Before doing that, I stop at the nurse's office to get the health information on the 5 initial referrals scheduled for Monday.

Once I'm back at the office and have lunch with my coworkers, I start printing a whole load of forms which I put in the appropriate student folders for the meetings. I run into a few areas where I'm not sure what forms I'll need so I try to print them all. Oh the waste.

I also get a message that the parents of a student that has just moved back into district have been calling to arrange a meeting for registration and IEP stuff. I call the number and speak with the mother and schedule a meeting for the next day after my counseling. I know this parent from last year and there was a residency issue at the time but, apparently, this has been settled and the student may now return to our school.

I finish the day feeling fairly satisfied that I'm at least moderately prepared for my meetings. Now if some teachers would just give me the PLEPs (Present Levels of Educational Performance or PLAAFs - Present Levels of Academic Ability and Functioning - if you have grown up in the age of PLAAFs) I need.

Wednesday, January 6th
Ahh, counseling. After three students, its time for my meeting with the parents from the previous day. I wait and wait and the appointment time comes and goes without them. I let the teachers that I had gotten for the meeting go after calling the home number and leaving a voice mail. I return to my office and ten minutes later I get the call that the parent have arrived at the high school. It must have been the other 10:15am. I return to the high school and have a semi-tense meeting. The mother wants her student out of special education, the father is not so certain. I go over the students history in special education as well as the pros and cons of revoking consent for special education services and what the process would be if they changed their mind after the 15 day grace period, which is basically the student would need to be referred to the child study team again and it would be treated as an initial referral. In the end, there is a change in his academic program but the student is still in special education. Although I predict the parents will change their mind before the school year is out.

After this, I return to the office and print out a bunch of PLAAFs (or PLEPs is you are old school) for my meetings on the morrow and organize them. I also wrestle with a psychological evaluation. This leads me to the end of the day. I know there is more but nothing of consequence that I can remember.

Thursday, January 7th
I get into work and grab my stuff and head immediately over to the high school. I stop off in the main office and guidance office to let them know that parents will be coming in for me and I will be in the high school library conference room, so please direct them there, thank you very much.

I have four re-evaluation planning meetings in the morning and one "I don't know what to call it" meeting scheduled in the afternoon. So out of five meetings, I end up with 60% turnout rate. My first meeting is a no show and I can't get the mother on the phone which wouldn't matter anyway since I don't speak Spanish. I'll have to follow up with the mother by phone with an interpreter (boy, I wish we had that language line).

The mother for my second meeting is prompt and it is a very friendly and cordial meeting. We decide that a functional assessment of the student is most appropriate and we review the student's current performance and previous CST evaluations. It is determined that the student is still eligible for services and then it rolls into an IEP meeting. While the IEP goes into effect it is recognized that there may need to be some adjustments toward the end of the school year because it is too early for teacher recommendations and determining 10th grade classes now.

The parent for the third meeting arrives on time and we do the same thing: a functional assessment and IEP meeting. This student is struggling a bit more than the previous student but is managing. With this parent, I don't know how to read 'em. I think that she may be worried that she is being flim-flammed in some way but I try to make sure that I explain things as much as possible.

The fourth meeting is another no show. I can't even get the student out of class because they are involved in a group presentation in math. In math! I never heard of such a thing. It must be that new math.

Then it is time for lunch. After an uneventful lunch, I make several aborted attempts to walk back to the high school as I keep forgetting things and have to go back to my office. I still manage to arrive for my own meeting before the parent arrives.

This "I don't know what to call it" meeting turns out to be a status check type meeting. The mother seems very involved and cares a great deal for her child and wanted to get feedback from the teachers on the student's performance and to see if there is anything in addition that could/should be done. It also has some overtones of wanting her student out of special education but nothing very strong. Overall, the meeting goes well.

