Madness, I Say. Madness.

Every year my husband thinks I’m going to get into March Madness basketball thingy and whatnot. Every year, I slightly glance at the TV while he is watching if one of my alma matters, UC Berkeley or University of Northern Colorado is in the tournament. I don’t care for sports, mostly because I feel badly for whichever team loses. I imagine the losers going home and crying because it’s their senior year, or the guy who misses the final shot at the buzzer goes down a shame spiral and replays the shot in his mind over and over. I guess it’s a work hazard to have too much empathy for people’s feelings sometimes.

Anyhoo, this year, husband printed up a bracket thingy for me to fill out in an effort to engage me in the tournament. I decided I would make my picks based on which mascot would win in a fight. As a former cheerleader in high school and college, I was subjected to hours of long boring games in between our fabulous performances. I often entertained myself by focusing on the mascots. My favorite mascot moment was in high school, when our Bear did a trampoline jump in order to dunk a basketball and his head flew off. Awesome.

So it appears as if I finally found a way to make March Madness interesting to me! Husband was trying to go to bed last night and I was all, “Honey, do you think a Longhorn or a Gator would win in a fight? Honey? Wake up. A longhorn could stab a gator with his long horns, but gators are sneaky and fast. What do you think?”* Suddenly, I have March Madness! I’m 1 for 2 right now, because I correctly picked that a Cougar would beat a whatever this guy is:


So how do we, as educators, engage kids in a similar way—finding something they are interested in and tapping into it to engage them in something they are not interested in? As school psychologists, we are typically at the front line of working with disengaged students, right? I find that when I have Sulky McGee in my office, I have to find that spark—that connection—on which we can build our rapport. I have to say (reluctantly) that it does help to have some basic sports knowledge sometimes. “How ‘bout those [insert local sports team]?” works with a lot of kiddos.

I also find that once I’ve found a connection with a kiddo, we end up using the topic as a metaphor for their school or social difficulties. With a kid who loved tennis, we discussed what is “in bounds” and what is “out of bounds” when it came to disagreeing with a teacher. With a basketball player, we talked about how you miss 100% of the shots you never take as a lesson on risk taking. And for a kid who liked aggressive video games, we talked about how you “use up your energy” fighting others, and sometimes it’s better to “go around” the guy to get to your goal.

I have seen skilled teachers engage kids in similar ways—they find their “thing” and work it into their lessons. I find that the strategy of “tapping into student’s interests” is one of those things that is easy to say and much harder to do without a lot of planning. Teachers may wonder, "How do I make quadratic equations relevant to a kid who just broke up with her boyfriend? How can a student in crisis possibly personally relate to the plight of the Pilgrams 400 years ago? Can we really make the Canterbury Tales something meaningful for the Facebook generation?" Yes! Yes! Yes! Hey, maybe each kid can make a mock Facebook page for each of the characters in Canterbury Tales and write what they would say, what groups they would join, and who they would be friends with or something. To reach a disengaged student, you often have to get creative.

Hey, if I can get into sports, then anything is possible.

What else have you seen teachers to do incorporate student interests and increase engagement? Have my fellow school psychologists been able to turn a kid's interest into an analogy about how to deal with challenges? You all know I love me some teachable moments and analogies, so share!

Also, if you must, you can also share who will win March Madness 2012. You can use my mascot decision tree strategy if you want. And good luck deciding if a Bearcat or a Wildcat would win in a fight.


*By the way, by my logic, Florida State Gators are going to win it all. I saw this special on how Alligators have basically been around since the dinosaur age, so they have some mad survival skills. I also remember them saying they can run pretty fast AND climb trees, which is unsettling because I always thought I could run to a nearby tree and climb it if I encountered a hungry gator.

This Is My Confession*

I have a confession. I have been writing for another. I didn’t mean to cheat on you, blog, it’s just that…just that…well, I met someone else. Her name is Jossey. Jossey Bass Publisher. That’s why I haven’t been around much this past year. Just know I was going down a shame spiral when I realized it had been weeks between posts and I was staying up late writing for Jossey. Of course, there was also that business of me not posting as much as normal because I was tired from making a person too...

You know you are my first writing love, blog. You will forgive me in a hot second though. I have exciting news that justifies my shameful lack of posting the last year…wait for it…wait for it…presenting…

The School Psychologist’s Survival Guide!



