Best of 2011!

It's time for the Year in Review post!

Needless to say, 2011 was a big year for me (and I mean that literally and metaphorically--I was a huge pregnant person for most of the year.) Towards the end of my pregnancy, I was getting that look from people. I know they were thinking: "Should she be out in public? Shouldn't she be in a hospital right now?!?" I know they were thinking that. But in the end, I got a perfect little baby girl, so it was all worth it. I have my very own developmental psychology project (n=1). Really, having a baby is easier than being a school psychologist. Caseload of 1, anyone? In my job, I was pulled in 8 hojillion directions to work with hundreds of students. Now I can focus on just one. It's a dream come true. Oh, and in case anyone is tracking her development, she is not only reaching for desired objects, but trying to move to get them (in 2 out of 5 trials as measured by mama charted records). Just kidding not really.

Once again, my love of writing about Baby B has distracted me from the real point of the post. I love writing the year in review post because I get to reflect on the year in the life of a school psychologist. Only this year, I also got to reflect on how I was too tired to write a lot of posts because I was busy making a person. I always thought about great posts and then I thought a post-work nap would be a better choice for a tired pregnant lady. I reasoned that I would not get many chances to nap at will once the baby was born. I was correct.

So without further ado, here are the best posts of the year (as measured by a weak measure of number of comments). New Year's Ressie for 2012 is to figure out how to read my analytics on feedburner to find the most read posts. That is if I'm not too tired from raising a small person...

January: My musings on the shooting in Tuscon. Not exactly an inspirational post, but isn't it interesting that the media has totally abandoned coverage of mental health issues since then? Now it's just cut cut cut mental health services from schools like nothing happened. Boo.

February: Default winner since I only wrote one post is the one in which I get spit on and then blamed for it by the police. My extreme reaction actually may make more sense now that you know I was pregnant during this episode and was a bit emotional...

March: A classic one in which I dance with a tiger mom.

April: A post about how kids should be like DIY projects.

May: The most commented on post of the year, probably because it was the most controversial. A post about who is best equipped to assess for ADHD

June: Yeah, June was weak. I only wrote one post because I was hot and fat (pregnant). A post on not posting.

July: Here was a post on my dogs, but not really. A post on Banning the L word from kids' vocabularies.

August: It was a tie between a post on my battle with mindfulness and my love of working with students with oppositional behavior.

September: My Labor Day Confession about why I didn't go back to work in the fall. Hint: 9 lbs, 1 oz. Seriously. I told you I was huge. My family is full of small women who make huge babies. It was genes, not ice cream! Sort of.

October: Here was a post on how Halloween messes up assessments.

November/December: Actually, the most commented on post was a contest that required one to make a comment, so I'm gonna go with my favorite instead on Baby Leg Warmers.

There you have it! Here's hoping that 2012 is full of informative, provocative, and useful blog posts. In related news: here's hoping that in 2012 Baby B becomes a longer napper...

SPAW! SPAW!

I hope you all read the title "SPAW! SPAW!" to the sound effect of a large predatory bird cawing. No? Well I did in my head. SPAW stands for School Psychology Awareness Week, in case anyone was wondering. So, how was your SPAW? I spent mine on maternity leave, making informal Individual Education Plan goals for my baby daughter in my head, as in: "Baby B will reach for a desired object on 4 out of 5 trials as measured by mommy charted records."

Since I was not at work this year for SPAW, I thought I'd do a little recycling for those who haven't been with the blog since 2007, but are too daunted by the hojillion posts to go searching for what the days of a school psychologist are like. Here's a hint: never the same. You never know what will present itself when you walk in your school doors, and chances are, your plans for the day go out the window within the first hour or so. It's what I like about our profession--never a dull moment. So here are some oldies, but goodies, about the day in the life of...moi.

A typical day, full of children trying to run away from me and foreign objects being thrown.

Another day, another quest for a pen and additional time to do my job.

Three days smooshed into one, full of cold pricklies (guns and whatnot) and warm fuzzies (kids making real changes).

Top 10 things I do as a school psychologist

Fuzzy math: why we never have time to do our job

Somebody, hug me. I hate when advocates get unnecessarily saucy in meetings.

