All right, everyone. I am honored to be back again today with the folks from School Psyched; Rachael, Eric, and Rebecca. If you haven’t heard of the School Psyched Podcast, definitely check that out. It is going to be linked in the show notes. I also did an episode with them probably close to a year ago, maybe a little more and had a really good time. And like I said, I feel lucky to have them back again to talk through the state of school psychology as it stands right now in the fall of 2020.
People are heading back to school or not heading back to school, and things are pretty chaotic. So this is a pretty wide ranging [00:01:00] conversation. We talk about how to conceptualize gaps in achievement and kids falling behind, not just the summer slide, but the COVID slide, so to speak as kids return to school, we talk about special education guidelines and how those may flex or not with intervention and assessment here amidst the pandemic.
We touch on teacher mental health and supporting teachers. We talk about marginalized kids and who is at risk for falling further behind. We also touch on trauma-informed perspective for achievement as the kids return, in addition to two thoughts on areas of assessment and teaching that might want to take a backseat for a little bit, things that we can maybe do with less [00:02:00] of. We talk about a lot of different things and had quite a dynamic conversation, so I’m happy to bring that to you.
Before we get to the conversation, one more shout-out for the webinar that I’m going to be co-hosting this Thursday. It’s co-sponsored by Build Great Teams and the Psychologists’ Association of Alberta. I’m going to be talking about the basics of psychological assessment of kids during COVID-19, so remote assessment. And then the second half will be my co-presenter, Dr. Ryan Matchullis, who will talk about how to perform remote assessment, particularly with difficult kids. You don’t want to miss this and there is the opportunity for CEs. So check that out.
And last but not least, if you are interested in a group coaching experience where you can connect with other psychologists who are taking their practices to the next level, [00:03:00] my Advanced Practice Mastermind starts in September and we have a few spots open. You can get more information at thetestingpsychologist.com/advanced.
This is a fantastic group experience where people come together, support one another. I provide the facilitation and guidance of course. We talk all about things like hiring or hiring again, streamlining your schedule, being more efficient, additional streams of income, and all those issues that come up after you get past the initial stage of practice. So check that out. If you are interested, I would love to have you.
Without further ado, let’s get to my conversation with Rachael, Eric and Rebecca from the School Psyched Podcast.
[00:04:00] Hey, y’all. Welcome back to the podcast.Eric: Thank you. It’s good to be here again.
Rebecca: It’s great to be back.
Rachael: Things sure have changed since the last time we were on; the whole world is a lot different right now. So good to be back.
Dr. Sharp: Yeah, no kidding. When all this started to go down in the spring, I immediately thought of y’all. I was like, I have to reach back out so you can see if we can have a conversation about all of this as time goes on, because I think there’s a lot of overlap between my world in the private practice world and school psychology and there’s a lot out there that we don’t know about. I’m excited to be talking with y’all and see where we end up in this conversation.
I just want to check in. Generally speaking, I know you’re each in [00:05:00] different settings, and I’m hearing across the country that not a lot of people know what is going to happen with school psychology over the next month or so. I’m curious, what is happening in each of your areas and what are you looking at job-wise over the next few weeks?
Eric: Yeah, go ahead, Rachael.
Rachael: You go, Eric.
Eric: Okay. Rebecca and I are both in Connecticut, but we’re both in very different settings. So she can chime in with what’s going on in her private school world, but the public schools in Connecticut are opening full-time in-person. We have about two more weeks, end of August, beginning of September, all the schools will be opening full-time in-person.
I think most public school districts are offering for parents a virtual option. So if they choose to not send their kids and there will be [00:06:00] virtual learning opportunities as well, but they have to make a decision about that.
And then as data rolls in, we’ll determine whether or not we’ll stay open or respond to outbreaks or increased illness accordingly, but we’re slated to open in-person and. We’ve had two meetings and we’re working on safety protocols, health protocols and looking at how we’re spreading out how many children in a room and how we’re going to navigate everything.
Dr. Sharp: Are you going to be testing with PPE, shields and masks and all of that?
Eric: Yeah, it looks that way. I’m sure as the conversation unfolds, we’ll talk a little bit about tele-testing and distance testing versus in-person but we will have plexiglass shields, face shields, and whatever PPE. [00:07:00] The district is providing masks and gloves.
Obviously, we’ll have to put a caveat in the report that that’s slightly unstandardized process in administration, but there will be safety procedures in place. We are expected to catch up with our assessments as soon as possible as we begin the school year.
Dr. Sharp: Jeez. That’s a whole issue in and of itself, just the scheduling. It’s been a nightmare in our practice trying to catch up from all the things that were delayed those last two months of last year. Rachael, what about you? What are things looking like in your area?
Rachael: I’m in a larger public school compared to like Rebecca’s in a smaller private school, but we are going back completely remote. When everything closed down, there was a big scramble of taking files back with us [00:08:00] home. We didn’t really know what was happening and what was going on.
We had suspicions. People thought, okay, we’ll be back in a week or two or something along those lines, we weren’t anticipating the full thing. So that was a little bit of a scramble as far as people were leaving things in their offices that maybe they should have brought with them. And so that made catching up and doing counseling, and once we did get rolling remotely, a little bit challenging.
Over the summer now, once we’ve stabilized a little bit with procedures, my district is large and so I think with large districts, it’s hard to navigate things but luckily, my department is extraordinarily well organized. So over the summer, we had an opportunity to catch up on some of the assessments that we left hanging there and that involves they designated specific tools and specific classrooms that we’re testing for patients throughout.
We’ve scheduled with the parent. PPE, we got the face shield, we got the face mask, the gloves, the hand [00:09:00] sanitizer and it’s a get in, get out as soon as you can. And so you know that that’s going to have an impact on the testing when you’re not able to really develop for more. So it’s been a learning process, but we’ve been getting through it.
