First Post; Student Schedules; Staff Meeting

Well, this is my first post. As the description and "about me" thing says, I'm a school psychologist/case manager on a child study team. What this mean, if you are unfamiliar with this type of arrangement, is that I perform the duties of a school psychologist (psychological evaluations, risk assessments, and counseling) as well as overseeing the special education programs of a specific caseload of students. The latter part entails a large amount of paperwork, time, and redtape. IEPs, eligibility statements, etc. All the things they don't really teach you about in school psychology programs.

I know in other states the duties of a school psychologist varies. One of my new coworkers reported that in the state that she last worked, she largely did all the school psychologist stuff that I noted above but the case management duties were largely the responsibilities of the special education teacher. So if you think doing the duties under school psychologist would be cool but the duties of a case manager would be completely outweigh the coolness of the former then check your state regulations before going any further.

My overall plan for this blog is to do a post a day, not including weekend and holidays, and give a brief overview of what an average workday entails. I'm doing this to inform people about school psychology, as far as how it is done in a public school setting, and maybe this will inspire some people to enter the field or help them change their mind before they get too deep into the course work.

So onto today, Friday, September 25th. The Friday before one of the more loved things: a three day weekend. Well I had to go see a guidance counselor regarding one of my kids schedules. This is the after effect of something from the day before.

Yesterday, we learned that somehow, one of the sections of in-class resource math did not actually have any special education students while another section of the same subject had special education students but no in-class support teacher. (Now I know that to some I am using jargon so I'll give a brief explanation: in-class resource = a general education class with one general education teacher and one special education teacher to provide addition support and modifications). Along with this discovery came a second discovery that there was a single special education student that had been placed in a class that did not have an in-class support teacher even though the Individual Education Plan said that he was supposed to be in a class with that second teacher.

Now the how's and who's and "whose to blames" for this often leads to an Us (special education) vs. Them (regular education) thought process where Us generally thinks They don't understand and don't get it. While They see Us as a pain in the ass and that entire shifts have to be made to accommodate a single student. Both sides have their points and their unfounded points which I won't really get into.

Needless to say, my mission to the guidance counselor was one of those cases where mountains were moved (in this case put an additional student in several classes that were already filled to capacity) to satisfy the educational needs and education contract (which is what an IEP is, a contract between the student and/or his family detailing the services that the district is going to provide) of a single student.

Following this event, I returned to my office to continue to plot how I was going to screw with guidance even more...I mean to review the rest of my students' schedules to make sure they were all receiving the classes that they should be receiving according to their IEP.

Before I could complete that, it was time for our weekly staff meeting. This is just like any other staff meeting in any other field or area of work. If you have ever been to one, you know what they are like. And since I have worked in another industry, I can honestly say it is exactly like any other staff meeting you can imagine.

Our ongoing topic is that our department is due for state monitoring in the near future and we are in the process of doing an in-house audit of student records so that we may come through monitoring with as little bloodshed as possible. This took up the majority of our meeting. This was followed by a discussion of the technical problems we are having with our special education software package. Then an issue regarding the process of reporting suspected child abuse to our local child protective services. Finally an issue that nearly every school psychologist has to deal with: space.

The availability of space to perform our specific duties. How am I supposed to test a student when there isn't a space in the school or in my office building to actually sit privately with the student? Or provide counseling on a regular basis when I have to scramble to find a private closet to meet with a series of students for their contractually obligated allotment of counseling?

I could go on and on about this last bit but it would just degrade into another "Us vs. Them" thing which isn't where I want to go with this blog.

Well, that is it for now. See ya' on Tuesday (which is really pretentious of me to assume that someone is actually reading my drivel).