The teacher turnout for all the meetings was spectacular. If you aren't a school psychologist yet and are reading this, some teachers can be passive aggressive when it comes to attending these meetings. If you are a teacher and you are reading this then you may know some of your colleagues that are like this. If you are one of those teachers and your reading this, then you may think I'm the devil :)

Following this meeting, I return to my office and work haphazardly on a number of things and have some testing and counseling related conversations with my office mate. I also field a phone call from one of the principal's in the district whose niece has been thinking of going into school psychology. My office mate and I give her some information and for the first time, I bashfully plug my blog as a way for her niece to see if this is the sort of thing she might want to do.

If the niece in question is reading this, hello. And that brings me to the end of my day. Only one more day and one more meeting for the week. All I need to do is survive until 9:30am and I should be good.

Monday, January 4th: Back to Work

2010-01-04T17:55:00.002-05:00

With the winter break over, it was time to return to work. The first thing to greet me at the office was that the building was colder on the inside that it was on the outside. Apparently, the boiler, the new boiler, had broken down and didn't start this morning or yesterday, or whenever it was supposed to start. We were told that we were to disperse to our respective schools or the board office but we were not allowed to remain in the building, not that I would want to stay. This would effect a number of staff because everyone doesn't have logins for the computers at the various schools. This didn't effect me because I had made sure to get a login at the middle/high school last year so that I could access the computers when I was over there. Several of my high school coworkers did not have that luxury so they had a harder time of it. Anyway, we were told that we may not be allowed back on the building for the rest of the day since it would take several hours for the boiler to warm up and several hours for the building to heat up. Oh, yeah. And the phones weren't working.

At the high school, I managed to arrange teachers for a number of meetings for this week and next week. I also attended an initial eligibility conference for a middle school student. After this I helped a coworker with an IEP. By the time all this was done, it was time to make my way home.

While not being able to work in my office, it was not such a bad first day back.

Questions from Jeff

2010-01-01T06:27:00.002-05:00

Since I have traditionally had trouble posting comments on my own blog, I'll answer Jeff's questions here. I may also go into other information just in case others read this. He asks:

Question... Are you a PhD level School Psychologist? Who is your direct report -- that is what is his or her title?

In New Jersey, the title of school psychologist is a product of the department of education. There is more to it than that but that requires a discussion of the American Psychological Association. My degree is a post-masters certificate called Educational Specialist (Ed. S.). I have my Masters in psychological studies and the Ed. S. is in School and Community Psychologist. This degree and an application to the New Jersey Department of Education allows me to work in a school district but it is not a license to practice privately.

I report directly to my district's director of special education. The current director of special education is a former learning disabilities teacher-consultant (LDTC). There really isn't a clinical director in the school district. The oversight that is given is more in regard to following special education law than my practice as a clinician or diagnostician.

I hope this answers your question and thank you and Anonymous for reading my blog.

Caught up in the Holidays

2010-01-01T06:18:00.003-05:00

I've neglected to post about my last few days of work before the winter break due to the rush of the holidays and there really wasn't a whole lot to report.

Monday, December 21st
There was a snow storm the weekend before Christmas which resulted in my district closing on Monday. It really didn't seem like a snow that was worthy of a closing. Later, I learned that the closing was due to the township not being able to clean up the intersections which is a big deal because it is a walking district.

Tuesday, December 22nd and Wednesday, December 23rd
There really isn't much to say about these days. My big push was to get a lot of letters done. I spent these two days doing invitation letters and sending out application packets to out of district placements. This was actually a lot of work and managed to consume both days. While there were other things to be done, this took priority since I was scheduling things for the first week of January when we got back from the winter break.

Regained some energy

2009-12-20T15:04:00.003-05:00

Well, Thursday and Friday were pretty exhausting. Winter break is so close yet so far. I finally feel rested enough to finish reporting the rest of last week.

Thursday, December 17th
This day was all about the special, lawyer attended meeting. I had every bit of information I thought I could possibly need. I had invited everyone that I thought needed inviting. And I had all the forms I thought would be needed.