A lot of parents have decided, let’s get into the fall. I want to see what fall looks like instead of rushing into this now. I think that it’s going to make a lot of school psychologists and districts rethink procedures as far as what is of really necessary assessment. Some of us don’t really enjoy giving tests and working with kids and now it’s you do what’s required and what you need and you’re not going in and doing extra things.
Going into this coming school year, I think it’s a little bit nerve wracking. I know that the expectations are rising. So before we were in crisis where you’re only working with the kids that need services that we immediately have needs, [00:10:00] everybody got their balance.
Classroom instruction was not super long. It was recorded videos for students posting resources. Now, when we’re going back on, they’re saying it’s going to be like 3 to 4 hours a day of synchronous learning in my district. So that’s going to be interesting.
I have two kids at home, I have a kindergartner and a second grader. And so they’re going to have to be doing their learning on their laptops. My husband’s a teacher, so he’ll be teaching his 4 hours a day to his students and then whatever my duties are, we shall workout how that looks like.
It’s the Wild West. We’re making things up as we go along and doing the best that we can figuring out new procedures for things like self-harm procedures, what do you do when you get a phone call that’s going on? So we need all new procedures and it’s interesting.
Dr. Sharp: To say the least. Oh my gosh. What are [00:11:00] things looking like for you, Rebecca?
Rebecca: We are also, like the public schools in Connecticut, going back fully in-person, but our rules are a little bit different for private schools. So public schools were asked by the State of Connecticut to provide three separate plans, one for fully in-person, one for fully remote and one for a hybrid model.
We had more flexibility because we have smaller numbers and smaller class sizes and more space anyway that we were able to do the fully in-person and the fully remote built into our fully in-person plan as a hybrid model for families that opt out of the in-person instruction.
We have a little bit more flexibility because we’re seeing more along the lines of, many private schools are boarding schools but my school happens to not be, but we were more under the guidance of [00:12:00] higher education and private boarding schools.
So we are doing the same with PPEs, physical distance in classrooms, cohorting is a really important part of the model. So the delivery of the curriculum is going to look really different trying to keep students and teachers together in cohorts. It won’t be like they’re going to all their special classes and traveling throughout campus.
So it’s going to be very different. We hope to prioritize wellness and mental health. And so I think that’s where my role will come in supporting teachers and the community parents to do that. It’s a big ask and ready or not, here we go.
Dr. Sharp: Exactly. It’s like we’ll just see what happens just as we [00:13:00] go along. Is your job going to change? And this is a question for all of you, are your jobs going to change significantly from last year to this fall?
Rebecca: Mine will not. I have a pretty full role in terms of the NASP practice model. I think mine will remain largely the same, just the hours probably keep going.
Rachael: I’m not sure what to expect on my end, but I have been pondering how can I better figure out students’ needs especially when we’ve got kids returning? We talked about summer slide and now COVID slide and that they’ve missed out on instruction. I think that’s going to play into, is this kid disabled or they just missed out on a lot of instruction?
So I’ve been thinking about ways to figure out where students are now. I know my district is doing a universal screener to assess skills [00:14:00] and figure out where people are but I’ve been looking at CBM, CBA and things that I can do, probes and whatnot if I were to work with a student for 30 minutes virtually. What type of information could I get with them doing some oral reading fluency, doing some phonological awareness, informal phonics checklists just to figure out maybe what recommendations I could make and thinking about those recommendations in terms of a teacher who’s working remotely with a student?
So I’m trying to think a little bit, but I’m sure that as it unrolls, it’s going to be ever changing, and so I’m not sure that I can fully be prepared. It’s just going to be adjusting as things come at me.
Dr. Sharp: What is CBA and CBM for anybody?
Rachael: Curriculum-based assessment or curriculum-based measurement, so just looking at those academics still. So not necessarily doing a formal, we have issues with the validity of our formal [00:15:00] assessments that doing remote assessment and doing things with PPE and whatnots, that’s going to be a concern with any tests.
I’m wondering if in light of that doing some informal assessments and working with the kid and figuring out where the strengths and weaknesses are from an instructional standpoint might be as helpful or more helpful even than a standardized battery of something at this point. I don’t know.
Dr. Sharp: Yeah. Eric, is your job going to change very much from year to year?
Eric: I think probably similar to Rebecca’s, my typical practice model role will remain partially doing assessments, partially doing some kind of counseling. I think the delivery will look different under PPE and small groups of cohorted students. So if I’m taking groups of students, they’ll be kids from the same classroom rather than mixing [00:16:00] across classrooms.
Probably, the emphasis, at least for me initially is going to be on, as Rebecca said, to wellness; emotional well-being, social and emotional learning and support, gauging the anxiety levels, perhaps or sense of agency that students and teachers have to get back in and be able to be a part of the school community without being too stressed out or too nervous.
I think there’s going to be a little bit of work needed to support teachers and students with feeling comfortable in the environment as it will have changed.
Dr. Sharp: That’s a great point. I wonder, have any of your staff districts or anything, have made any mention of more support for teachers and staff in terms of like in services or [00:17:00] training or mental health checks or anything like that?
Rebecca: That’s been a big part of my push at my school is to learn how the adults are feeling. Starting last spring, Dr. Suniya Luthar has an assessment called the faculty resilience survey, also has a student resilience survey, so we administered both surveys to our students and to our teachers just to find out how they are feeling.
And built into her survey are actionable scales for well-being. So she looked at how connected do teachers feel? How clear is the information that they’re getting from their administrators? How much are they experiencing emotional burnout and stress? So she differentiated between those two.