Oh snap! Finally! There’s a guide for school psychologists that is practical, time-saving, and useful! This isn’t the run of the mill “What is School Psychology?” textbook from graduate school, but a resource guide for surviving in the chaos of the job once you actually get in the field. Newbies will love the advice and time saving tips. School psychologists who have been around a while will get fresh ideas and strategies to continue doing their jobs without going crazy themselves! Think you're going to tear your hair out the next time you get an inappropriate referral? Do you want to poke your own eyes out if you have to write another psychoeducational report on the weekend? Fret no more! There is help in this guide. And of course, it is written with juuuuuuuust a splash of snark to keep it spicy and entertaining. Snarky? Moi?

The guide covers many different topics, including:

• Finding where you belong in the schools and successfully navigating your role
• Dealing with “Bureaucracy Monsters” that ruin your work flow
• Organizing and being strategic about your assessment caseload
• Tuning up your skills in individual, group, and crisis counseling
• How to be preventive when you have no time
• How to navigate changing policies around Response to Intervention
• How to deal with people with…uh…erm…“challenging” personalities
• Preventing burnout and increasing job satisfaction

There are time-saving reproducible worksheets, letters, spreadsheets, and organizational tools that are ready for you to Xerox and use tomorrow. Be still my nerdy heart!

I am SO excited to share this resource with you all and I hope you will find it useful as you start out in the profession or revive and improve your practice as a school psychologist. Know that this survival guide was a true labor of love for me to write**, and it was inspired by all of you readers with your great questions, comments, and posts on the Facey Face page for the blog.

You can pre-order it off of Amazon.com by clicking here. If you pre-order, I believe you get a better price. The book will arrive right in time for the spring freak-out when everyone refers kids to you and you can’t imagine how you will do all your work without going cuckoopants. Hey, maybe the book will even come on your spring break, and you can relax on the beach with it? Erm, maybe it’s not exactly a beach read, but you get the idea.

Now I can relax and not feel guilty about my lack of posting on the blog, right? I mean, you guys can now have hundreds of pages of school psychology fun at your fingertips! Wheeeeeee!

I sincerely hope you like mama's other baby!


*For those of you who read “This is my confession” to the tune of R. Kelly’s remix “Confessions” you get extra points.

**Labor indeed. This book and my baby were both due in August. I spent my final weeks of pregnancy frantically trying to finish edits while Baby B kicked (punched?) my gut. She was really helpful in the motivation department, giving me a kick start when I needed it. Get it? Kick start? Oh, nevermind.

My Titanic FAIL.

I have been noticing advertisements lately for a new 3-D version of the movie, Titanic. I don’t know about you all, but when I saw that movie in regular-D, it freaked me out and strengthened my vow to never go on a boat again. In 3D? Shudder. I know what you’re thinking. How can this woman possibly make an analogy or poignant comment on today’s yoots or school psychology by discussing the Titanic? Well, I cannot. But I can share with you my most epic fail in working with students with disabilities from early in my career.

I often get emails from young, perky students who are eager to be school psychologists someday. They ask, “what kind of experience do I need to be a good candidate for grad school?” The better question, I think, is, “what kind of experience do I need to know this job is for me?” It’s not for everyone. I remember being a bit stunned in my grad school program when a few fellow classmates in my school psych classes admitted that after the first year of practicum, they’d rather do research on education than work with kids. They transferred to the research-side of the building. Now, I love me some research, but I love me some kiddos much more. Shocking they didn't think about whether or not they liked working with kids before signing on to a school psych program, right?

I think the best experience I had to prepare me for the job of being a school psychologist was working in group homes during summers in college. I have worked in group homes for students with developmental disabilities and students with emotional disturbance, and after basically living with these kids for a few summers in college, I knew I could handle any kid (or flying object) heading my way. I found myself learning the on-the-job skills that are not taught in any course: how to get a kid with autism off the roof, how to handle a kid twice your height having a seizure in the middle of the street, how to keep a kid from trying to kill herself or run away, and how to anticipate when a large object is going to be thrown in protest. I would come home after days at the group home and lament on how I had actually used phrases like, “Jeffrey, put down the stove.”

Anyhoo, back to The Titanic. One day, while working at the group home for students with developmental disabilities, I decided to take 5 teenagers to see a movie. Movies were always a good way to kill a few hours on a hot, summer day. The kids were typically happy at the movies. So I picked the longest movie on the planet. I would surely get 3 ½ hours of happy time if we went to The Titanic. It turns out, 3 ½ hours is way too long. To make matters worse, I had an “aide” with me, who had autism. Sure, she was high functioning, but she wasn’t the best person to help when chaos ensued. She had a “thing” about countries, and she had memorized every country and their flag, capitol, and main exports and such, and every time she saw a reference to a country she would scream out the name of the country. I don’t know if you remember, but there were a lot of immigrants on the Titanic. IRELAND! AMERICA! ENGLAND!

