1/26/10
Today was my first day of my school psychology practicum at the International Preparatory School at Grover. After working out my schedule with Dr. Duffy, we came to the conclusion that I would spend Tuesdays with the school counselor, Mrs. Tanevski, and I would spend Thursdays with Dr. Duffy. Since today was Tuesday, Dr. Duffy took me to meet Mrs. Tanevski, or Sabrina as she asked me to call her.
When I first started my day with Sabrina, we talked about what I would like to get out of my practicum. I told her that I would like to see the differences between what a school counselor does and what a school psychologist does. I also thought that this was going to be a very beneficial experience to see what students are like in a city school since I am from a small rural school district. Unfortunately, this week is Regents week so there really will not be any interacting with students until they return to school next week.
Since there were no students, Sabrina showed me the paperwork aspect of her job. She showed me how she has to look at the students PSAT exams and file them and she is also the person in charge of getting parents involved in school activities so she showed me some of her ideas for that. I might be helping her come up with some ideas because it is hard for her to do that on top of all of her other work. We also made phone calls to some parents about students’ progress because next week is the start of the second semester. After this, we worked on the students’ schedules for next week and tried to make sure that the classes were evenly distributed without too many students being in a classroom at one time. We went and met with the Principal, Mr. Eberle, and discussed some problems that were arising with scheduling and discussed with him ways to change some schedules around. At the end of the day, I helped Sabrina make posters to put up around the school for upcoming scholarship opportunities for the students before they go to college. Some of the opportunities did not pertain to any of the students because the Preparatory School is such a new school and does not have a senior class yet. Overall, my first day was interesting to see what the school counselor has to do when they are not meeting with students. Next week will be totally different when the students come back.
1/28/10
Today was my day to spend with Dr. Duffy, the school psychologist. The weather was terrible this morning and some of the teachers were late to school. Since it is Regents week, the school was short for people to proctor the exams and therefore, Dr. Duffy and myself had to split up and go proctor a couple of exams until the teachers showed up to relieve us. After I got done proctoring, I went back to Dr. Duffy’s office and the other three students’ from Canisius were there for their practicum as well.
When I am with Dr. Duffy on Thursdays, I will be observing a student with another girl from Canisius, Danielle, and figuring out if the program that they implemented is working for the student. Since we could not go see the student today, we spent the day looking over his folder. The one teacher wrote that he is always leaving class, skipping class, talking during class, and yelling all the time. This was the first thing that Danielle and I looked at before we saw his folder about his past and his family life. Based on the teacher’s observations, we discussed plans that could be implemented to try to and help this student. We also looked over and read some books about how to implement plans based on the way the student acts. After we made our own plans, Dr. Duffy gave us the rest of the student’s folder and we looked over the plans that he had implemented for the student. We found out that the student has been diagnosed with ADHD and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Everything that Dr. Duffy had implemented were things that Danielle and I also came up with which made us feel that we were on the right track with identifying problem behaviors and ways to help them. At the end of the day, we met the student’s special education teacher and next week we will start observing the student in his classes.
2/2/10
Today, I was with Sabrina the school counselor. Our morning started out with a meeting with the principal, Mr. Eberle, about student and teacher schedules for the second semester. We had to discuss with him how many students were in each class to make sure the numbers were alright and if they were too high or too low, we had to figure out where we were going to pull students from to add to the class. During this time in the principal’s office, there were also a couple of meetings that Mr. Eberle had with a couple of students and their parents. We sat in on those meetings and I observed how he handled the disciplinary actions that he had to implement based on what each student had done.
After we left his office, we went back to Sabrina’s office and worked on scheduling more since everything needed to be done because the new semester had already begun. While we were doing this, students were stopping by throughout the day to get copies of their schedules or to talk to Sabrina about a problem that they were having with another student. In the afternoon, we met with a couple of teacher’s that had too many students in their class to talk about their schedules and see what student’s would be best to switch to another class. Sabrina also teaches a SAT prep class to a few students at the end of the day and so we worked with them on papers that they had to write about their future professional goals and what college’s had programs to help them reach their goals.