And so we were able to sort by grade level, [00:18:00] by all kinds of different variables to really know how the adults were feeling. And for me, that has been a priority, even going back into the school year to provide them with support from our wellness team.
We have a division called the wellness team with resources and ability to have open sessions of pop in and tell us what’s on your mind, what are you working on and how can we provide any kind of support or reflection because we know that if the adults aren’t well, the kids aren’t going to do that well either. So it’s been a priority for us for sure.
Dr. Sharp: That’s good to hear. That’s a little bit outside what y’all might typically do, but it makes sense. You’re already there. You’re psychologists so you can support teachers too.
Rachael: And I think that that’s a little bit of a different role too, as far as [00:19:00] the public versus private. We’ve had situations in my district where teachers have needed help with mental health and whatnot. We’ve been specifically told, don’t touch that. That is not your role. You need to immediately refer and distance yourself.
I totally agree with everything Rebecca is saying that if the teachers aren’t comfortable, if they’re anxious, if they’re nervous, that is going to absolutely impact things. And I myself, I was a bit relieved when I heard that we were going to be completely virtual for at least the first semester, because it is nerve wracking. You watch the news and I know our kids watch the news, and it’s something to be taken seriously, so there’s perfectly normal to have anxiety about it.
Dr. Sharp: I know in our district, they have, it’s almost like their own proprietary insurance plan or EAP that the teachers can use that [00:20:00] provides a little bit easier access to services. It’s been really helpful for the teachers around here. I imagine we’re going to see a big uptick and referrals through that.
Eric: I was just thinking, similarly, in this circumstance, especially as adults, we’re considered the first responders in the education system, the mental health practitioners but also the teachers, but we’re also victims here too. We will all be and have been touched by this virus and by the pandemic and by closures and lack of social connection, the losses that that impacts, regardless of whether we have been personally impacted, we are with somebody perhaps personally passing away in our immediate circle. We’re affected and [00:21:00] impacted.
I think in that respect, taking the emotional temperature of the climate and culture of the building in the school community is really important. Doing a lot to making effort to really support that climate and culture as we get back in will be crucial because we’re all going to go in on pins and needles, so to speak with various levels of discomfort, stress and needing those supports and connections.
You said something really appropriate, Jeremy, or just really poignant, is anyone measuring how teachers are feeling? We have this little adage, what gets measured gets managed. So if we neglect that aspect of what we’re measuring as we go back in, we might leave our key players in the [00:22:00] lurch; the teachers and the adults. That’s really crucial.
Dr. Sharp: It makes me think too, and I wonder if I could ask y’all, if you have you thought more about your own self-care and what that might look like as you go back. I don’t know if you can even anticipate needs in that regard. If you’re willing to talk about that, have you thought about that at all or try to anticipate?
Rebecca: Every single day, we think about it. It’s been such an unusual summer for school psychologists because many of us are fully focused on return to school, re-entry planning and whether that’s a part of our official role, for me it is. For some people, they may not even have a seat at that table yet they have to think about it because only we know what ethical [00:23:00] practice under these circumstances can look like.
But at the same time, like Eric said, we’re parents and we’re human beings and we’re in the storm with everyone else. This is one of our avenues of professional self-care. We’ve been doing extra podcasting, having these conversations, talking to professors and researchers and other practitioners to find out what other people are doing and trying to crowdsource as much inspiration and help as possible.
And there have been so many great ideas shared out there. We’ll definitely share with you two that we think are really helpful around these topics like Suniya Luthar, I mentioned, Authentic Connections is a great organization that is looking to support schools with collecting data on mental health and wellness. So there’s one.
CASEL has this really [00:24:00] comprehensive SEL roadmap for school re-entry. It would take all summer to get through it, which is what I’ve been trying to do is explore it because there’s so many other links too. There’s lesson plans and there’s trauma-informed toolkits. It’s really amazing.
Along those lines SAMHSA, their trauma-informed schools’ toolkit is also really comprehensive. So I think as we’re gleaning ideas from experts out there, how can we best serve our students, our community, our school. We have to balance that with how are we breathing? How’s our oxygen level?
I’m doing a lot of that myself. I’m trying to make sure I have time for just the basic sleep is always really important for me and exercise and time with my [00:25:00] kids and making sure that they’re okay.
Dr. Sharp: I’m amazed at what my average nightly sleep amount has done over this. It’s just skyrocketed, which I feel very thankful that it can do that, but it’s like, I don’t know where all the sleep came from, but apparently it’s needed. Rachael, you had some thoughts, huh?
Rachael: Yeah. Rebecca mentioned that we’ve been doing extra podcasts and we have, and that’s been super helpful to hear from professionals. We’ve had come on Dr. Farmer and Lockwood talk about, they’ve written a paper on remote assessment. And so I feel more prepared having done that.
Another thing that we’ve done is as part of the podcast, we’ve been doing Facebook live discussions especially when things initially hit. And it was almost a roll call for school psychologists, hey, everybody watching, what state are you in? Are you in school, or are you out of school? What are your directives right now? Where do you stand?
And so [00:26:00] it’s been really comforting. You have to log on to Facebook and have these live conversations and then see the chat bar going along the side hearing from all these other school psychologists in different states and seeing that we’re all in the same predicament and fumbling around. That’s made me feel a little bit better.
I like to feel confident in my job, like I know what I’m doing and I’m helpful. And so when all this happened, I started feeling very incompetent; how do I help? How do I do? What goes on? And so it was helpful for me to realize that we’re all in the same boat with that.
Dr. Sharp: Sure. Eric, did you want to say anything?
Eric: Yeah. That self-care piece. I think during this time, I would say at least for myself, my typical emotional ebb and flow has been a little more intense, maybe a little more highs, a little more lows, a little [00:27:00] more frequent rather than maybe more spaced out and more even. And so finding avenues to support things that we need are so important.
