WISCing away!

I finished giving the WISC today to a little kidlet in the 2nd grade. I didn't actually need to do a cognitive assessment for her since she is already going to qualify for SLD using the RTI model, but I decided I wanted a good look at her ability. She is a really sloppy kid. Has a hard time keeping her thoughts and herself together. She seems to always be running like a maniac to something. I have a pretty good rapport with this little one since I have been working with her on her classroom behavior for the entire school year. She was pretty stoked to come in and test with me and I could tell she really gave it her best shot. I honestly didn't know what to expect for her IQ because she is amazingly low in academics. As a second grader she is only reading about 15 words in a minute, so she is very far below her peers. Even after 15 weeks of reading intervention, her rate of improvement in reading fluency is about .3 :( But, low in behold she is a completely average kid per her IQ of 97. She had really good perceptual reasoning skills, but her memory was her weakest link. It was below average, but not by a ton. So she is definitely a learning disabled kid, but it seems like there is something else amiss with her. Not sure what it is. She is so socially behind her peers, and even her motor abilities seem not quite right. I may have to try something else... maybe a rating scale? I guess though it really wont matter. She will qualify with what I have already done with her, but I am just so curious!

800 hours down

400 to go! Not that I will leave my internship at the end of them, I'm there until June. It will just be nice to have one more requirement done for this program.

Classes for the final semester have started and I am quickly finding out that this semester I won't be going to class very often. Most of the classes meet at most once a month! I've returned to my previous thesis plan, with some tweaks. I am going to present my intervention kids data at my Thursday/Friday sights instead of my other school. So that will mean I need to adjust my previously written lit review a smidgeon as the intervention curriculum is different. No biggie.

My internship class is meeting pretty infrequently too, which I love. When I was doing practicum we had to meet weekly - dumb because most of us were only doing 1 to 2 days of practicum a week and so we really didn't have much to say. When we started internship we were still meeting at least every other week. The Prof would stare at us and expect us to come in with stories or problems that needed to be dealt with. Problem was there really wasn't much to say! We'd end up sitting and staring at each other for the couple hours we had to warm the classroom seats!

I oddly enough don't have much to write about this week. Having Monday off kinda threw off my entire schedule, so I've been just trying to get some things caught up this week rather than starting on anything new as I knew I wouldn't be able to get too far.

My Two Worlds Collided!

I think I have mentioned before, that prior to this internship I worked for six years for the county run human services department as a social worker. As part of this job, I occasionally had to complete child abuse investigations. This week one of my counseling kiddos asked her teacher to find me because she felt "sad." I got an email from the teacher, asking if it was possible for me  to come by. I got the email at around 12:30 and school ended in an hour and a half. It was surprising to get this request because this student is extremely shy and I typically feel like she doesn't want to go with me because she is so timid. BUT early on in our sessions I had told her that if she needed me she should tell her teacher and I would try my bestest to get there. So, although I was at another school site I managed to find a half hour to run to the kiddo's school and pull her with 10 minutes remaining in the school day.

I went to her classroom, still holding my purse since I didn't have time to set it down in the office and pulled her into a private room. When I initially asked her what was up, she started to play shy with me again. Although not my typical style, I was pretty blunt with her and said something along the lines of, "ok girlie, I know something is up or you wouldn't have asked for me. So spill it." She looked at the ground for a couple of moments and then began to share with me that the night prior her mom had "hit" her on her back. My brain seemed to automatically switch back to my old days as an investigator. I started out by asking what had happened before  that and she said that mom was mad at her for not following directions so she hit her on the back. Kiddo said it didn't hurt anymore and gave me permission to check out her back (there were no marks/bruising) she said that mom doesn't typically hit her, but it does happen every once in a while. At this point in time I am kinda uncertain as to what to do. I ask her how she feels about going home that day and she states that she is a little scared. I ended up marching her over to my supervisor who then directed us to the principal. We shared the story with him and he thinks it over and decides to send her home.

Following this I had to run back to my site of the day and get my wits about me to run an IEP. The IEP went fine, but was amazingly chaotic because mom brought three kids under the age of 5 to the meeting. Talk about noisy!