2/4/10
Today, I was with Dr. Duffy and I was supposed to shadow a student around and observe his behavior to see how he was doing in his classes. However, after I got to his first class he was brought down to the assistant principal’s office because he had been suspended and was not supposed to be back in school without a parent bringing him in and having a meeting. After spending some time in the office, the student was sent home and I went back to Dr. Duffy’s office.
Dr. Duffy was supposed to be testing some students but some of them were not in school so that did not happen. Therefore, he spent his time going through a whole IQ test with the practicum students and talking about what tests he administers. We would each try a question and then he would ask us what each test would represent and why would he use this test. We then talked about what certain scores could mean and how to come up with a plan to implement for a student that is showing difficulties in some areas. After we got done with this, Danielle and I worked on a preschooler’s folder that Dr. Duffy is going to have to test before he enters kindergarten. We had to write down their previous scores on certain tests that they had taken when they were 2 years old so that they could compare those to the new scores. We also had to look at what kind of learning environment he was in and what the student to teacher ratio was. For this student, it was 8:1+1. We also looked at the family history and wrote down the child’s background information. This brought us to the end of the day.
2/9/10
Today I went to a different school for my practicum. I went to the Math Science Technology Preparatory School at Seneca and the school psychologist is Mark Mecca. He had contacted Dr. Duffy and said that he would like to have a couple of interns. Since there were four of us with Dr. Duffy, two of us are probably going to be switching schools. My day went really well.
I started my day by going to observe a student who was just recently tested. I recorded her being on task in 10 second intervals for 20 intervals and then got a percentage. I also wrote down things that she did during her class like asking questions and starting her homework. When I got back to Mark’s room, I had to write up an observational report that he could put into the student’s folder. It was nice to be able to really do something by myself. After I finished with that, I scored a parent’s assessment of their child. I had to record it into a computer program and then I had to print it off and read it over. While reading, I had to look for possible disorders that the student might have based on the mother’s assessment. We still have to receive the student and teacher assessments and then we will compare all of them.
After we got done with all of that, we had a few meetings to go to. The first one was with the Assistant Principal and the 8th grade homeroom teachers. The 8th grade is having a bullying issue so we all got together to figure out which students are doing the instigating. We then came up with a plan to monitor those students based on them being on-task, on-time, and good behavior. The teachers are going to report how the students behave every day. Our next meeting was with 10 students selected from the 9th and 10th grades (5 from each grade) to ask them if they would like to be student ambassadors. They will meet with some of the faculty so that the school can get student’s input on ways to improve certain aspects of the school. I think it is a great idea and all of the students seemed excited about doing it. It is a great opportunity for them to be leaders in their school. I finished my day by doing some research on the new Woodcock-Johnson achievement test.
2/18/10
Today my day started by going and observing a student that Mark is doing an evaluation on right now. After I observed him in his science class, I began scoring some of this student’s BASC-2 questionnaire’s that were given to three of his current teachers. It was interesting to see how different some of the teachers rated him on the scale. I feel that this shows that he must act differently in his classes depending on who the teacher is. I also read through the report from each teacher’s scale and highlighted and wrote down any information that considered the student to be Clinically Significant from other students in certain areas or At Risk in others. I also had to find some of the Critical Items that the teachers responded to that Mark has to pay attention to because it could be of harm to the student or others.
After working on this, I met with a student who was having some problems at home. I sat down with her for about an hour and got to know her a little bit. We then talked about what was going on at home and what she felt was causing some problems in her life. Some of it related to school issues but most of it was things that were only happening at home. I felt like she really just wanted/needed someone to talk to because she didn’t feel like she really had anybody at home that she could do that with. While talking to her, I tried to get her to come up with some things that she could possibly work on at home with her guardian but it was very difficult. She didn’t really know of any ways but she was going to try to talk to her guardian about one thing that was bothering her. For today, that was all that was accomplished but at least something was done. I am probably going to be following up with this girl in the upcoming weeks to see how things are going and if there is anything else that she wants to work on.
My day ended with helping Mark proofread a report that was written up for a student who was having their meeting tomorrow morning. I tried to help as much as possible but it was really my first time reading a whole report so I wasn’t exactly sure what to look for. Seeing what Mark picked out that should be changed was helpful though. Practicing this more and more is going to get me better in the end.
