Seminar - Professional Development Weeks

For the majority of the time during the last 2 weeks at my practicum site, I have been engaging in professional development. I often find myself in long conversations with my supervisor. While these conversations are interesting and I tend to learn from them, I think I am more interested in gaining experience on my own. It is difficult to change this routine that my supervisor and I find ourselves in, because the conversations usually include information pertinent to being a school psychologist. Even though I do not think it is a "waste" of my time by any means, I think my days need to be more structured.

My supervisor recognized this as well, I think. We spent last week doing record reviews in the morning and preparing for my administration of the WISC-IV for a student up for reevaluation. Unfortunately, the opportunity to meet with the student was not present and so we have rescheduled for the next week. This would be the first full case I think my supervisor is offering. I will find out tomorrow whether I will have the opportunity.

One of the most interesting times I have in my practicum day is when I do the counseling group with the social worker. Now that I have been a part of this group for some time, I feel more comfortable making suggestions. Typically, the group is centered around talking about how the week has been going and having the students rate their feelings. If a significant issue comes up, we discuss it. I think this method is healthy, but thought the group might also benefit from practicing techniques for different situations. I suggested role-playing and so tomorrow we will do a role play for anger management. We will then have a discussion about it. I have also been keeping track of the feelings of each member of the group (they rate from 1-10). I am hoping this data will show a general improvement for the rest of the year.

I had an interesting conversation with my supervisor after an IEP meeting. The person leading the meeting was discussing how a student's capacity was X and his abilities were Y. The person said that the student's Y abilities were lower than his X capacity and that they needed to achieve X capacity. It took everything I had not to say "Actually, people achieve over their capacity all of the time. The tests don't mean that -Name- can only reach X capacity." I mean, who wants to be told that they have a ceiling for what they can achieve and have the capacity to achieve? I had a long conversation with my supervisor about how I really thought she should talk with that person leading the meeting about what the tests actually mean. It's really awful I think for parents to hear that their child is capable of achieving more, but not much.