After the meeting as I was desperately attempting to make sense of the mess on my desk following another day of running from place to place my supervisor, Mr. H., calls. Mr. H was checking on me and wanted to hear how everything had worked out with my counseling kid. So I give him the play by play. He advising me against playing investigator in the future (too true - gotta get rid of that programming in my head!) but tells me to follow up with the kidlet the next day. So I did. She was fine. Nothing new happened, but I think I will keep tabs on this topic over the next couple of weeks. I didn't do a child abuse report because I do not feel she is being abused, but should she tell me a similar incident in the future, I may have to change my opinion. Hopefully that isn't the case though!

Cliffs of Insanity!

Ok so maybe my title is a bit overly dramatic, but man oh man have I been running this week! Yesterday I think could have been put down in my personal record book! I did 2 observations, 2 counseling sessions, assessed a kid, progress monitored, met with my behavior mod kids and met with a parent and a teacher. YIKES! I ended up having to run home, grab a sandwich and run to class. Today appears to be close to yesterdays busyness. It's just noon and I have already done a classroom observation, cognitive assessment,  read with a kid and plugged them into a reading intervention group, and done RTI program evaluation on 3 kids in the Tier 3 program. Plus I got stuff ready for this afternoon's IEP. You know what is cool though? Even though I am so busy, I am thoroughly enjoying myself.

The kid I did the cognitive assessment on this morning is my first MR eval. He kept me on my toes as he required CONSTANT redirection and praise. I gave him the Weschler Nonverbal Inventory, and as we went through the Matrix subtest after every answer he gave he had to drum on the table with his hands and then give me a high five. He did stay pretty well engaged during the object assembly. He loved those puzzles, but I could hardly get anything out of him during the coding exercise. His fine motor skills were really poor and writing did not seem to go well.  He would glance up at the key at the top of the page and then completely loose his place on the paper. Poor little dude. He was a drooler too. But, all in all for my first MR cognitive test, I think it went well. Although I at times had to break standardization with the kiddo, I think my results are valid. Overall, his FS was 70, so he is just barely on the line. I saw his adaptive scores were really low too.

IEP's, New Schools, and Trainings - Oh My!

I ended up sitting in the hot seat yesterday for my IEP and facilitated the whole shabang! Other than the fact that I forgot to go over the parent rights (she did get a copy though) I felt it went really well. I wasn't expecting to play facilitator, but I winged it and everyone seemed pleased. The RSP teacher was extremely complementary which made me feel awesome. Mr. H only had one suggestion for me to work on which was that I need to let the other parties say their parts. This is contrary to my inital training in which the psych presented the cognitive/processing/behavioral stuff that they had done AS WELL AS the academic stuff that the Special Ed teacher had done in order to go over the discrepancy. But he shared with me some of the problems that can arise from doing it the way and so I totally see his point. I will now just have to come up with a new game plan for how to best present my information.

Today I start at the Middle School with my new Tuesday Supervisor, Mrs. B. She already has an intern but is being amazingly nice and letting me work with her one day a week so I can get some Middle School hours under my belt. I am beginning to feel much more solid on my roles at my elementary sites (finally!) so I am really looking forward to this new start. I need to get practice with developing behavior support plans and doing manifest determinations and I will have a greater opportunity to do those things at the Middle School setting. So, wish me luck!

Training this morning on Legally Defensible IEPs... Hope it's good. I believe Mr. P and Mr. J (last years practicum supervisor) will be there so at least I should have someone to sit by! Hope it's good.

Busy Busy Busy Week!

The week ahead of me seems to crowded with stuff that it deserved to be labeled Busy X3 as anything less would be in accurate. So here is the run down:
Monday: Start a new assessment/Finish a report/Meet with Behavior Kids/Present at an IEP
Tuesday: Legal Topics Training at County Office/Meet with new supervisor for Lunch/Go with new Supervisor to my new Middle School and get the low-down
Wednesday: Finish Assessments/Reports/ Meet with Counseling Kids/ Chat with VP about Social Skills Group/Read Social Skills Curriculum/ CLASS in the evening
Thursday: On my own at my site/Figure out what's going on with the IEP that's scheduled/Assess a kid/Progress Monitor like 8 Kids/Finish report for that IEP/Facilitate IEP
Friday: Progress Monitor more kids/ Finish assessment if needed/BICM test.