2/25/10
I started my day by beginning to look over a student that was just given to Mark for special education services. I had to look through this student’s folder and find information about his past that would relate to him possibly needing special education services. I did not get very far through the folder when I was able to sit in on two CSE meetings.
The first CSE meeting was about a student whose mother asked for testing and other things to be done to see if her son was in need of special education services. The son did not attend the meeting but there was a parent representative there who was a woman who had a child in special education at MST and was there to answer any questions that the other mother may have. At the end of the meeting, the team came to the conclusion of the student having an emotional disability and that is what they needed to focus on to get his grades and behavior better.
The second CSE meeting was with a girl who actually said that she wanted to see if she could get some sort of special education services to help her in school. Both of her parents agreed with her and attended the meeting and the girl was there as well. She was very enthusiastic during the meeting and was excited to be able to get help because she really needed it. The team came to the conclusion of her having a learning disability and they were going to provide special services to her so that she could try to get her grades up.
After the meetings, I spent the rest of the day going through the one folder. I had to write down any previous test scores and I also looked at any previous IEP’s (Individualized Education Plan) that the student had in the folder. The student is currently in 6th grade and has had an IEP since 1st grade which shows that he has had some kind of learning problem for a long time. This student is going to have to be tested again for another IQ score to determine what kind of services should still be provided to him and if there are any new services that should be implemented.
3/2/2010
Today, I started by meeting with a girl who had requested to talk with someone about setting up an academic and behavior plan for herself. She had heard somebody else talk about how they made one and they thought that it would be a good idea for them as well. The girl was mostly having trouble with algebra (along with a lot of other students at the school) but was not doing as well in her other classes as she would have liked. Come to find out, she was not utilizing her IEP that was written up for her to have special testing accommodations. She was not taking her tests with the resource teacher and she also was not getting extra time to take her tests; both of which are in her IEP. The girl and I came up with a plan that she would talk to her teachers and remind them of her IEP and behaviorally, she was not going to talk back to her teachers anymore. She said she said that if someone makes her upset/mad in the lunch room, she was going to get up and move away to avoid any type of argument (this was due to a previous incident that occurred).
After this, I spent some time writing memo’s to some of the faculty about paperwork that they had to fill out on specific students and one that was to the whole 6th, 7th, and 8th grade faculty. The one to the entire faculty talked about a potential student bullying group to help prevent bullying in the middle school. The faculty is supposed to write down the students that they feel are bullies and those who are being bullied. From this, the Assistant Principal and Mr. Mecca are going to come up with students that they feel would be good candidates/advocates for the group. I think this is a great idea if it will actually reduce some of the bullying at the school.
The last two periods of the day, I spent helping two students with algebra. They both are not doing well in algebra and had requested to receive extra help. Since I am good in math, I volunteered to help them. Today went really well and the two girls seemed to understand things a lot more than when they got there. The one girl even finished her homework assignment for the night and after doing a couple of problems together, she finished the worksheet on her own and I just checked it over. I am going to try to help out a couple of students every Tuesday and Thursday at the end of the school day. I think it will really be a benefit to some of the students.
3/4/2010
My day started by meeting a girl that I had met with before and came up with a success plan with the help of Mr. Mecca. I wanted to follow up with her to see how things were going and if she accomplished anything at school and home that we had come up with before. I met with her briefly but she seemed a lot happier than the last time I had seen her. She had been doing everything that was on her list and just wanted to work more on getting her homework done on time. Otherwise, things were going well. I then met with her younger sister for the first time to see how things were going with her because their parents wanted us to check in on them every once in a while. While I was with the second girl, we came up with a success plan for her. She wanted to work on not talking back to her teachers and keep building a better relationship with her mom. She seemed like she was very motivated in her schoolwork. She was having a hard time in math but was getting extra help for that and it seemed to be working.
After I met with both girls, I worked on sorting through some student’s folders and filing them away. I also had to look over some surveys that the faculty had done. I tallied up some of the questions which finished my morning.
