Mellow week

It's odd to really have nothing to report. The week went pretty smoothly with nothing too exciting to touch on. I spent Monday and Tuesday finishing up on some testing and psycho-educational reports and doing homework mostly. Wednesday I went over my research design with the supervisor and got some pointers, then we figured out cut points for the Tier 3 reading intervention that starts next week as well as our schedule for progress monitoring the kids. Thursday I progress monitored the Tier 2 kids at that site, interviewed a teacher, and progress monitored the Tier 2 kids at that site. Friday I went to a new-to-me school and helped benchmark some fourth graders on Reading Fluency. Then I went and took an anxiety provoking "pre-test" to become a Behavior Intervention Case Manager (BICM). I think I did ok on the  test, but you had to get a 90 or higher to get into the class, so hopefully I did it. I am supposed to find out next week. So I'll have to wait and see. That's about it. Guess having a mellow week now and then is probably a good thing!

A day of Chaotic Crisis Intervention

I got called in to assist at one of the middle schools today to deal with the sudden death of a teacher. We were told that today would be focused only on teachers and helping them with the grief and loss they were feeling. The news was not to be released to the students until Monday. The team was two school psychs, myself and the other intern, and three middle school counselors. The day didn't match up with any crisis intervention plans that I had read about. Instead it was kind of a chaotic mess. A teacher spilled the beans about the death to his students, so then they announced the death over the PA system so that everyone would be aware.  I guess this was the easiest way to get the info out to everyone at once, but it seemed like a weird way to do it to me.

The kids lunch period was so sad. So many sobbing children grouped up throughout the yard. I was told to go from room to room to room and no one seemed to have a real plan as to handle it. I did end up talking with a couple of children, but felt rather clueless about what to say. I've read a really good grief book, but it was focused on helping people who were close to you grieve. Since I didn't know these kids, I can't say that it was very helpful in this situation. It was difficult to say, "Hi, I'm Mrs. Z, tell me about all your feelings." Not really an appropriate time to sit down and shoot the breeze to establish a rapport of sorts, so instead I tried my best to give kids their options and thank friends for being together, helping and supporting eachother.

With all the chaos around me, my biggest worries were for the safety of the kids, they were all over the place, and were dealing with the news in totally different ways (as is typical for grief) my worry was that since  the kids were spread all over the place that someone may hurt themselves or someone else in grief and no one would know about it. Thankfully, my worries seemed unfounded and the day went by without any incidents (that I am aware of). Very sad though, it's hard to be surrounded by sobbing people - especially when you never even met the person they are hurting for.

The only thing I can say that I truly brought to the day, was a little bit of the Best Practices that I had read in Psychology Seminar (huh, guess I did learn something in this schooling!). In the pre-talking to people meeting, there was discussion of how much info to share (it is the belief of many that the deceased person committed suicide by OD'ing on prescription meds). I heard all the higher ups (superintendent folk) discussing this as if it was fact and indicating we were going to share this information with the staff today and the kids on Monday. So I spoke up, in my best I'm-just-an-intern-so-I've-got-a-question voice asked, "are we positive that he OD'd? Because I know we just want to share the facts, right?" and my simple question reminded the people around me that perhaps, it wasn't a good idea to spread the news that the guy had killed himself/OD'd before we actually knew it was a fact. So there was my contribution to the day. I was chicken to speak up in front of the other psychs and district big wigs, but I am really glad that I did.

Umm.. excuse me... but your perfectionism is showing.

Today I had to give the WISC4. I've done it before, actually done it 6 or 7 times, but it was over a year ago. So I walked in, trying to remember the nuances of the 10 core subtests to the best of my ability. Then I find out that I will be observed during it by my supervisor. So that didn't bring out a lot of warm fuzzy feelings for me. I consciously told myself to take a deep breath and begin to barrel through it. You should know, my supervisor is a stickler for standardized administration of tests, read everything you are supposed to read, exactly the way it is written. I am kinda terrible at that and because my last supervisor was a gist sorta guy (which is my personal preference as well), so I've gotten out of practice. So, I tried my best to stick to the administration manual's script, it was rather cumbersome and formal feeling, but I did a pretty good job. My supervisor, who has given this test a bazillion times attempted to speed up my snails pace and  kept jumping in to speed up the students responses to get to the next question. A couple of times on the verbal tests I was scribbling as fast as I could. I managed to keep up and didn't seem to make any real boo-boos and I was pretty happy with the overall process. After I was done, my supervisor told me I needed to "relax and have fun with it." LOL for sure. I guess my uptight-need-to-get-everything-perfect attitude was a little obvious. Well, sir, once I get it perfect I will relax a bit! :)

