More Catching Up...

...both at work and on this blog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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