Well, it was time for our weekly department meeting. Since our start time is 8am and the meeting begins at 9:30, it doesn't leave a whole lot of time to do anything outside of the office. As I may have said before, the special needs department has their offices in a separate building and case managers usually visit their assigned schools but do most of the paperwork in the office. While the high school is only a block away, an hour and a half doesn't leave you much time. So I busied myself with paperwork. I finished up few things and started a psych report.
Then the meeting started. We had two guest speakers today. The English and social studies supervisor and the math and science supervisor. Each of them discussed the district curriculum for those subject areas. While the discussing the lower grades, the conversation was much more focused but when it came to middle school on up, the conversation turned murky. It is funny (not ha ha funny, quirky funny) that while high school requirements are much more regulated, things become much more uncertain in the area of curriculum.
This may be a personal gripe but I know that some of my coworkers share similar feelings: the pool of goals and objectives that we pull from are often just to core curriculum content standards (CCCS) for that subject area and to read them, they make no sense as goals. While the CCCSs outline what a student is supposed to be taught, it doesn't focus on how they are supposed to be taught or what skills are needed to learn it, particularly at the high school level. The high school goals and objectives for, say, social studies, read something like this: student will be exposed to multiple forms of government.
With stuff like that, it makes no sense to use that as a goal/objective. I know it isn't just me, hell, there is a whole book about aligning goals and objectives with curriculum standards.
Follow our presenters and a break for lunch, we had met briefly to discuss any case management issues. My only issue was a stationary issue: week 4 of not having a new ink cartridge for my printer. And me and my office mate have shaken that cartridge to death to get every last ounce of toner out of it.
Then we broke up into our groups to continue with chart reviews for monitoring.
Monday, October 12th
I attended a workshop called Special Education Court. As I was waiting for some of my coworkers who were also sent to the workshop, I played my usual game of people watching with the purpose of seeing if I knew anyone from NJASP conferences or from my school psych program. I also played "guess whose the school psychologist." I had no way to confirm who was or wasn't a school psychologist but it passed the time.
The workshop was good but definitely not inspirational and not necessarily a way to get you motivated or inspired for the week. I made me feel more like climbing back into bed and going under the covers. The scariest thing that I came away from it was that because most administrative law judges may not have much familiarity with special education procedures, a district could do everything correctly and the judge could still find the district at fault because they base their judgment on something that they have no qualification to assess. One of the presenters discussed a case where the judgment wrote in their summary 10 pages of praise for the district, 5 pages of reasons why the petitioners case was incorrect but in the end still wrote that they didn't think that the student made as much progress as they could have so the decision went for the petitioner.
Aside from that scare, the presenters, all lawyers, did provide good advice on how to avoid court and some of the common mistakes districts make. Perhaps in my next post, I'll put a few of those up, if I remember to bring the handouts home.
The day ended with an interesting (and funny) mock mediation where the presenters played the part of the lawyers for the parents and the district and the mediator, and volunteers from the audience played the part of the parents and the district representatives.
Tuesday, October 13th
I love coming in after being out for a day and not seeing my voice mail message light blinking...but 21 new emails. Krikey. Fortunately, most of it was fluff. I worked on the psych report I started on Friday; tried to do some organizing for an IEP meeting I have on Thursday (is this considered foreshadowing...); dealt with a call regarding one of my students that is in a world language class and feels they can't handle the reading and writing; and mailed some paperwork out.
I spilled a little hot chocolate on the front of my pants just before having to go to the high school to see some teachers, so I walked around the high school holding my paperwork in front of me like a schoolboy trying to hide an embarrassing moment (so help me, I'm in my late 30s). I also met with my monitoring group again and we finalized several charts and were feeling pretty good about that.
Then I attended a meeting for a student and his guardian to go over the results of the testing we did over the summer on the student. We had already had the eligibility during the summer but the student was away visiting family at the time and it was felt important that he hear the results. His guardian asked some very good questions about whether or not the student is in the right program. It is a hard answer because the student has behavioral problems and is in an out of district placement. My response was that he is but he also has to recognize that he has a problem and feel the need to work the program.
Wow, someone actually read this...
Lynn Marentette wrote:
I'm a school psychologist, too, and I find it interesting that you are working full-time at a high school. I'd like to reach out to other school psychologists who are working at the secondary level, because it seems that the bulk of the research in our field has been focused at the elementary level, and most of the NASP conference topics don't address much that relates to the high school level, either.First of all, thanks for reading this thing.
At any rate, I had a few questions to ask you. 1. How many students are enrolled at the high school where you work? 2. Do you have any other schools? 3. How many special education students do you have in your school? 4. How many of your special education students are in more "self-contained" classrooms for part of the day due to lower cognitive abilities, serious emotional disorders, autism, etc.? 4. Does your school have a social worker? If so, what is the social worker's role in supporting the students who eligible for special education?
As to your first comment, I think that the focus shifts at the secondary level and behavior and psychiatric issues become more of a concern. I don't know if the folks in the field just think that an SLD student who is 9 years old is the same as an SLD student that is 16 years old. I'm sure that isn't the case across the board.
As to your questions, I work in a smaller (compared to some in our state), but diverse district. Among grades 7 to 12 (our high school and middle school are connected) we have about 1400 students. 14% of those students are classified. I don't have numbers handy for student in out of district placements but they are included in the 14%. Our district does have an alternative program for special education students which would be considered self-contained and I think we have about 10 to 15 students in that program.
If by any other schools, you mean district, yes, we do. We are a pre-k to 12 district. If you mean my personal assignment, technically no. I am the 9th grade case manager. But my more psychology related duties spreads me out. If I'm the one that is around when a risk assessment needs to be done on a 5th grader, then I'm off to the upper elementary school. The same goes for the other school psychologists and social workers, if they are around when a high schooler needs to be assessed, off they go. The same goes for psychological evaluations: its a round robin sort of deal.
In regard to school social workers, our special needs department is composed of 5 learning disabilities consultant-teachers, 5 school psychologists, 4 school social workers, and 3 speech-language therapists (it should be 4 but we have had a hard time filling one position). Lynn, I don't know if you are in New Jersey, but I'm guessing from this question that you may be from out of state, and I know things are done differently in other states, but each of us are assigned as individual case managers above and beyond what our duties are based on our specialties.
One of my new coworkers was a school psychologist in Seattle before moving to New Jersey. In Seattle, she was a school psychologist and she didn't do nearly a quarter of the paperwork that we do in Jersey. She said that the special education teacher was responsible for making the IEP.
That doesn't happen here. So yes, we do have social workers in the district but they are currently assigned as case managers to the lower grades. Their duties as a social worker include completing social history assessments for evaluations, counseling, and risk assessments.
At the moment, I'm the only person in the high school that does counseling for the special needs students that have it as part of their IEP. My high school cohorts (the 10th and 11/12th grade case managers) are both learning consultants. But that is the nature of the beast and may change from year to year.
I hope this has answered your questions. If you have any more please ask them. And once again, thanks for reading.
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