10 February 2010

Doubt


I’ve had this nagging feeling again.  Most educators get it every so often; at least, I imagine, the good ones do:

Am I making a difference?  Is there anything more I can be doing?

When I left teaching to go into school psychology I (perhaps naively) thought that it would put me in a position to do a greater amount of good for a greater number of students than working as a teacher.  Now, almost two years later, it seems to me that my scope of influence has actually diminished from my classroom days.

So what’s a natural-born do-gooder to do?  I try to compensate in a few ways.  I co-advise my high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, not only because I think it’s a righteous cause, but also to increase the face-to-face time I spend with young folks.  I also volunteer to conduct professional development sessions at work and help teachers get comfortable using tools like wikis and podcasts to develop more student-centered, authentic projects.  Of course, there’s also the consultative role I play as part of my job, which I guess (I hope) is beneficial, too.

Reading up on education reform and going to conferences like EduCon and Constructing Modern Knowledge (if I can get away for three days!), although not directly related to my responsibilities as a school psychologist, are important to me because they prevent me from becoming too isolated in my practice and, more importantly, keep me engaged as a visible stakeholder and participant in the discussions I think we need to be having about education right now (many of which, I’m finding out through my reading, have been going on for decades, to little avail).

At EduCon two weeks ago, as much as I enjoyed it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was the only one (psychologist) in the room at any given time.  As many of the conversations at EduCon focused around what teachers can do differently and how teachers can improve their practice, I continually wondered, “What can I do differently?  How can I contribute to some of these changes given the limited interactions I have with students?”  The teachers and administrators and techie folks all had at least a few kindred professional spirits to bounce ideas off of; I was not so lucky (this is probably fodder for another post).

I asked in a blog post almost two years ago what, if any, place psychologists have in the School 2.0/Unschool framework.  Let me expand that somewhat narrow question to YOUR vision of what school could/should be, free of movements or labels.

Maybe a better question for you progressive educators out there is this: what could I, given my skill set, do to support your efforts if I worked in your building?  Sky’s the limit; just put it out there.

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9 January 2010

Why I Failed


Just after Thanksgiving, I announced my intentions to start the P90X workout program.  From a behavior management/support standpoint, this was probably a good idea.  So was starting my own microblog dedicated to tracking my feelings & progress on the program (see some of the links in that blog post for the reasons why).

So why have I stopped the program just over a third of the way through?

It’s not that journaling was ineffective; in fact, I don’t know if I would have lasted as long were it not for the added guilt incentive my blog gave me to keep going – after all, I couldn’t punk out after having stated my intentions so boldly, could I?  I think I put my finger on the issue in my 27 December post:

Update: I took my “recovery week” as a real rest week – took about 4-6 days off completely. I did more days than I’ve blogged about here, but I’m finding I’m burning out – I’m a fit guy, and have run and lifted for years, but I’m having a real hard time finding 60-90 minutes a day where I can follow the program without other stuff interfering. I’m going to pick it up again today in Week 5 of the program and see where it takes me.

The problem was not with the supports; it was with the ultimate goal.  In the back of my mind, I knew that this was going to be time-consuming, but it wasn’t until I got into it that I realized I was effectively having to choose between exercise and my family (long story, not interesting, just trust me).  I have since switched to a different workout routine that is still challenging, but more compatible with my schedule.

So why whine about my workout on an education blog?  Simple: it was a stark reminder to me to keep goals attainable, behavioral, academic, or otherwise.  In hindsight, even though I was able to keep up physically with the workouts, the specifics of my work and family’s schedules made this an unrealistic undertaking for me.  I kind of knew this in the back of my head, and had a Plan B to go to just in case, but that’s not always the case, especially with our students who are attempting to meet goals that we set for them, either via behavioral expectations, grades, or IEPs.

The same may be true of your students.  If Johnny (why are these hypothetical example students always named Johnny?) picks his nose for 80% of the class period, it may be unrealistic to expect to extinguish that behavior right away.  If, after, say, two weeks of behavior interventions, he’s picking his nose during 40% of the class, that’s not bad at all – you’ve cut the frequency of nasal spelunking in your classroom in half.  Of course, you’ll eventually want to kill that off entirely, but in a case like this, it’s important to a) recognize his progress, and b) understand that behavior is complex, and can take time to change.  The same is true of improving study skills, academic performance, reading fluency… some improvements come quickly, but others take time, and don’t always come as easily as we’d like.

As educators, we often like to set the bar high and challenge our students, and that’s admirable.  We just have to remember that setting the bar too high too soon can sometimes do more harm than good – set up some smaller bars first, for them and for yourself.  The confidence boost they (and you) get from meeting those short-term goals (“Hey, I can do this after all!”) could be just what they need to get them to that ultimate goal.