The importance of having keys

Yesterday I spent the morning testing the smallest 3rd grader ever. She was this amazingly tiny person, you know the terms "dainty" or "petite?" Take that and multiply it by 5 and you've got the size of this kid! Also - she had oddly hairy arms... well anyway I spent the morning working on her initial special ed. assessment (Survey Level CBM Oral Reading Fluency, PAT2, TOWRE, RAN, WJIII and a short interview). She was a tough nut to crack, really really shy, hard worker, but she wanted to take an hour answering everything. I hate feeling like I have to rush them though. So we made it through it all and she seemed to not suffer any serious psychological damage as the result of my rushing her answers on the WJII.
Then worked on running all the School Wide CBM data that was collected last week through SPSS. I got done early, and was pretty stuck as to what I should work on. I had already told my supervisor once that I didn't think I'd have enough to do, but he was certain that wouldn't be the case and had left me with my list (guess he doesn't know the awesome efficiency that is Mrs.Z). So I was done at 2:30... that seemed WAY to early to head home, so I checked my personal email and found that I had an email from my university finally providing me with my hours log (only about 5 weeks late!). So I spent the next hour and half attempting to get my form filled out for August and starting on September. I decided to take off at 4pm and walked out of the office to discover that the school had been closed up! Everything was locked! I have a key to my little office in the library, but no where else in the school. So I started to weigh my options: call my supervisor and ask him to drive over and unlock the gate for me (not really liking this option), some how climb the fence while caring 2 bags and 4 test kits (errr... umm... no?),  or find a comfy spot in the library and snuggle in for the night (if there was a bathroom in there I might have gone for this one).  THANKFULLY, I saw a teacher on her way out and was able to yell for her to wait. So today, I think I will politely ask for a gate key. I think it would be for the best.

My own personal, Davie Crocket...

Lately, I just fall in love with every kid I work with! I was asked to pull out a kid and do some survey level assessment using CBM Oral Reading Fluency probes to figure out if this third grader could read. He had just transferred into the district and the teacher was worried by what she was seeing in the classroom. So I pulled this adorable little boy into my room and we tried to read together. I learned, very quickly that this third grader couldn't read a lick, didn't even know letter sounds. Depressing huh? So he is on the list to get into the intervention program that is starting soon. Some of the kids I have asked to read for me who cannot read get a little defiant or seem indifferent to the activity. However, this lil guy gave it his best shot (which you've got to admire). In between reading passages he loved to tell me stories. He told me about his dad who could speak three languages and knew karate. He attempted to show me some of his own karate moves, showed me every scar on his body, and then he told me the best story ever. He went camping once, and a bear came into his camp. The bear knocked over what his mom was cooking and in the process his mom's arm was burned. So what did my cute little boy do in response? Well, he killed the bear of course! Will a rock no less. And then he used its fur to make something that sounded really cool in spanish which is apparently a blanket of some sort. That kid cracked me up. And thankfully, I can get him some help in his reading too, so it was a great day.

Double Supervisors, Double the Fun!

It's beginning  to become amusing. I have two supervisors, and they both have similar philosophizes about school psychology, but there the similarities stop. One supervisor has short-sweet to the point psych reports, the other lengthy and very descriptive. One supervisor has a simple and quick CBM administration procedure, you go in to the class room alone, you pull kids, you give them a 1 minute probe, you send them back and you pull the next. The other supervisor you have a written schedule of what class you are to be CBMing first, what team you are in for CBMs and you have a stack of protocols and give each student 3 CBMs and take the median number, you have to go off of your list of kids, in order because your class list has been split with another person on your team, which then requires you to yell out and interrupt the class so you can get your kids attention. One supervisor is all about pretty formatting, the other doesn't care. LOL. I guess I will be especially well rounded after this experience, that or bi-polar.

First full assessment completed!

Yesterday I started on the assessment of a cute little 4th grade boy who has very limited English acquisition (pretty much a CELDT level 1 across all sections!). He was referred for assessment at the end of the last school year because he failed to respond to the Tier III reading intervention he was in. The kiddo got 30 weeks of intervention (4x per week for 30 minutes) and he actually became a slower reader! Poor kid. So, he was chosen to be my first assessment. Lemme tell ya, it has been a pretty unnerving couple of days for me! Yesterday I complied all his data from last year's interventions, gave him a survey level reading fluency test and administered the PAT2. I didn't have any problems with that, but my supervisor kept quizzing me about different components of reading and my brain would NOT work. (to explain: this is not my typical, but my hubby's grandpa, whom I was very close to, just died suddenly and I can't take time off because of my contract has given me very few days to take off, so I am just gonna try my best to get through) So I just owned up and gave a IDK to his questioning and felt like a big dummy. He was nice about it, but I proceeded to beat myself up over it for the rest of the day and came home an incredibly grumpy girl.

Today I finished up his assessment/observation. Gave him 6 subtests of the Woodcock Johnson III - Achievement test which I have only given once before and that was over a year ago. So needless to say I screwed up. Totally missed that there is a basal on the math calculation subtest and I didn't notice that the kid spelled a word wrong on the spelling test because I was looking upside down so I didn't really get a basal on him either. :( THEN I messed up the TOWRE! When you only have 45 seconds for an assessment it is easy to get off track (especially when you are testing an ELL mumbler!) and I couldn't find my way back. But even in all that, my crazy nice supervisor some how made all of my mistakes go away. After that I did an time-on task observation of the kiddo in the classroom. That, thankfully, I didn't mess that up! I was able to then sit down and put the report together. My supervisor read over it at the end of the day and was surprised to see it finished. He gave me a "I'm very impressed with your work." and I felt like jumping up and down. Finally got something right! I really hope this gets easier!!