And to spice it up with something new, here is a sample of how your friends at the NFtSP Blog Facey Face page spent their SPAW:

• Teaching social skills, counseling, and behavior plans.
• Sat on teams for inclusion, Positive Behavior Intervention System (PBIS), and "yellow zone" behavior interventions.
• Provided parents with the information that they need to ensure that their child receives accommodations when writing SAT and other necessary exams, and when attending post-secondary school.
• Giving a questionnaire to fifth graders to assess for the prevalence of bullying at their school.
• In my current job I rarely ever test anymore. This week I was schooled on the most effective way to steal cars. (I work in a juvenile jail)
• Implementing check-in/check-out program for the district! Oh, and in Response to Intervention (RtI) meetings out the wazoo.
  
• Started a group for 5th grade girls targeting current relational aggression issues
• I spent 5 hours of my day today in a student crisis situation...
• Created a "Manners Jeopardy" game for our middle school counseling groups... in light of thanksgiving coming up. Doesn't hurt to remind 7th and 8th graders about table manners, conversation manners, etc!
• I had a rather humorous counseling session, followed up with the student showing me his sticker chart for good behavior later in the day.
• Helped a life skills student conquer his bus phobia with a get on the bus, get off the bus, ride laps around the parking lot with a very patient bus driver yesterday. The kiddo took a mass transit bus to a field trip today and the school bus back.
• I attended a full day of training on the iPad. We just got them to use to administer AIMSweb probes to our elementary students (and to have a little fun with!)
• Helped a first grade classroom teacher plan a re-entry plan for a student with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) returning to school from a partial hospitalization program
• Prepared for and led a middle school team meeting to prepare for the admission of a student with autism and is non-verbal moving to our district from a foreign country at the end of the month. I had requested translated reports and video of the student in his current educational setting from his parents and shared all this with the group today. I told them they were going to do amazing things with this student, who to this point, has not received much in the way of meaningful instruction. And I meant it! They are pumped!
• RtI meetings, threat assessment, behavior plans
• Wrote 2 behavior plans, manned a school-wide community service project, and managed data and made decisions about students on our Check-in, Check-out Tier II PBIS program.
• I have the Michael Franti "Be a Learner" song from third grade Second Step stuck in my head after doing the same lesson in three classrooms. It's catchy!
• Provided Grief/Crisis Counseling Support and drove a parent to visit a program for their child.

See, we are more than just testing and IEP machines! Spread the news!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Baby B is at 80% mastery on her IEP goal, as she reached for her Whoozit toy four times today. Genius child.

You Are All Winners. But Only One Gets A Prize.

Last week, I ran a contest to win this fabulous classroom observation app for the iPad. Using a random number generator, the winner is... "JFValerie"! So if you are JFValerie, send me your email at rebecca(at)studentsgrow(dotcom).

Thanks to everyone who participated...I loved reading about your best classroom observation moments! Hope you all are having a fabulous SPAW (School Psychology Awareness Week)!

Little.

I warned you guys that since I’m on maternity leave, posts were going to be a bit baby-o-centric. Today’s post is about baby laundry. But not really.

They say to nap when the baby naps. But I see her naps as my only opportunity to get the laundry done and eat with TWO hands. I am getting rather babydexterous in that department, but it’s just more fun to eat without holding a baby. Today, I was folding the baby laundry when it was done, and I just love how little everything is. Little baby socks! Little baby leg warmers!** Little t-shirt! I die. I love all things little. People are always telling me to enjoy my baby because they grow up so fast. No problem! Do you see that little face? I'm soaking it up all the time. It is true that they grow so fast though. I was initially bummed out when she grew out of her bassinet, but then I got to put her in her crib and voila! she looked super little again. Yes!

My friends know about my love of little. When I moved to Cali with one of my best friends, she was in charge of stopping me from buying little things for the apartment, like mini-spatulas and itty bitty useless cookware. Whenever I showed her such things in the store, she would make me answer the question, “Are you buying that because you need it or because it is little?” Most times, it was because it was little. And little is cute. I would say, "Gah! Fooled by the little again!" and put it back.

