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.