In the afternoon, I met with a girl that needs help with math. She had a lot of different homework assignments that she was behind on but we worked on just trying to get one finished. She really wanted the help and was very polite the whole time we were working together. We were working on finding the slope of a line. She seemed to understand what the slope was after we got the line in the correct formula but she had a hard time getting it into that formula. By the end of the day though, she was really starting to understand it and I feel that she could have completed the last couple of questions that we did not get to by herself.
3/9/2010
My morning consisted of paperwork on a student that is going to be getting an IQ test and also an achievement test. This student was referred by a teacher but the parents and child consented to have the tests performed on the student. I had to look to see if the student has had any problems in the past with schoolwork or with behavior just to get some background information. It was a pretty slow morning.
In the afternoon, I met with a student to discuss their success plan that was implemented before I started to see how things were going. The student seemed to be making progress but was still not where they wanted to be with their grades. Therefore, they were going to keep getting additional help afterschool and was going to continue asking questions during class. After this, I met with a couple of girls to work on their math homework. They both were trying really hard to understand the material. They understood how to start the problems but did not know how to finish them. We only got through a few problems but I feel that they will be able to do more at home if they use the problems that we worked on as a reference. That brought me to the end of the day.
3/16/10
Today I worked on tallying up a survey that was given to the staff about safety, bullying, and other questions regarding student, parent, and teacher behavior. 58 staff members participated in the survey. I had to divide all of the questions up into agree, disagree, and no response. Then after I was all done with the 73 questions on the survey, I had to (with Lyndsey’s help) type it up in some sort of format that the SST could look at for their meeting in the afternoon. We had to find the percent agreement and disagreement without the no responses and put them in the write up as well. We decided to highlight the high percentage agreements so that it would be easier for the SST to see the areas that the entire faculty agreed on because those could be the biggest problem behaviors. One member of the SST that we were with today liked our idea and thought that the rest of the team would like it as well.
I did not attend the meeting because I was tutoring two girls during the last two periods of the day in math. It’s nice that the girls actually want help as opposed to other students that I have seen in the school who could care less about understanding homework assignments. These girls are doing poorly in the class and actually want to do better and I feel that they are making the right choice to get help. My day was very uneventful because the survey took up a lot of time even though one would think that it wouldn’t.
3/18/2010
Today started off with a CSE meeting about a student getting evaluated for special education services. He has been receiving services so this was more of a re-evaluation but the team was looking to possibly change some things. First, the student had seizures in the past so he was classified as having that type of disability which was thought to have possibly contributed to his learning and behavior but he has not had a seizure in over two years so that classification does not seem to be the full reason. Therefore, the team came up also saying he had LD, learning disability, because he is having trouble in a lot of his classes and he also speaks a lot of baby talk. A lot of his skills are at only around a 4th grade level and he is in 8th grade. Therefore, he is very behind in many of his classes compared to his peers. The team wanted to keep the special education services as long as keep him working with a speech/language pathologist. Hopefully he will improve his skills.
After the meeting was over, we had a birthday party during lunch for one of the colleagues in the department. Her husband, daughter, and 3 grand-daughters came in and we all had pizza and cake to celebrate.
In the afternoon, Lyndsey and I worked on putting the second half of the student surveys together to give to all of the teachers so that they could distribute them to their students in class. This took a while because there were almost 600 copies that we had to make for about 45 teachers. Then we went and put them in the corresponding teachers mailbox with a memo attached on what to do and when they needed to return it by. That brought us to the end of our day.
3/23/2010
Today started off kind of slow. Lyndsey and I worked on evaluating a student that was tested to see if she was gifted and worked on a summary report of her achievement and IQ tests. I had to write this summary so that the student would have a copy, their mother could have a copy, and the teacher that referred the student could have a copy. Overall, this student did very well on the achievement test in the mathematics category with their score being above average. The other scores were mostly solid average. On the IQ test, the student had above average verbal skills but only average nonverbal skills. In the write-up, I listed the student’s scores in a table and for the achievement portion, I also put the grade equivalencies which were all well above her current grade level. In the afternoon, the student stopped by to go over the results so that they made sure they understood them correctly.
Also in the afternoon, there was a SST meeting where the staff survey that Lyndsey and I put together was discussed. They do not know how they are going to score the student surveys because there were only 58 staff surveys and there are close to 600 student surveys and there is not enough time for anybody to score any of them up and then write up a report. Therefore, they asked BOCES what they should do because their student ambassadors cannot do it since they have a presentation to work on for the Superintendent. That brought the day to an end.