This is why it is surprising that for most of my career as a school psychologist, I have worked with middle and high school students. They are decidedly not little, and let’s be honest, not so cute. One would think I’d be a preschool assessor with my preference for little. But there is something awesome about working with the adolescents, even if they can be rude or standoffish.*

I wrote a series on middle school students when I first started my blog. As a sidebar, I think my writing has evolved from then. I used to be super researchy and informative. Now I’m trying desperately to connect baby leg warmers** to school psychology. Anyhoo, my point (I have one, I’m just sleep deprived and it takes me a while now) is that I think people are much less forgiving of adolescents’ developmental mistakes than younger students’ mistakes, because younger students are still cute and little. It is kind of cute when a Kindergartener uses faulty logic to explain their actions, and not so cute when a 13 year old does it.

I find that as a school psychologist, while teens are not little and cute on the outside, when I am working with them one-on-one, I find the cute on the inside. So many times, adolescents have presented as hardened and aloof, and then when I get to know them, they surprise me with saying funny things or sharing a the softer side of Sears (e.g. A 10th grader dressed like a thug sharing he loves poetry, or an 8th grade girl who initially acted snotty to me admitting she wants to be a vet because she loves fuzzy animals). You have to look for the cute in teens, it’s not in your face.

Please remind me of this when Baby B is an adolescent and makes mistakes that are not cute. I have a feeling though that even when she is 16, I will still secretly think of her as my cute little girl, even though she will have long grown out the baby leg warmers.**

*One of my friends teaches 7th grade, and she told me once, “I can’t help it. I love teaching the little bastards. I don't know why.” I wouldn’t have put it in those terms, but I agree that I too love adolescents’ sauciness.

**Baby leg warmers. I die.

Go On, Win Yerself Something Purdy.

I love getting emails from readers, especially when they offer something pretty for my readers. I tend to not pimp out things to buy on my blog, unless it is shamelessly something I wrote, of course. But in this case, you get something freeeeeeeeee and who doesn't like free? You guys don't have to pay $29.99, I give it to you for FREE99.

Enough hooplah. Enter my contest and win an app for tracking behavior during classroom observations! Some momtrepreneurs/school psychs in my home state of Colorado developed this app and wanted to share it with all y'all:
The Behavior Lens app. The app has four observation types: Interval Recording, Duration, Frequency, and ABC. The look and design is very sleek and sophisticated, yet extremely intuitive and easy to use. The best part is that it automatically generates graphs from your data which can be easily shared with parents and teachers through email or attaching them to documents.



Now, of course you have to be fancy and have an iPad to use it. I am still sans iPad, and I do think people kind of rub it in my face when their emails end with "Sent from my iPad," but who am I not to share the iPad app love?

So how do you enter the contest? You can enter in one of three ways (or all three!)

1) Write a comment at the end of the post telling a story about the craziest or most inspiring thing you have ever observed in a classroom (don't use names or identifying info, please!)

2) Pick your favorite post on NFtSP about behavior and share it on Facey Face or Twitter. Use the button at the end of the post. Be sure to tag @Notes from the School Psychologist Blog (Facebook) or @studentsgrow (Twitter) so I will be able to see who re-posted it.

3) If you aren't already a fan of the blog on Facey Face or Twitter, sign up and then return here and post a comment that you are signed up.

I will then put your names in a numbered list and use a random number generator to pick the winner. I will announce the winner of the app on the blog. The app is valued at $29.99 so go forth and enter! Or...is it actually priceless because you get to show a fancy graph on your iPad at IEP meetings? So jealous.

My Favorite Halloween Game.

I have this game I play whenever I’m testing students around Halloween. It’s called “Halloween or Emotional Disturbance?”* Around this time of year, when I ask students to draw for me, I often get some pretty disturbing stuff—zombies eating people, ghosts, headless horsemen—and it begs the question, “Is the child emotionally disturbed or just thinking about Halloween?” I was reminded of this problem in assessment when a friend of mine posted this picture on her Facebook and asked, “Should I be concerned?!?”