Before I had my meeting, I met with my supervisor about my recent performance evaluation then it was off to the meeting. I thought that one or both of the supervisors of the supervisors would be attending the meeting but here I was going with a few coworkers. I get to the meeting and our lawyer arrives but we are still awaiting the parent's lawyer. We go into our little pre-meeting pow-wow with our attorney and when their lawyer arrives, they go into theirs. About 20 minutes later, the meeting is ready to begin. There is a lot of people in attendance. The teacher turn out is huge. At least one from each subject area which is great. Two related service providers; the transition coordinator; the LDTC; later, the supervisor for English and social studies. Really quite impressive.

I open with my considered agenda items: review of recent testing; deciding on a neuropsychologist; and discussion of personal aide duties. I ask the parent what items they sought to discuss and transition concerns are added. From there the meeting takes off. The teachers say their piece first since the teachers will have to leave in a little while. We review the testing then follow up with discussion of neuropsychologists. From there we hit the meat of the meeting: personal aides.

Three and a half hours later, the meeting ends with some additional modifications added and adjustments made to the duties of the personal aides. In addition, there is the certainty of another meeting in the future once the neuropsych is completed.

Overall, the meeting goes quite well and it definitely had the chance to go poorly. It is to the credit of all the people that attended the meeting that it didn't go south. In addition, the family's attorney was quite reasonable and did not act in an adversarial manner.

I get back to the office to try to decompress and looking forward to a little downtime since the meeting blew through what is generally considered lunch time. But rest is not my destiny. About 20 minutes after I get back to the office, I get sent to the middle school for another risk assessment. Following this, it is time to leave for the day. I decide to get out of there before anything else happens that needs my attention.

Thursday night was also a department holiday party at a restaurant. It is also the retirement party for someone that retired before the start of the school year. If I hadn't already paid, I would have gone home considering how exhausted I was. I go to the party and have a nice time. I didn't really know the retiree that well since she was only in school for half the year and went out on medical leave but it is nice to see her looking so well. I take my leave and head home for the night.

Friday, December 18th
There is not much to report for the Friday. I did some follow up stuff from Thursday's meeting. I contact the facility doing the neuropsych and get the information to make the referral. I send out a few emails and try to make a to-do list for next week.

I am blessed with the gift of 5 new initial referrals and I try to contact the other people that have been equally blessed to arrange a common meeting day for all 5. This is not going to happen before break but the winter break does slow the clock down a little.

There are a large number of people absent today. Either people that planned to be absent after the previous day's festivities or others that didn't feel like slogging it in afterward. The day goes slowly and quitting time takes forever to get here.

Three more days to go before break and there is so much to do.

Wednesday, December 16th

2009-12-16T20:18:00.002-05:00

I get into work and immediately head over to the high school for my two re-evaluation planning meetings. Things start off so well. No teachers, no parents. I call my first parent and manage to pull teachers together for a phoner. The student is found to be eligible based on a functional assessment of his performance and no additional testing is required.

This trend of no parents appears to continue for my second meeting. I call the "home" number and a young male answers the phone. It turns out that the young man is my student. It turns out that the "home" phone number that I called is a cell phone in my student's possession. It turns out that my student is in school. Ergo, he is answering his cell phone in school while he is in class. Once I bring this up on the phone, we are suddenly disconnected. Good grief.

Just as I'm letting teachers go back to class, this student's mother shows up. I have a large number of Hispanic students and I have trouble keeping track of which student's parents speak Spanish and very little English. It turns out that this parent is one such mother. I make a hasty call to a coworker that speaks Spanish and manage to get her on the phone for interpretation. So we manage to get through this meeting as well.

I return to the office and prepare for my next meeting for a student that had been withdrawn from the district last year and is now re-registered in the district. The student has been out of school since last March. The student is also in need of an out-of-district placement. The meeting goes on for quite some time but I get what is needed to start looking for an out-of-district.

After lunch, I spend the rest of the day preparing paperwork for the super duper special meeting tomorrow.

Tuesday, December 15th

2009-12-15T19:50:00.003-05:00

Well today involved some counseling for my 1st period group. It was funny because one member was absent and the group was much more manageable.

After this, I returned to the office and started doing some preparation for my re-evaluation planning meetings. I also turned in some stuff to one of the secretaries to have a whole bunch of documents archived in our computer system. This means that those documents will be read only.