3/25/2010
Today I started off by showing Mark Mecca the PowerPoint presentation that I have put together so far for the presentation that I will be doing with him on April 20th on the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. We discussed what I had done up so far and what he would be discussing along with what I had done as well. We then talked about how we would ask the student’s questions about what they ended up getting as a result and if any of them would like to share it with everyone else. We also think that we might ask them what they think they are going to be before they take the test to see how accurate their predictions are. We figured with everything we have so far that we have about a 2 and a half hour presentation.
After that, I met with a student that a teacher had some concerns with. The student had written something in their journal about how they used to scratch themselves until they bled. I read the journal that the student wrote and then went and got the student out of class to talk with them. The student said that they only do it when they are angry after someone picks on them or their family. They said that they could try writing in a journal instead of scratching when they get upset. At this point, they did not want to talk to their parents about what was happening. I then took the student back to class and talked with Mark about it. We then talked to the nurse and the Principal and decided on calling the parents to inform them of what was going on. We wanted to talk to the student again first though to see if they wanted to call their parents themselves or if they wanted us to do it. The student decided on having us call the mom and the mom seemed really caring about everything and is trying to get her child to talk to someone about everything. The mother said that she really wants the child to talk to them about it and after hanging up the phone and talking to the student; they said that they are going to talk to their parent about what is happening and they seemed happy about it. Almost like they were glad to know that they can talk to their mom about it.
We also had a meeting with a parent of an eighth grade student who would like to hold her son back a grade because he is having such trouble in school because he cannot read. We recently had a meeting regarding this student and special education services but the mother could not make the meeting at the time. She was upset that the student had never failed a grade but could not read and now it is just going to be harder to teach him how which is all understandable. She then met with the Principal to discuss what can be done and that brought me to the end of my day.
3/30/2010
My day today was going to start off by observing a student who is going to be retested for special education soon. However, the student was not there today so that was out of the picture. After that, I made a couple of phone calls for Mark. He has been assigned to test preschoolers and from the list that he had, he did not know which site each student was at because the school district had three sites for it. I called one of the sites and the lady that answered was able to tell me where all of the preschoolers were so I did not have to worry about calling each site which helped with the time. I then had to write on each preschooler’s folder where they were located and the phone number of the site. I then called another site to see if Mark could test a student in April so that they would know ahead of time that he would be coming. After that, I worked on some paperwork for the teachers for each preschooler and getting the packets together that they would have to fill out for each student.
In the afternoon, Lyndsey and I met with a student who a teacher had said was sleeping in class sometimes. We checked the student’s grades and they are failing everything so we decided to come up with a success plan for the student to try to bring his grades up somehow. The student said they would try to stay after school for help. They were also going to try to ask for help during class time because they usually do not like asking for help. When he cannot do something, he gets frustrated and then he puts his head down on his desk and that is when he falls asleep usually. He was also going to try to do more homework because he barely does any and he was also willing to try to go to bed an hour earlier so he can get more sleep to see if that helps.
After that, there was a safe in civil schools meeting and they discussed a survey that all of the students in the school are required to take for the group’s presentation in April. They decided that they were going to use survey monkey online and make it easier to tally up all of the answers because there are about 500 students who have to take the survey which has about 50 questions. It would take way too much time that nobody has to try and tally up everything. That brought me to the end of my day.
4/13/10
Today was a really slow day since we just got back from spring break. I started off by doing some paperwork for an initial evaluation on a student that was just tested. I had to write a memo and put together the BASC paperwork for the teachers to fill out on the student. I then called the student’s father to see if he wanted the parent evaluation sent home or if he wanted to answer the questions over the phone. He was actually coming to the school to pick his child up so it worked out good because I was able to give him the parent evaluation then. I also talked to him briefly about how his child did on the IQ test and achievement test so that he had an idea before the meeting in May. After that, Mark and I had to take a folder over to another school’s SST team.