Well... At least I won't be board... right?

Tired Feet

Why did I wear heels today? That was a silly thing to do. Man it was a tough day back, a good day, but a little hard to get back into the routine. I started the day off trying to remember what I had completed assessment wise and what was still needing to be done. Note to self: Next year, write this stuff down so when you get back it is all outlined. I finished up a psych report and emailed it out to all necessary parties, then did a record review for a three year SLD review. I ended up getting that done faster than I thought and was able to pull the little dude in for a bit of testing. He's a 1st grader, been in a specialized academic placement since preschool, previously found eligible for Sp Ed services due to SLD and SLI. I started him out on the WISCIV as he is (per the records) and English Only kiddo, but then as we were doing the WISC I realized what a stupid choice that was because the kids speech is so bad. Oh well, it's not a terrible flop, I will most likely not get a valid Full Scale due to the huge discrepancy between verbal and perceputal reasoning, but we will have to wait and see since I only got through 7 of the 10 subtests with him. I also did some survey level assessment, but there wasn't much of a survey to do because he is very behind in reading (only read 4 correct words per minute on a primer passage). So I will need to finish up with him on Wednesday when I am back at the site and then start filling in the remaining blanks in my psych report.

I also inputted a bunch of stuff into our local SELPA data base, met with a behavior kid, and consulted with the SDC teacher. All in all a very productive day if I do say so myself.

Christmas Break

This is just another reason to add onto my list of loves of the world of School Psychology: Christmas Break! It has been a fabulous, rejuvenating, and relaxing two weeks. Got to go out of town for five days with Mr. Z and my fam to play in the snow, then I still had so much time when I got back. I have watched at least 15 movies, read 4 novels, and taken a bunch of naps! Awesomeness. Mr. Z tells me that Christmas break for him is the half-way point. It's like a reward to making it through the first half of the year. Whatever it is, I like it!

Tomorrow I head back to internship. I don't know if I can say I have reached the level of competency that I had hoped to be at this point of my internship. I think I am close though. I had hoped to be a higher level of independence, but perhaps I had too high of expectations for myself (it wouldn't be the first time.) I am lucky to have the supervisors that I have, and I am getting another one this month as my horizons spread to include junior high as well as elementary. I am looking forward to it, and not trying to overwhelm myself with all the things I have coming up. But as in 17 weeks I will be graduating, there is quite a bit of stuff to do. I need to figure out what exactly I am doing for my research project: I have 3 ideas, but I wont pick one until I get the syllabus for my class that starts next week. I want to know what the specifics are for the project before I start any work on it. But I have in my mind 3 easy research projects, 2 of which I was going to be doing anyway (case study on my BICM kid, and a social skills group) so that would just mean I would need to collect data and figure out a pre and post test/measurement for my social skills kids, which is totally doable. My problem is that I need to know if I will have to do the whole IRB thing, which, if so will mess up my 17 week time table to complete the task. If that is the case I think I will just come up with a survey of some sort... but maybe I have to do a IRB with that too?? I am uncertain. But I am trying not to freak out about it all just yet.

So I've got school to finish: which includes 2 classes, a research project, and completing my 1200 hours. I've got an idea of what to do for my research project, so that is a good start. My hours are solid at the moment, I am over 100 hours ahead of schedule so I should have no problem getting the 1200 finished before May. So at least on the school front I am ok.

The internship should start heating up in the months to come as there are a whole bunch of three year reviews coming up at both of my sites - and as I mentioned - I will be starting at a new site this month with a new supervisor, Mrs. B. I am also going to be starting a social skills group at one of my elementary schools, and I've still got a handful of individual counseling kids that I need to see.

Then there is the whole BICM thing. I am beginning to think it might have been a mistake to jump into this at this time in my school life. BUT I will try my best to get it done. I have decide that this certification falls at the bottom of my list of things to get done. If I can complete it, that'd be awesome. But if not, I am not going to get upset about it. There is always next year when I wont have as many things going on.