I also reschedule the mistaken appointment I mentioned yesterday.

Lunch rolls around and a risk assessment rolls around with it. I get to bring along one of my new coworkers to break her in for risk assessments in the district. But more importantly, she speaks Spanish and the student was an ESL student. Obviously, she did most of the talking. Following this, I get another surprise. The guidance counselor for the ESL student asks me to speak to another student that had made an unfortunate comment. In both cases, the students aren't sent out for an evaluation. After this, I stop at the middle school to try to see another student for counseling.

I call up to the classroom and the teacher makes a stink because they are starting a new lesson. She asks if she can send the student down at the end of the period. I tell her "never mind" because I know the student needs the lesson and I don't plan on waiting 30 minutes for the end of the period.

Once I'm back at the office, I finish up the paperwork for tomorrows meetings and look over paperwork for Thursday's extra special meeting. I also find my first of three performance evaluations for the year on my desk with a note to set up an appointment to review it Thursday at 9am (1 hour before this meeting). The evaluation is very complimentary and I later joke to a coworker that its a good thing that I meet with my boss about it before the lawyer meeting because if it was after she might think of changing the evaluation.

While I going over paperwork, I start looking over a form called "Waiver of Triennial Re-evaluation." I've never really used this form before because I haven't really understood how it is used. I look up the statute that it references and read it over. I then talk to a few of my coworkers about it. The only conclusion we come to is that it would be used in the case of a disabling condition that isn't going to change over time, such as cognitive impairment or deafness, or blindness. Even so, I'm not sure. This feels like something to get more clarification on from the county office. Since our monitoring visit, there are a few things, form-wise, that need clarification.

Following this, I look over the information on my new student and discover a number of discrepancies in the paperwork which is aggravating. After this discovery, I go home to prepare for another day.

A Little Delayed

2009-12-14T17:45:00.002-05:00

I got a little behind on posting.

Friday, December 11th
Oddly enough, I can't remember much from Friday except to say that it went really slowly. The most entertaining thing was counseling my early morning girls group. Very little talking on my part was needed. I don't know how teenage girls have that much energy for drama.

I then spent the day tied up with trying to locate home instructors for my suspended student. I was also given a new student that had just re-registered with the district. It is the sibling of another student of mine. I attempted to contact the mother several times without success.

I make a futile attempt to do some paperwork, such as a risk assessment from earlier in the week and a psychological report. But as I said, it was a futile attempt.

Monday, December 14th
Back to work. I try to get in touch with out district lawyer regarding the tentative plans for a meeting later this week. The lawyer says that yes, it will occur on Wednesday. This sets off a flurry of emails to make final arrangements. All this will come back to bite me in the butt later in the day.

I go over to the high school to meet with a couple of student and then I get out of there before I'm trapped in the lockdown drill.

Once back at the office I get an email that tells me that one of the home instructors that I thought I had arranged is not arranged. Back to the drawing board. Science and math are the hardest to find for home instruction. I speak to one of my superiors and follow up on a suggestion from them. I contact the director of guidance who is the contact person for the web-based home instruction company that we use. I give her the information on the student and also send an email to the mother.

Following this, I call the parent of my new student and arrange a meeting. Another thing that will bite me in the butt.

I wait around for the state monitors but I'm never contacted which is fine. I hear of their comings and goings and continue about my day.

In the afternoon, I go over to the high school to follow the schedule of one of my students to see just how many stairs they have to take during the day. Don't ask.

Then in the afternoon I get a call from one of my coworkers who is involved with the student that has the lawyer meeting coming up. She reports that she has just gotten off the phone with the mother of said student and reports that the mother is under the impression that our meeting is Thursday and not Wednesday. I return to my office and print out the several emails that capture the exchange between me and our lawyer about the date of the meeting, culminating in this morning's email that confirms that the meeting is on Wednesday. I go to my coworker and show her the emails just because I want someone else to see the stupidity of the situation. After several other phone calls, our lawyer (who says that they aren't sure who screwed up) confirms for the 17th.