We think about resilience, some of those pieces that help us build resilience are connectedness; self-care, sleep, adequate nutrition and all those things that perhaps we neglect or perhaps we don’t always pay attention to until we can’t find toilet paper, we can’t see our friends and our colleagues in person. We’re stuck at home or our gym is closed and all of those things that perhaps were much easier to come by.
And so I think we have to make extra effort to do those things that we need and find avenues, just a little bit of time each day to help [00:28:00] ourselves unwind, to help ourselves whether it’s exercise or reading a novel or chatting with your best friend, that sort of thing, just find some time to do that or time with your family.
As ironic as it is, even though we’re all stuck at home, it’s easy for people to be doing their own thing. We’ve all been at work this school year and into the summer on our screen. For me, just touching base with my kids, even though they’re off in another section of the house or making sure when I’m off my screen, I’m doing something meaningful with them or getting out to exercise, it’s just important to keep those routines and that consistency.
Dr. Sharp: I couldn’t agree more. I feel there’s all that push in a certain area or the population or media outlets or whatever to develop new hobbies, new habits [00:29:00] and take care of yourself and whatever. I’m just like, go for the low hanging fruit, pick what works and has worked for a long time and maybe just do a little more of that instead of adding whatever you think you should add.
I appreciate y’all diving into the personal component. I imagine a lot of school psychologists out there are wrestling with this, how am I going to navigate all this and still stay sane? We mentioned a little bit ago, this whole idea of what’s going to happen to kids in the fall, what assessment and services are going to look like. And so I am really curious what y’all are hearing, reading and seeing about are there going to be gaps in achievement? What do we do with that? If we could open that can of worms, I’d love to do that.
Rebecca: I [00:30:00] guess I can start. There’s going to be a lot of variability with our students coming back. It depends so much on lots of personal variables, what their family situation was like when they were home, how their health was impacted and what their vulnerabilities were before; were they anxious before this pandemic situation?
And then also we can look to research. It’s not exactly the same, but we can look at research that’s on summer slide and post other kinds of natural disasters like hurricanes when kids missed a lot of school or absenteeism and how that affects school. It’s really not very much the same, but [00:31:00] if we try to extrapolate some of the that, we can be pretty confident that there’s going to be a lot of variability, but kids are going to be behind.
When I say that, it makes me uncomfortable because I think behind from where? They’re going to be in the same boat. So I feel like we want to encourage our adults, parents and teachers to just breathe deeply and know that we are going to find out where are their skills.
And yes, they may not have retained all of this academic skills that they had before buildings closed, but we’re going to find out where they are in terms of skill level and we’re going to get them where they need to be. We’re going to get them moving in the right direction.
I feel really positive about that because there’s no one that’s not in that situation. I do feel most worried for vulnerable kids that will be coming back to [00:32:00] us with some varying levels of trauma. I worry about them.
Dr. Sharp: Yeah, of course. I’ve heard folks are saying a lot like kids are going to fall behind but again, what are we comparing that to? This is a unique event and that it’s a nationwide shutdown, it’s not just geographic where certain kids are missing out, but it’s the whole country is falling behind. And this is my gap in knowledge is how does that play into standardized testing and assessment when it’s a national level delay? Do y’all know anything about that or what the impact might be?
Rachael: I think that’s another big question mark. I had an intern this past year, she emailed me and said, do you think that the testing companies will renorm? I’ve had to laugh that off [00:33:00] like I don’t think it’s that simple, that okay we’ll just renorm, we’ll adjust this way. I think it’s going to be just using what we have and making those cautionary statements that of the things that you don’t really know.
I’ve got a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old. I’m a school psychologist and my husband is an elementary school teacher. And so when we shut down, I worry for them. I knew that they were going to get what they needed academically in my house. We were both working from home at the time, we carved out a schedule, we were able to see to their needs and we knew what the standards were and what needs to be fought and what’s important to work on.
I have no worries for my own children and I think that they’re going to look far more prepared going back to school than most kids. I worry for the kids that are going [00:34:00] to be most impacted for this parents and households that didn’t have the internet connection or the technology to engage in the remote instruction or have parents that have to go out of the house to work.
I was lucky that I could stay home and work remotely. If you have to go out and leave, then who’s going to sit there and work with your kid on their math. So it’s going to highlight the gap. I don’t know.
Dr. Sharp: I think that’s one thing you said, Rebecca, the trauma piece, and it’s obviously happening. I guess the question is like how to wrap your mind around that, I don’t even know what the question is here, but just observing that that’s a huge issue that we’re going to have to wrestle with as kids go back. It’s trying to figure out who is maybe [00:35:00] more “traumatized” than others. I don’t know if anybody is thinking about that, or trying to plan for that, or how y’all are conceptualizing that whole dynamic.
Eric: Definitely. Our commissioner of education in Connecticut is pushing for strong social and emotional learning components across the state to build our level of capacity to support kids emotionally for all educators. So to that end, we do have some financial support available in Connecticut.
My district is responding with rolling out some additional training, additional social and emotional supports and time so that all teachers can have a built in time to do some social and emotional learning and try to provide a little more [00:36:00] support for kids at that level. So hopefully, we’ll be more proactive than reactive in that respect in building trauma-sensitive schools and schools that are welcoming, supportive, gracious and patient.
I think those cultures are where kids thrive, where teachers thrive and where teachers are retained because they want to work there. I’m proud of my district because I do believe that we are working hard to achieve that and support our students at that level.
Dr. Sharp: That’s great. I was going to ask, are there specific guidelines out there around what constitutes a trauma-sensitive school and does that actually change behavior or interventions or policies in that building?
