Absenteeism and a Shift in Perspective

So it has been a very long time since my last post. I know that I have at least one message to reply to and I have been very poor at doing so.

What has been going on since my last post? A lot of things. I won't go into painstaking detail. I had to adjust to being a single parent.  I had to finish out last school year which I managed to do fairly well. It was the first times that I actually didn't have IEPs to bring home with me during the summer. I did some per diem work during the summer and then started the school year.

I have been extremely fortunate to have so many wonderful people in my life. In addition to the wonderful support that I have gotten from my friends and family, my coworkers were also incredible.

At first, keeping up with this blog did not seem important anymore since I had so much else to do. My heart was just not in it. Then as my life began to settle down, a wondrous thing happened.  I found happiness again.  I could go through a whole thing on the grieving process but I won't. But I'll say it again, I found happiness.

Even after I was happy again, I still didn't feel the need to come back here and write.  A few months ago, I began to examine the reason for this.  I started examining this because a very special person in my life asked me why I stopped writing it.

So the conclusion I came to had to do with a shift in perspective.  When I seriously started the blog, things weren't going well in other areas of my life.  Work was the only area where I felt competent.  Work was a refuge...not that I tried to disappear into my work and remove myself from the rest of my life...but my hours at work were a distraction from the other areas that weren't so good.

Now that my personal life is better, I don't need work as a refuge.  While I still want to be good at what I do, being a school psychologist isn't as much of a defining attribute.

I don't know if that sounds lame or not but that was my conclusion.  I could provide other examples as proof of this but I think I'll leave it at that for the moment.

Where do I go from here?

I'm planning on posting again on the site. I know that I'm not even going to try to keep up the rigorous pace I foolishly attempted to do before.  One post a day was just too much and, now, I don't think my professional life is that interesting (Do I know how to promote myself or what?).

To the person that sent me a personal message, I will get back to you soon, which is kinda relative considering how long ago that message was sent.

I think my next post or two will have to do with changing tests and the use of technology in the workplace.

A Personal Message

On February 25th, 2011, after fighting metastatic breast cancer for less than a year, my wife of 8 years passed away at home.

The months leading up to her passing were not easy as her condition continued to deteriorate.

I hope to be able to return to this blog but I know it will not be with daily updates.

Very Brief Interlude

I just tried to put my name into the school information system.  I'm losing it.

Trying to get back on the horse

Well, it has been a while since a proper post.  As I noted, a lot of personal life stuff has been draining me which has led to my break in posting.  I'm going to try to hit some of the highlights since I returned to work from winter break.  Sadly, the unaccounted days from before the break are lost to the mists of time.

Last week, I had several IEP and initial planning meetings that I attended.  Most of the initial planning meetings resulted in the recommendation to evaluate.  I also started working on my steadily increasing load of evaluations.  'Tis the season.

Fortunately for me, I closing in on the tail end of the re-evaluations from my own caseload.  Soon, it will just be initials and my coworker's caseloads.  I'm also fortunate that I've been keeping ahead of my IEP meetings.  I have all the meetings for this month already scheduled and next week I'll have to work on next months IEPs.

For most district, entering the new year means the beginning of IEP season.  From about late February to May, the majority of IEPs come due.  This is usually because IEPs have to be changed or adjusted to account for teacher recommendations for classes, which also come due at this time of year.  I'm expecting to have to amend a number of IEPs at the end of the year to account for those students that had IEPs come due in the first half of the school year.  Ideally, this will not pose a problem.

Well that is all for now.

Place Holder...

Sorry for the absence.  The week leading up to the winter break was a drag in more ways than one.  The holidays were more exhausting than restful.  And, of course, I caught my son's cold just before going back to work today.  So I am feeling really lousy and plan to get some rest.

More tomorrow, if my head and joints stop aching.

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.