Now I got back and resend emails regarding the meeting. I have to call the high school person that organizes substitutes to reschedule the substitute and find another place to hold the meeting. I also have to reschedule the meeting with the other parent that I called today.

Well, that should make up for a slow Friday.

Thursday, December 10th

2009-12-10T17:33:00.002-05:00

A lot of the time, it isn't worth taking a day off as the 18 emails and 3 voice mails sometime prove. The voice mails were actually much lower than I expected. I caught up on those and photocopied some stuff that need to go through a fax machine and then headed over to the middle school to do some testing.

By the 3rd subtest I decide that if the student isn't communication impaired then they should be. Later, after I return to the office, I learn that he is already classified communication impaired. Yay for my my diagnostic abilities. I usually don't like to read up on the previous testing of students because I want to go in fresh. That and the fact that I often don't have time to look up the previous information until report time.

Following the testing, I had a period before some counseling. I spend that period gathering information and speaking with people regarding a few other students. After this, counseling. I meet with two of my boys and we discuss interacting with students and teachers. Fairly benign stuff.

I get back to the office for a leisurely 5 minute lunch before getting reading for my 1:00 initial referral conference. The parent doesn't show up until 1:40 after I call the home. The case is the unusual one that I have mentioned before. The one that needed an interpreter for a fairly rare language in my neck of the woods. The parent gives consent to test so the clock is not ticking: 90 days.

I go back to my office after speaking with my supervisor regarding the initial and another case. I use the rest of my time to score the test from the morning and send a few more emails. Thus the day is at the end.

Tuesday, December 8th

2009-12-08T19:48:00.002-05:00

The day started off with the manifestation determination meeting for the incident from last Friday. It was determined that the incident that resulted in a 10 day suspension was not a manifestation of the student's disability and a functional behavior assessment and a review of his placement is not in order. The end result is that the student will face the 10 day suspension unless the school administration decides to change their decision and reduce it. If they don't reduce it, I have to arrange for home instruction to begin on the 5th day of the suspension.

About 10 minutes into the meeting, it is interrupted and I'm informed that there is another risk assessment over at the high school and there is no one else around, so after my meeting I have to head on over to do the risk assessment. The meeting didn't actually take very long and within 45 minutes I find myself meeting with a student in their guidance counselor's office. The outcome of the assessment is that the student did not present as a danger to themselves but seems to be in need of counseling. I wait for the student's mother with the student and counselor and we all meet to discuss what has happened and provide them with a list of resources. From the meeting it seems that the mother could also use the resources herself.

Following this, I return to my office and play phone tag with a number of people and respond to some emails about my lawyer-involved case. I speak to a department head about one of my students who is being a bit obstinate. I also talk to another guidance counselor about a student of mine who is having difficulty in their math class. The guidance counselor brings up the idea that the student might need some counseling for stuff that is going on at home. I tell her that may be the case but it would be better to refer the family to outside counseling resources.

Now it isn't a matter of my not wanting to counsel the student. It is a matter of what in-school counseling is about and it is easier to define what it isn't than what it is. It isn't psychotherapy. IEP related counseling is to address issues that impact school performance. There are so many students in schools that could benefit from counseling, both regular and special education, that you would need to employ a fleet of counselors but it is over-prescribed for what it is in school. There are some schools that have instituted school-based counseling clinics as part of district services but they are few and far between and take place after school day hours. My heart goes out to the student but he would be better served by obtaining services from within the community since it is a family situation. In fact, the whole family would benefit.

After this and a lunch, I start typing yesterday's risk assessment. I'm only partly finished when it is time to staff a student that I tested. The student is clearly eligible but the issue remains what to do for the student. This is again one of those situations where the student needs more treatment outside the school setting than within because that is where the resources lie. The student doesn't need an out of district placement; the student needs appropriate treatment for their condition.

Following this I talk with a few of my coworkers about some of the crazier situations that are coming up and how it seems to be tied partly to this time of year. After this it is time to race home. I have a personal day on Wednesday but I'll pay for it on Thursday.