About halfway through the movie, the kids were getting restless. I saw one kid’s glasses fly across the screen, because another kid had an obsession about throwing glasses. I fumbled for them in the dark and found 148 old pieces of popcorn and 276 old jujubes as well. Gross. Then, another kid began to masturbate. After a fruitless attempt to tell him “that is for private time” I gave up. We got to the most dramatic point in the movie—[spoiler alert for those who lived under a rock in 1997] Jack is holding on to a piece of wreckage and Rose says, “I’ll never let go, Jack! I promise,” and as I am tearing up at the moment, and I look over to the aisle to see a kid taking his pants off and then running out of the theatre. I quickly grab the other kids and get everyone back in the van to go home.

I never got to see the ending of the movie. Do Rose and Jack end up together? I guess I will have to go see the 3D version to find out. And I will go alone with my box of Kleenex, thank you very much. I learned my lesson. I suppose the bigger lesson is that when you work with the most severe needs students early in your career, you have confidence that you can handle any kid that comes into your office after that. It also gives you empathy for all those special education teachers out there working with students with disabilities all day long. If I couldn't get 5 kids to watch a movie, I shudder to think if I had to teach them to read, write and do math. Here's to special education teachers!

I Need More than Inspirational Poster of Woman Scaling a Mountain.

As many of you know, I recently made a person. One of the things that I didn’t expect about pregnancy is that even after having a baby, I would still look pregnant for many months. I thought that maybe after 3 months post-partum, I’d be back to my normal shape. Ooooohhhhh no. When Baby B was 3 months old, I decided it was time to do something about it. I was determined. I took the advice of this mommy in my mommies group to try out The Dailey Method. For those of you not familiar, it is basically a core focused class that seemed to me to be like if pilates and ballet had a baby. Women I know have sworn it is the best workout on the planet. So I decided to try it out. I was fairly confident I could handle it, as I worked out my entire pregnancy, 3 days a week, before work. I know! Ridiculous.

I arrived to find my mommy group friend had picked the same class to attend. Hurrah! We would be fit yummy mummies together! The instructor was a perky lady with perfect hair and she welcomed me to the class. I mentioned it was my first workout after having my baby and she exclaimed gleefully, “Ooh! I just had a baby too!” This women looked like a fitness model, so I figured she had a baby a while ago. Turns out our babies were the same age. I hated her. But then again, maybe it was a good sign that she had rock hard abs already. It did make me feel like a 400 lb Schlumpelufagus though. And as I looked around the room, it seemed like I was the only one who wasn’t modeling professionally for Lululemon athletic wear.

Anyhoo, needless to say, the class was a disaster. Everyone knew what they were doing and I was desperately trying to keep up. The instructor just kept yelling out things I didn’t know how to do or could no longer do—“Tip your hips! Tips your hips! Bend! Squeeze! Lift!” I ended up doing this awkward thrusting gyrating movement in an effort to tip my hips. It was not cute. There were no modifications for someone with a jelly core. I peered over at my mommy friend, sure I would find a kindred Schlumpelufagus, and the woman was doing the full splits like it wasn’t hard at all. I started to tear up a little. I couldn’t do anything right. I felt everyone was pitying me. The instructor was moving so fast, I couldn’t get any help. It was the longest class of my life.

After the class, the instructor said, “You did such a good job!” and I felt like she was lying to me. She asked how it was for me and I welled up with tears. I sniffled, “I feel weak—physically and mentally--like a weak person.” I told her I couldn’t keep up and didn’t know how to do what she was asking. It was too fast paced. She was genuinely surprised. Then, I was annoyed at her. How could she not see me floundering around like a dying fish on the floor for an hour? I left. I got an email later with an apology that I had a bad experience, offering me a free class to try again. That was 3 months ago and I haven’t stepped foot in that place again.

I can totally see why some kids with learning difficulties give up easily. It is so hard to be the one left behind, the one who doesn’t get it, the one who feels dumb for not getting it. And it's not like my success in life depends on fitting in my pre-preggers jeans, whereas learning to read is pretty fundamental. As a school psychologist, I give the persistence speech all the time. I always say that the brain is like a muscle and you have to keep working it! I tell kids a mixture of mistakes and success is how you learn! And with older kids, I tell them the research on persistence and grit—that it may be a better predictor of success and high grades than IQ scores. Persistence is, after all, one of the “success attributes” for students with disabilities. However, after my experience, which is a fraction of the cumulative effects of struggling to learn, I wonder now if I should start with empathy about how hard it must be and THEN moved to the persistence speech.

