Thurfriday

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

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?

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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'

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

[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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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)

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.