She of course was not concerned because she knew her little treasure was going to be a vampire for Halloween. Yes, yes, that makes a difference in context. Now if her kiddo made that drawing on a random Tuesday in March, it would be a different story, no?

I have a memorable assessment from last Halloween time to illustrate the point…I was walking this kiddo to the testing room, when I spotted a huge spider web and a spider was chilling in the middle. I am not a huge spider fan, but I do anthropomorphize every spider into being that nice spider from Charlotte’s Web, so I said, “Oh look! That spider made us a web for Halloween!” The child turned to look at the spider’s web and then started spitting on the spider, yelling “Die! Die! Die you mother*#(%#@!” Whoa. I did not see that coming. Later, when I asked him to draw a picture of a person, he drew a vampire with a machine gun, blasting all the spiders in the world. Soooooo, you’re not a fan of spiders, eh?

Kids’ drawings are awesome. They are one of my favorite parts of the assessment process. Aside from the comorbidity of creepy drawings and Halloween, drawings can reveal a lot about our students. I especially love the Kinetic School Drawing, which is basically a way to see how the kid feels about school. You just ask them to draw a picture of themselves at school at any time of day and see what they come up with. I wish I had kept this drawing of this 10th grade student I was assessing for ADHD (who later cornered me on the streets of SF with his pack of friends yelling, “Hey, that’s the lady that put me in special ed! Thanks lady, special ed is way easier!”). His drawing was a cartoon-style sequence of him getting in trouble (“Here’s where my pencil accidently flies out the window, then here is me getting kicked out, and here’s me going down the stairs to the dean’s office, and here’s the dean saying to get a pass, and here’s me going back up the stairs, and here’s the teacher saying I can’t go back to class without a pass, and here’s me going back to the dean’s office…”).

Another kiddo who I was assessing for Asperger’s syndrome drew the most literal interpretation of the drawing I’ve ever seen. He started drawing every facet of the school building, including the irrigation system out front. When I asked him to draw a picture of himself in the drawing, as if I had a camera and took a picture of him at school, he drew a picture of me jumping out of a locker with a camera, taking his picture. HA! I love it.

My absolute favorite drawing was actually of me (not a Me-Monster story, I promise). The kid was 6 years old and in a school for students with emotional disturbance. The kid hated testing so much, it was torture to get anything done. After daaaaaays of trying to get something out of the guy, I finally asked him to draw a picture and tell me a story. He drew this monsterously fat and ugly person and said, “This is Dr. Fat, no I mean, Dr. B. She was a horrible fat person who made kids do stuff. She has a timer and her pencils and a monster ate her.” Soooooo, how do you feel about testing, little buddy?

So, as you go forth and test students on Monday on Halloween, look out for ghosts, goblins, spiders, and creepy drawings! You might also want to look out for REDRUM as the answer on a spelling test. Now that's a scary reversal...

*My friends and I also played a related game around Halloween when we were in grad school at Berkeley called “Normal dress or Halloween costume?” So, when a cloaked man entered the “Games of Berkeley” store, was he normally dressed for his fantasy board game club, or was it a Halloween costume? Is that a hippie costume or an actual hippie?

Bullied.

I just received a threatening email from Amazon Kindle. They (the royal “they”) said they noticed I hadn’t posted in over 30 days and they threatened to cancel my Kindle account where people can subscribe to my blog. Apparently customers want to read posts. Humph! Don’t they know that I am trying to raise a tiny person? I’m kind of busy. But I do suppose it is time to get back on the blogging wagon, and it is Bullying Prevention Month, so ironically, I’ve been bullied back on the blogging scene.* And yes, I realize there are only 4 days left of Bullying Prevention Month. For anyone who thinks “I can always work from home when the baby sleeps!” I laugh in your naïve face. I said that before I had a baby and I laugh at my own naïve pre-baby face. But I digress...