So I’m thinking that I should walk the walk, show persistence, and get my jelly core back to the class. I have been slowly working on my core in the privacy of my own home (Baby B and I both do Tummy Time together—she works on pushing up and I do push ups. Then we both face plant on the floor and cry). I’m feeling a little stronger physically. It will just take the mental strength to go back to the place of shame, where I cried in public because I didn’t know how to tip my hips and was too weak to participate in most of the moves. It would just be so much easier to avoid it. If only I had a school psychologist I could go to, who could encourage me to persevere. She would tell me I will get better with each class. And maybe, just maybe, she would tell me this with a backdrop of a poster of a woman climbing a mountain or something inspirational, and I would believe her.

Every Child is my Baby.

To say motherhood changes you is a huge cliché, but it’s also true. I think of my life before Baby B as “B.C.—Before Children.” It’s a whole different world now. B.C., I promised myself I would never tell boring stories about my daughter. And yet the other day, I was telling my BFF that I was glad it was getting chilly outside because Baby B got to wear her new beret. I can’t help it; everything about my baby is interesting to me (and she looked smashing in her beret, by the way). Clearly, there are major physical changes in motherhood as well (my kingdom to fit back into pre-preggers jeans!). But there is another change that I didn't really anticipate, and that is my mindset about parenting.

To be honest, B.C., I always felt a little like a fraud dolling out parenting advice as a school psychologist, without being a parent myself. I was a fairly knowledgeable “fraud,” to be fair. I held parent nights where I’d give sound tips for parenting. I’d freely advise parents in meetings what to do. I even did an interview for Parents Magazine. I reasoned that my advice was actually superior to advice of a school psychologist with a child, because mine was completely objective. I never made my advice for kids about what worked for me or for my own child. I gave just the facts and research. So in this way, maybe not having kids was an asset in my job (not to mention the fact that B.C., I had waaaaay more energy and time to give to my job).*

Now that I’m a parent, I am very aware that there is a danger that I will project my personal parenting experience onto other parents. At one of my schools, there was a support staff member who had a child with ADHD and eeeeeeevery child she saw she thought had ADHD. She saw ADHD lurking under every rock, so to speak. She always recommended the same things that she did for her child to every family. I could have predicted what was coming out of her mouth before she said it at every meeting, because it was always really about her child. Worse yet, she was always recommending unproven, unresearched treatments. She meant well, but she didn’t understand the importance of keeping the focus on the child we were all talking about. Sure, you might have some personal experience in parenting that could be useful, but you gotta keep it in check.

Even in my pregnancy, I knew that being a mother would change my outlook on my job. When I was taking developmental histories, I had a renewed excitement for learning about the pregnancy and early years of the children I was working with. I found myself wanting to know more and more (“Um, tell me again about how you got your child to be a good sleeper?”). I was filing away experiences parents had with possible future scenarios I might encounter. And I thought I could detect that parents were a bit more open about sharing. Maybe my giant belly gave me some street cred?

Now that I have Baby B, I definitely see the world differently, as a psychologist. When I see a child with autism wring his hands, they become my daughter’s hands, and I wonder what its like for the parent to see their child this way. When a parent tells me their child is being teased, I flash to what it would be like to have Baby B to come home and cry because she was teased. Every child is now my baby, on some level. And I know I have more empathy and understanding with parents because we have shared the experience of looking down at a little darling all your own and wanting the absolute best for him or her.

I realize this may come off as me saying that psychologists without kids can’t fully understand the business of parenting. If someone had said that to me before I had kids, I would have been annoyed at him or her. It’s like someone smirking and patting you on the head and saying, “you’ll understand when you’re older.” That’s not what I’m saying; I think I was a fab psychologist before I had kids, I just think I may become a better psychologist now that I’m a mother.**

And since I am loving my new role as a mom and psychologist with parenting street cred, I am on a kick to get all my 30-something educator friends to have babies too. A few weeks ago, I brought Baby B to my Elementary School and told a teacher colleague she should get a baby because they’re so awesome (showing Exhibit B, wearing baby leg warmers and beret). My colleague mused that she was worried she wouldn’t have enough love and energy for both her students and children. Au contraire!*** Having a kid makes your love for students deeper. In my mind, every child is now someone’s baby. Sure, that “baby” may be getting in trouble or making bad decisions, but it makes you more empathetic toward the parents, who are often doing their best with the tools they have.

As a psychologist, I always intellectually understood a parent’s love for a child, but now I can feel it too. It’s an amazing, indescribable feeling. And I truly believe that the experience of motherhood will continue to make me a better psychologist. Now if we can just do something about fitting back into those pre-pregnancy jeans...

*Why do people say, “not to mention…” and then go ahead and mention it? Discuss amongst yourselves.
**Toot! Toot! What’s that? My own horn.
***That is what Baby B said in her head, while wearing beret.

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.