[00:37:00] Eric: Not state guidelines, but Rebecca, I’m not going to put you on the spot, but I think Rebecca has a really good handle on this because this is something she’s been very interested in. There are some distinctions between trauma-sensitive and trauma-informed. As Rebecca mentioned, SAMHSA and CASEL have some really good information. I don’t know if you want to jump in here, Rebecca.Rebecca: Sure. Before I do, I want to make a plug for people that want to take a deep dive into this particular topic. My friend, Dr. Caren Baruch-Feldman is going to do a presentation with a colleague for the New York Association of School Psychologists. It’ll be a live webinar, August 21st and 24th, but it will be recorded if you register through the NYASP website. It’s called Resilience Upon Reentry: Building a Trauma-Sensitive School in our New [00:38:00] World.
I’ve been talking with her a lot about her presentation and about what this means for all of us. I think that a trauma-informed school requires a lot of training. I think that there are some great examples like the Boston Public Schools but many of us are just not there yet.
And so if we think about how do we support teachers with trauma insensitive understanding so that they get a sense that, like Ross Greene says, kids will do well if they can. And so if they’re behaving in a way that is flagging them for, they’re not moving forward academically or they’re communicating what is their behavior saying to us, that they’re communicating that they’re having a hard time. They’re having a hard time, not they’re giving us a hard [00:39:00] time. That shift in perspective is a really good start.
And then again SAMHSA has a great visual tool for guiding principles of a trauma-informed approach, and they are safety, trustworthy and transparency, peer support, collaboration and mutuality, empowerment, voice and choice, cultural, historical and gender issues.
There’s so much there that we can help our teachers as we get referrals. As teachers are asking us, how do I reach this child remotely, we can use our understanding and all of these resources to collaborate with teachers and help our schools all be more sensitive to these kids have gone through a lot, and even if [00:40:00] their health and safety is well, that’s the most important thing, but this has been a lot emotionally for them.
I recently shared on Facebook this great webinar on looking at children’s responses to natural disasters, so huge hurricanes. I can share the link to that. The presenter said, right after when school reopened, 45% of the student population met had symptoms of post-traumatic stress but when you looked 9 to 10 months later, that’s when you really saw kids who were still struggling, that really needed support and intervention, and kids that were becoming okay, that we’re resilient over all of it that they had been through.
So I think that we’re still in the hurricane and everyone’s experiencing some levels of stress, of [00:41:00] uncertainty, anxiety, all of those things. We want to keep an eye on looking at all of our kids to make sure that they have one adult that they can count on, that they’re safe in their homes.
All of these things; the factors for resilience, if we look for them now and try to measure how kids are doing now, then 9 months from now, we’ll be able to identify the kids that need a lot more intervention and support.
Dr. Sharp: That’s such a good point. That makes me think too, that we need to buckle up. It’s not like we’re going to go back to school and in two months and a few extra counseling sessions, things are going to be fine. I’m kind of talking to myself because I have 7 and 8-year-old, and this is like a 12-month to maybe 18-month process here. We got [00:42:00] to, like I said, buckle up, be there and ride it out. Gosh.
Eric: I like that term. Just buckle up. I think for schools, if we focus more on that resilience and positive climate, the academics are important but if we look at Maslow’s hierarchy, our safety is first and then our emotional security and our emotional needs.
There was an article, I want to say New York Times just recently, Five Reasons to Ease Slowly in from COVID- 19 to schools. It’s something like that. I can share the link, but I just read it this morning. It basically spoke about not pushing the academics, that in looking at our responses to hurricanes, earthquakes, [00:43:00] wildfires, getting kids back into school socially connected, safe and then easing back into the academics seems to be the response that’s appropriate that gets there little minds ready and gets their little hearts, brains and souls ready to to get back in.
Dr. Sharp: That’s such a good point. That’s also got me thinking about the kids that we’re going to be testing over the coming months and how that might impact our feedback sessions and what we focus on with parents. It’s like there is a good enough and maybe focusing more heavily on the emotional wellbeing and those low reading scores or whatever it might be.
Rachael: It’s a hard balance. Dr. Amanda VanDerHeyden is coming on the podcast next week, I’m not sure when this is coming on shortly. Her [00:44:00] passion is specifically in evidence-based math instruction across the board. I totally understand and agree that the social and emotional side of things needs to be attended to but she also is worried that we’re going to lose traction with the academics and the impacts of that down the line.
I’m more familiar with the literacy side of things, but we know that being literate and getting children reading has such an impact on the course of their life, and then how they’re able to access things, attain educational achievement and to make a life for themselves. It’s so important to be following the science of the evidence- based and being mindful of our time. We don’t want to waste time on [00:45:00] ineffective practices. We’ve got to get our A game going into it.
Sometimes in schools there’s differences in curriculums and quality of curriculums, and so now’s the time to really look at what works, what doesn’t work and to dive into that when we’re ready. I totally agree, though, that we’re not social-emotionally there. You’re not going to be able to absorb these things but we need to shed ineffective practices when we can and move forward as scientifically as we can.
Dr. Sharp: That makes sense. When you say all of that, is there anything top of mind that you’re thinking about that might be more easily shed throughout over the next few months, inefficiencies or what that you’ve seen?
Rachael: Rebecca and Eric know exactly what I’m going to say, but I’m a big proponent of the science of [00:46:00] reading movement. We see a lot of reading curriculums, for example, that, I don’t know if I can mention it here. Is that okay if I mention those examples?
Dr. Sharp: You’re safe here. You can say whatever you want.
Rachael: Like Fountas and Pinnell is used in my district, and it’s a whole language-based approach, you don’t understand what that word is, okay, look at the context of the picture and look at the picture, try and figure out what that word is. So that’s a methodology based on whole language reading that back in the day, we thought that that maybe was how we learned to read.