I am glad that bullying is becoming an issue that educators are taking on. I endorse prevention programs and intervening early when bullying behavior is discovered. I especially like how school psychologists can take on a preventive role in the creation of a positive school climate. A recent poll of the fabulous folks on my Facey Face page showed that school psychologists are active and involved in the prevention of bullying. A few resources they shared for you to check out:

• National Bullying Prevention Center
• Cruel’s Not Cool
• Teaching Tolerance Website
• Second Step Social Emotional Skills Program

I find that my role in the schools when it comes to bullying prevention actually sadly tends not to be in the prevention area, but in the psychological cleanup and intervention area. I have the distraught student in my office, who finally admits she is sad because she is relentlessly teased. I get the iChats emailed to me by parents to prove their child is being cyber bullied. I get the middle of the night emails from parents worrying their child is being bullied, and requesting a meeting. I get bombarded in the mornings before school starts to talk about bullying. And yes, I even got a parent showing me her secret iPhone video of her daughter being excluded on the playground. It seems like the bullying awareness campaigns at my schools are working.

I am glad that bullying is no longer being written off as a developmentally appropriate “kids can be cruel, what are you going to do?” kind of thing. The problem is, we have gotten so good at raising awareness, but we really haven’t taught the students (or adults for that matter) what to do once we see bullying behavior. By the way, I usually use the term “bullying behavior” instead of “bully” because bullying dynamics are really complex. I have seen kids be the "victim" one day and the "bully" the next.

Addressing bullying on the individual level is hard, especially since much of the behavior is hidden or underground, and there is typically a “he-said she-said” quality to the conflict. How we respond to bullying behavior is really important. While we can’t ignore it, we also can’t jump in and try to solve all of kids’ interpersonal problems for them. Sometimes, when we intervene, we even give lame advice (see: My Words Taste Yucky, by yours truly).

We also need to be careful not to see “bullying” under every single interpersonal conflict. In some of my schools, it has become a catchall for all negative peer interactions. Unfriendly look in the hall? Parent meeting about relational aggression. Child not invited to play tetherball? Request for anti-bullying intervention. During fantasy play, one child pretends to kill off another child’s unicorn? Two hour meeting with parents and students.**

Please don’t get it twisted. I’m not saying to ignore bullying behavior. Chances are, if its reached the level of involving you as a school psychologist, it’s serious, or at least the subjective experience for the student is that it's serious. As school psychologists, we must treat each incident brought to our attention as “bullying” seriously, but also not jump in when it’s not necessary. The problem is, it is hard to tell in advance how serious an incident is. One incident could be the tip of the unicorn’s horn, or it could just be kids playing make believe and having normal conflict. I remember one kid who reported to his teacher that he was being bullied and was scared and she wrote it off as him being “sensitive” and then the next day another student brought a knife to school and threatened him in the bathroom.

So while we can’t jump to intervene at every peer conflict, we should listen to kids when they report bullying behavior. It’s a unspoken challenge for school psychologists to decide what requires individual intervention. That is why I'm a huge fan of prevention programs that teach actual skills to kids, rather than waiting until there is a school culture of bullying behavior that requires a ton of individual intervention.

Now, the real truth about how I feel about bullying will come out, from a new mom’s perspective. If Baby B grows up and someone is mean to her, I like to think I would gently coach her to deal with peer conflicts, and only intervene if necessary, like I do with my students. I like to think I would calmly alert the school to the incident and trust them to handle it. But it’s equally possible that I might just do the same thing as the parents I work with and flip out and call an emergency meeting. I might even turn all Mama Bear protective and demand a school-wide anti-bullying intervention, I don’t know. I just know that when I look at my baby girl, I want to protect her from all things mean. It’s unrealistic, but it’s totally different when you are the parent. This may be the beginning of a series of posts entitled: “Things I recommend to parents as a school psychologist that would be way harder if it were my own child.” I think I’ve figured out a way to be a secret mommy blogger with that series of posts…

*By the way, it takes every fiber of my being not to turn into a mommy blogger. I mean, who doesn’t want to hear about Baby B’s latest developmental milestones? Posts about her visually tracking objects and crossing midline, orienting toward sound, and reaching for objects have broad appeal, right?

**I am not making this up. Happened to a school psych friend of mine. I asked him if his advice was to teach the other kid to make believe their unicorn had a protection spell from all harm. It wasn’t. It should have been.