After we got back, there was a Safe in Civil Schools meeting that lasted longer than usual because of an upcoming meeting with the board on surveys that the students have to take and surveys that the faculty have already taken. Only a couple of the members will be able to go to the meeting because there is ELA testing during the time of the meeting which means less people being able to present the material. That brought us to the end of the day so it was a pretty slow day.
4/15/2010
Today I worked on writing up a report on a student who is going to be having a meeting soon. I haven’t written an entire report by myself yet so it took me all day to work on it. It was a re-evaluation and the longest section was looking at the student’s educational background because they are currently in 11th grade. The student has had special education services since kindergarten but was taken out for a few years in third grade because the initial disability classification was speech impairment and that was no longer a classification when the student entered third grade. Then in sixth grade the student was classified as hearing impaired because they are deaf in their right ear. The student has never failed a grade but also has not had the best grades throughout her school career. She is currently still classified as hearing impaired but some feel that she should be de-classified because her hearing impairment is believed not to interfere with her learning any longer. The student has preferential seating to sit on the right side of the classroom because of her deafness and also she has said that she can read lips which helps when she is on the wrong side of the room. She does not have any disciplinary problems but does have a problem getting to school on time. She has been tardy 49% of the time this school year and could be due to her having math first period since that is her worst subject. Therefore, a Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) is going to be put in place to try to get her up on time so she can get to school on time. She also doesn’t do her homework most of the time so a BIP was also going to be put in place to try to improve that as well. When the student was interviewed, she expressed that someday she would like to be either a civil rights attorney or a professional basketball player. She is currently playing basketball for the school team and is trying to get into a summer league. She did say that she doesn’t like school. The two teacher’s that were interviewed both said that she is a likeable girl who gets along well with peers and adults but that she doesn’t ask for help or complete out of class assignments on a regular basis. When given an IQ test, she received a full scale below average IQ which seems to go along well with other IQ scores that she has received in the past. She had not yet taken the achievement test so that part could not be written up yet. The overall evaluation seems that the student should keep receiving special education services because she is still having some difficulties in school and these services could help her.
4/20/2010
Today I made a presentation with Mark to thirteen area high school students on the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. I have spent many hours over the last few weeks preparing for this presentation since it had to be about 3 hours long. I made a powerpoint presentation and Mark would add in some information as needed as we went along. I introduced each dichotomy and after I presented each one, we had the students play a game either with a partner or in a group to help them better understand what the dichotomies were. We then had them pair up with somebody that they knew and they had to take a guess at what category they thought they went under and which one their partner fit with as well. Before we talked about the reliability and validity of the test, we had each student take it themselves and we showed them how to score it up afterwards. We then wanted to see how many of them guessed correctly what they would be and some of them had close guesses. Many of them thought that what their personality came out to be truly fit how they really are but they liked knowing more about what it all meant. We also talked about what kind of things someone would have to overcome if they were working with somebody who had a different personality then them. We also talked about how their personality fit along with the careers that they want to go to college for. We ended with a question and answer session but overall the presentation went really well and the students had some very positive feedback for us. I thought that this was a good experience because I have never had to stand in front of a group of people that long before and explain something but it was definitely beneficial for me.
4/22/2010
Today was my last day of my practicum. It was a slower day because Mark had to move a lot of his things out of his office because he is going to be out of the building four days a week now to test preschoolers so there was not much since of him keeping too many things at the school anymore. In between helping him pack some things up and load them into his car, I worked on finishing up the report that I was working on last week. I had the achievement test results so I could work on that section of the report and then I worked on the summary and evaluation section. Evaluating and making recommendations was the hardest part because the student seemed like they could fit under a couple of different classifications. The social worker stopped by the school in the afternoon and we talked to him about the student a little bit and it helped with the recommendation section knowing what he had found out about the student and what the mother wanted. Mark then proofread the report and we made some minor changes to it and then it was finished which brought us to the end of the day.
I thought this practicum was a great experience. It really taught me what a school psychologist does and how much work one has to do at any given point in time. Even though I am going to graduate school for school counseling, I am going to be working with a school psychologist at some point and this helped teach me about what they do so I will have a better understanding and know that they might not have time to do certain things that people ask of them because they have so much of their own work to do. I learned a lot from this experience that I will definitely use in the future.