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8 June 2009

Sharing is Caring


Back in April I mentioned that I started a feed of my Shared Items in Google Reader for anyone who’s interested in reading the same stuff I am on psychology, special education, technology, etc.  Today I’d like to let you all know that after multiple failed attempts, I think I’ve finally found a use for social bookmarking site Delicious that suits me: I’ve taken all the sites I’ve bookmarked for myself pertaining to special ed, assistive technology, and school psychology and uploaded them to my own Delicious account.

Please feel free to either subscribe to my Delicious RSS feed or just bookmark my page; have a look at the tag list on the right-hand side of the screen for categories that may interest you (e.g., Organization, Reading, Math, ADHD, etc.).  I hope you and your colleagues can find something useful there, for yourselves or your students.

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30 May 2009

Hello? Is This Thing On?


I’m not normally in the habit of recycling previous posts (especially those barely a month old), but I really need some feedback on this from teachers, CST specialists, parents, administrators, students, consultants – really, any stakeholder in the world of special education.  Here’s what I wrote last month:

So every member of my new Child Study Team has some ‘pet project’ that they contribute to the department, and along those lines, I’ve been approached to put together a website for the department (not sure if it’s just for CST or Special Services in general; will get more details in the summer).

[...]

Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments here – parents, what info can we make readily available to you?  Special ed teachers/service providers, what “frequently asked questions” or topics would you put on a site for the community?

Although this project is still in the very early stages, I have some thoughts as to what I think needs to go on this site at minimum:

  • “plain English” description of the NJ special ed determination process
  • downloadable PDFs of NJAC 6:14 (special education code), PRISE (Parental Rights in Special Education), and similar documents
  • little blurbs about each of the CST members (4 psychologists, 2 LDTCs, 1 social worker) and our supervisor, along with contact information (phone, email, fax)
  • information on transition services and options
  • links to useful external sources

I’m not quite at the point of creating a Twitter account for our Child Study Team, but I would like to do something a little more personalized than a static website, like maybe have a monthly blog post from a different CST member (a la a newsletter).  I did create a wiki for the Special Services dept. at my last school as part of my grad school internship project, so I do have a basic blueprint, but given the additional year and a half or so of technical experience I’ve gained since putting that up (plus the fact that I’ll be using locally hosted WordPress as my canvas), I think I can kick this site up a notch.

So what do YOU think needs to feature on this website?  Sky’s the limit, at least as we kick ideas around in this space.

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21 May 2009

Social Story: Fire Alarms In School


One of the students on my caseload is autistic, and his teacher tells me he has recently developed a fascination with the fire alarms in our school, particularly with the idea of pulling them.  A fellow psychologist suggested I develop a social story for this young man that explains appropriate fire alarm protocol (for lack of a better description).

Social stories (for those of us too lazy to click a link!) are short illustrated stories designed to teach social skills to students with autism (and similar developmental disabilities).  In a social story, the student will see specific behaviors depicted in concrete terms and learn why they are or are not appropriate (e.g., “hitting other people can hurt them”; “we raise our hand when we need to ask a question”).  I was generally familiar with the concept of social stories, but creating my own gave me a new appreciation for the tool, as well as raised more questions than I was able to answer.

At the suggestion of our CST secretary, I decided to illustrate this social story with pictures taken on our campus.  I don’t know if this holds any water, but I’m hopeful that seeing familiar, local images in the social story will make the message a little more tangible to this young man than clip art or random pictures off the Internet.  The story itself is 8 pages long (including cover) and contains 9 images, of which 3 were obtained from the Internet (1 public domain, 2 licensed under Creative Commons).  The remaining 6 I snapped myself over the course of yesterday and today.

In the spirit of Dan’s repeated calls for critique amongst bloggers, I submit to you my first attempt at a social story.  Because I’m a big sensitive crybaby interested in sharing my thought process with you, here are some issues that are yet unresolved in my mind:

  • I had a hard time nailing the language.  Some pages I think are too easy; others, too complex.  I guess appropriateness varies by student, but what little text you see is the result of a number of re-writes, and I’m still not sure I’m entirely happy with the final version.
  • Don’t know if the pictures are concrete enough.  Are they too symbolic, especially the last one?
  • I wanted to keep the tone positive, but also make sure the student understood the consequences of pulling false alarms.  Like the point above, it’s a fine line to walk between not sugarcoating the issue and not making it too scary.
  • The administrative offices picture.  I don’t want the student to think that principal = trouble, but…
  • I don’t know if the last page is so contradictory as to be confusing to the target audience.
  • I didn’t feel the need to include a page of photo credits in the version I’m giving to the student, nor did I black out the face of the administrator who graciously agreed to pose for me.  This is the “public” version of the document, so I can attribute my photos properly and not put someone’s face on the Internet who never agreed to it.

OK, without further avoidance ado, I present:

Fire Alarms in School – Apace of Change

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