Now we know through scientific research that we read through that simple sound correspondence, phonemes connected to graphemes and letters connected to sounds, and you need to know how to decode in order for them to become efficient readers, and then they don’t have to decode anymore because it gets put in their memory.
And so we’re diverting students away from, okay, look at the picture, you don’t have to look at the word or look at the first sound of [00:47:00] the word, take a guess based on the context or read the next sentence. Maybe you can figure out what that word is. When we’re not using a phonics approach, explicit instruction, things like that, research has shown time and time again that we know what’s efficient and what’s effective instruction, and yet we have a lot of schools that don’t do that.
And so if I could get rid of that whole word reading approach, memorizing flash cards of sight words, I would get rid of that and say, let’s go through a systematic, explicit kind of process there. That’s just my personal opinion.
Dr. Sharp: I don’t think you’re alone in that. I was scared, I didn’t know what you were going to say, but totally, I’m right with you. I wanted to circle back though, we started to touch on this idea of [00:48:00] certain kids falling behind more than others. And then Rachael, you mentioned this idea of COVID privilege in our chat here. I wonder if we dive into that a little bit more and what y’all know about which groups of kids might be more vulnerable right now and who we might really need to be looking out for.
Eric: Definitely. There are so many factors impacting kids during this pandemic, but the ones that really are striking are impoverished kids, some of our kids in inner cities are some minoritized families and kids. People who don’t have access, our families with low socioeconomic status.
My district was really good. We went one-on-one with devices. So every child had a Chromebook and we [00:49:00] set up internet connections throughout the city. So we set up mobile internet connections so that at least the issue of opportunity was as minimized as possible, access and opportunity.
That doesn’t mean that kids necessarily had a quiet room to study and be online, it doesn’t mean that perhaps there were other issues in those homes that might’ve been impacting, it doesn’t mean everything was equal, but we did make an effort to try to make at least access take care of that.
And also food insecurity. So we gave out meals, we continued with our lunch and breakfast program and that’s continued throughout the summer. My district is a Title I school district and so we do have a lot of families who have that traumatic impact of poverty. [00:50:00] And so I think about those students in particular impacted by not having the material needs to weather the storm as well as some other kids.
Rachael mentioned she and her husband were both educators. I’m in a similar boat. My wife is a clinician and was able to do telehealth. So we’re able to be home with our kids. I think those issues can impact some of these families thinking about if parents are in the health care world or the service industry and had to go back and certainly be at risk themselves.
So many factors impact kids and those then eventually trickle down to academics as well. And so we have, as you mentioned, the COVID slide, so wondering how many of our kids will have retained [00:51:00] anything.
Some kids engaged really well and some didn’t. Some districts reached out and some students and families were available, and there were connections and with some it was more difficult. I think probably though, in those cases, some of those families were just trying to cope too. And that maybe jumping back into school was a lot or trying to help their kids navigate school was a lot.
I think when we get back, we’re going to have to find a balance for where we are, a baseline where everybody is and how we’re going to navigate levels of support and intervention. In schools, we have these three tiers. It’s our go to multi-tiered systems and usually Tier1 is universal, Tier 2 is a little more explicit and Tier 3 is individualized.
And so we’re going to have to find ways [00:52:00] to provide interventions across the board for kids. Prior to special education or determining whether special education is needed as well, we still have to navigate the law of IDEA and trying to figure out how that fits into this as well. Just mentioning in the chat, racial injustices really coming to the highlight, I don’t know if you want to jump in with that, Rachael?
Rachael: Yeah. With everything that’s going on in the news, I don’t think that this is anything new, with George Floyd and how that’s come to the forefront of things. It’s obviously nothing new in this country.
We’re shining a little bit of a spotlight on it now, and I hope that we continue to shine a spotlight on it and make changes just because systemically, this is a problem. The inequality [00:53:00] issue in education, in life and everything. It’s so important to keep in mind and that this is going to harm those students who are in the greatest need the most, I think so.
Dr. Sharp: It’s such a good point. It seems like all those factors that we typically think of with kids falling behind are just amplified now through everything that we’re going through. And so I wonder, has there been any talk in any of your districts or schools about targeted strategies or ways to truly identify those kids and bolster their learning a bit more or anything in that realm?
Rachael: I think the plan on my district end is this universal screener [00:54:00] just to dip our toes in the water and figure out where we are and where the greatest need is. I think that’s the first step.
I’m in a district that because they’re large, school psychologists aren’t necessarily always consulted on all the kind of big overarching decisions. So I’m a little bit out of the loop. I imagine that Rebecca is way more involved in the reentry plan of her district and in the loop and consulted on these types of things.
Rebecca: In terms of knowing where kids are academically, we are going to do similar things, just screen everyone, find out where kids are when they get back to school, but not as a first step because more, we want to make sure that the kids that didn’t retain because they couldn’t access the remote learning for [00:55:00] whatever reason, because for so many reasons, we want to make sure we can identify those kids because they’re already more vulnerable kids.
Last year when we did the student resilience survey, we looked at self-report scores of kids, 6th grade-9th grade; how distracted do you feel during distance learning? Do you have an adult that when you have questions with your schoolwork, is there an adult that you can ask?
And looking for all of these different variables, because kids that say I was highly distracted, I had nobody, I felt lonely and isolated, those are the kids that are going to be the most behind because they’re telling us that I didn’t do well. This was not a good situation for me academically and also emotionally.
I think that we want to try to identify kids that didn’t have access to the distance learning. Also our [00:56:00] kids that really require a lot of individualized academic support or specialized academic intervention anyway. Our kids with IEPs, how were those services delivered? How successful was that?
Let’s ask our teachers from last year because those kids are going to be more behind too. Maybe they did have access but they need an educator. They may not have had two parents who were able to even address their academic needs last spring. So lots of things that we’re going to have to survey and ask and continue to check on.
Dr. Sharp: You mentioned IDEA two times here in our conversation, and there’s a little bit of a left turn, but I am curious, are there any guidelines now around IDEA, even timelines for assessment and delivery of intervention with all these variables going on? Do we know [00:57:00] anything about what that’s going to look like, especially with kids being remote, obviously, but also just a completely backed up schedule for testing and service delivery?
Eric: Yeah. When we started, when we initially shut down in March, the guidance that we got was that everything was paused. So we weren’t circumventing IDEA, we were pausing. And because we were in a crisis, we were going to service deliver as possible. Timeframes were not necessarily avoided; they were just on hold.
So we ended up having IEP meetings. We let parents know if we absolutely need to, we will, but here’s what we can offer. We have to have everybody safe. We have to do these over the phone or video. And so we had some IEP meetings, but most parents, triennials, all services continued as [00:58:00] possible and as available.
And so as we roll into the school year, all IEPs are continuing, and so our charge will be to let’s say, we missed an annual review or we missed a triennial evaluation or something, those will all be scheduled as soon as possible. We have a timeframe, we have to get all of that done before October 1st, which seems pretty lofty to me, but as my supervisors have said, we’re going to do our best and we’ll make it happen.
For assessment-wise, if kids have been in the buildings, if teachers know them, we’re going to try to be able to jump right back in and within a few weeks get a sense for behavior observations. It obviously will look different than it did with smaller classrooms and these cohorts that are [00:59:00] 6 feet apart and masks on and all that stuff.
I think the biggest thing when we have kids who have very clear disabilities that have been already diagnosed and we already have a sense for the impact, those are much easier for us to look at how well have they done? What kinds of services should continue? We have a baseline and a continual measurement over maybe two years.
I think probably the trickier ones are going to be the learning disabilities; the gray area kids who are struggling to learn, but we weren’t quite sure how, and that’s going to be the tough area to assess. I think the biggest because certainly instruction was impacted. There’s no question on that.
My district is doing MTSS, Multi-Tiered System of [01:00:00] Supports, so we have these blocks of time where intervention is supposed to happen. Hopefully, we’ll get a quick baseline and can jump in providing intensive interventions as needed and try to support kids and move them along. Hopefully, we’ll see in a short period of time whether those interventions are supportive and appropriate.
It’s going to be a tough call. It won’t be black and white in many cases but we”ll do our best to assess not just test. Sometimes in some fields, I think in the clinical field as well, we consider a good thorough assessment really a good part of what we do, not just throwing tests at a kid, but really assessing where their skills are, where their needs are, good social history, so really thorough global assessment.
And that to me is the difference between [01:01:00] testing and evaluating a child. And so we’ll gather more information than just standardized test data. We’ll get history, observations and we’ll get it all back together. It’s going to take time. It’s going to look different.
Dr. Sharp: Like you said, just doing our best. Everybody is just doing their best. I know that our time is flying, but I did want to check in on the whole idea of remote assessment. It sounds like two of you are going back in-person, but what’s that look like around the country and school psychologists you’re talking to in districts? What’s the view on remote assessment and validity in the school setting?
Rachael: I think that most school psychologists are rightfully very cautious about this. We know that there’s concerns with validity. We know that [01:02:00] they weren’t necessarily normed for this. We know that there’s logistical issues as far as the technology to do it and having the quiet environment.
I’ve also talked to school psychologists who have concerns that parents help a little bit too much, even in the testing process, that they might be prompting them or giving or correcting it. How did you get that one wrong? That are sitting right there and listening. I think that everybody’s a little bit nervous. At the very least, we’ll be cautioning things and explaining that in the evaluation, this is potentially not a good representation of what’s going on.
The alternative of suiting up like as if you’re going to talk a remote assessment versus the PPE and going in, are you getting a good feel for the child’s skill in that type of scenario as well? And so that’s what I’m looking at, I’m only doing the standardized cognitive stuff if [01:03:00] that’s really necessary in decision making and I really need that information.
If it comes to, because I do have some anxiety too, about spreading germs and bringing that maybe home to my own family, and I would feel terrible if I was sick and I got a child sick or the child’s family sick, so if it comes down to the remote assessment that we don’t know if that’s valid or not, we’re suiting up and doing the PPE and then risking health, I’m personally tending towards the remote assessment.
I know my district is looking at the riots right now that might meet our needs. Nothing is ideal. It’s not going to be the perfect scenario. It’s not what we did in practice in graduate school when we have professors making sure that we’re putting the blocks out correctly and all that. I think we just have to gather, like Eric said, as much information as we can to make the best decisions that we can with the information that we have.
I have a question that we could [01:04:00] temporary IEP, okay, we recognize this child’s struggling. We don’t know if it’s because of COVID related factors or not. We do feel like an IEP would be in their best interest. Let’s move on IEP right now and we will reassess once we’re back to business as normal and tease that apart.
I have concerns for what quality of service we’re going to be providing remotely or in the PPE world anyways.
Are we doing interventions to fidelity? I’m not sure that’s the answer either, but of course, I’m not in charge. I don’t know what the federal government’s going to say about IEPs, disabilities and testing and all that.
If it were up to me, I think that I’m leaning towards, honestly, being more in favor of the remote assessment, but understanding that it’s not ideal, and it’s not perfect, and we need to be aware of the limitations of the test that we’re giving.
Dr. Sharp: Yeah, of course. Rebecca or Eric, did either of y’all want to add anything to that or on the flip side, [01:05:00] what you’re finding about testing with PPE and how to navigate that, if that’s impacted then?
Rebecca: I did want to add that we had Drs. Farmer and Lockwood on our podcast to talk about tele- assessment. It was a really good episode. They did share, I think it was Dr. Wright’s research on tele-assessment practices but mentioned that in that research, the clinician, and I think it was an adult in that situation, but both people were in the same building. They were just in different rooms.
And so that is a model that we can consider because it does increase our safety and reduce the spread of germs probably better than PPE. There is a little bit of that research, probably not with children, as Dr. Farmer said but at least then maybe we’re closer to where [01:06:00] we want to be in terms of, can we really count on these results for anything at all? I just wanted to mention that model.
Dr. Sharp: I’m a big fan of that. We call it the hybrid model, where we’re in the same office suite but in different offices. It’s been tough.
I’ve done a few of these presentations over the summer around tele-assessment and how to navigate it, and it’s a really hard presentation to give because there’s not very much research at all. There’s one study with kids in the U.S. that actually gives a comprehensive battery and it’s not even published yet. So it’s been tough.
Rachael: I’ve enjoyed checking out the comments on your Facebook group of people posting pictures, too, of their setup for testing. And so you see the shields and I saw one that somebody had a plexiglass in a [01:07:00] doorway, so you’re sitting but the door was plexiglass. It was really interesting.
I wish that in the schools, we had more flexibility to do something like that if we so chose but oftentimes, we’re running between offices. Sometimes we’re testing in whatever room we can find.
I know that too, there’s restrictions from the standpoint of we have a union here. And when we’re doing the testing over the summer, it was interesting to be to learn that we could bring a kid and test them in the designated room, but we were not allowed to sanitize afterwards and bring a second child with the union, we weren’t allowed to be doing the cleaning, the custodians had to do the cleaning, and then the custodian contract had something along the lines, they’re only allowed to clean a space one time a day.
So what it ended up being is you can use a room and test, and then later in the day, the custodial staff will come in and clean, but that room was off limits for the rest of the time. So there’s all sorts of these kind of logistical issues in schools that [01:08:00] you don’t maybe always realize are at play behind the scenes that make it a little bit more cumbersome than you might expect.
Dr. Sharp: That’s why I love having y’all on that you can speak to these little nuances. How would we know about these things unless you actually dig into it? I want to be respectful of y’all’s time, I feel like we’ve covered a lot of ground in our conversation. It’s been great.
Can you talk a little bit about who’s coming up on your podcast? You always have fantastic guests. I love listening to it. So let people know who’s coming up here in the next few weeks or months.
Rachael: I talked briefly about Dr. VanDerHeyden and her episode is related to how to hit the ground running, how to get the most when we get back to school, what we need to put in place to come ready.
I know that going into the fall, it looks like Dr. Reynolds is going to come on again. We’ve had him [01:09:00] before and he’s great to chat with and shoot the breeze with because he has his hands in so many different things and has so much experience that we like having a conversation with him.
Eric: He is like a grandfather of school psychology.
Dr. Sharp: Yeah, that’s great.
Rachael: I’m trying to think; I think positive psychology is another topic we’ve got coming up. What else do you guys remember?
Eric: Social and emotional learning.
Rebecca: A college LD advisory is her Facebook page. I’m not sure her official title, but she supports our kids when they go off to college. So that’ll be a really interesting topic. We have a lot; we have more guests than spots.
Eric: Right.
Dr. Sharp: That’s a good problem.
Eric: It is.
Dr. Sharp: Like I said, I always love checking out what y’all are up to and who you’re talking to and [01:10:00] we’ll make sure to link in the show notes so people can jump on and find it. Thanks again y’all. It was great to connect with you again. Good luck as the year gets started
Eric: Thank you so much, Jeremy. Always great to connect with you too. So we appreciate this.
Rebecca: Thank you.
Rachael: Thanks.
Dr. Sharp: Okay. Thanks again, y’all for listening to my conversation with the fantastic hosts of the School Psyched Podcast; Rachael, Eric, and Rebecca. Like I said, we covered a lot of ground in that conversation. This is less of an instructional podcast, so much as just diving in and really seeing where things are at in the school psychology world. The hope is that y’all will take some good information away and if nothing else, get some validation that things are a little wild everywhere and we’re all doing the best that we [01:11:00] can.
Like I said at the beginning, if you are interested in the Advanced Practice Mastermind, taking your practice to the next level as an Advanced Practice owner, we’d love to have you in the mastermind group that is starting in September. You can get more information at thetestingpsychologist.com/advanced.
If you want to learn more about remote assessment particularly with challenging kids, check out the webinar that I am co-hosting this Thursday with Dr. Ryan Matchullis. You can find the link in the show notes. There is CE credit available. I think it’ll be great. I’m really excited to hear Ryan’s part of the presentation, and I think it’ll be very helpful.
As always, there are plenty of links in the show notes from our conversation today including many things that I have never stumbled on. So big thanks to the School Psyched folks for bringing those things up. There are links to all of those if you want to check [01:12:00] them out.
Okay, everyone. Hope you are doing well and hanging in there. I’ll be back with you on Thursday with another businessy episode. Take care until then.
The information contained in this podcast and on The Testing Psychologist website are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast or on the website is intended to be a substitute for professional, psychological, psychiatric, or medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Please note that no doctor-patient relationship is formed here and similarly, no supervisory or consultative relationship is formed between the host or guests of this [01:13:00] podcast and listeners of this podcast. If you need the qualified advice of any mental health practitioner or medical provider, please seek one in your area. Similarly, if you need supervision on clinical matters, please find a supervisor with an expertise that fits your needs.