Internship Update

Things are finally starting to pickup for my internship. I haven't had much free time the last couple of weeks at work -- which I love, it makes the days go by so much quicker. Right now I'm doing a lot of cognitive testing for admission to the district's gifted program. Its nice to get to work a little with the really smart kids (in school psych, and special ed -- which I did before -- you usually see the lowest of the low, or average kids with severe behavior problems), its nice to see the other side and know that there really are kids who are exceeding expectations. I'm also going into classrooms and doing formal observations of students for special ed reevals and watching some teacher strategies to help them with behavior management in the classroom. I think its so interesting to watch different teaching styles and how students react to them. I have found that alot of the problem behaviors that drive teachers crazy are actually a result of their own poor behavior management strategies. I'm also spending a lot of time gathering information about at-risk students and compiling reports about their needs and the interventions tried by classroom teachers.

I got my first student to case manage last week! Which means that I am in charge of all of the paperwork for this student's special ed eligibility evaluation. That might not sound exciting to any of you, but it means my supervisor trusts me enough to gather all the data, synthesize it, come up with an evaluation plan, divvy out responsibilities to the rest of my team... and then see where it takes us.

My internship baby, though, is AIMSweb. I am so glad I was trained on this program before getting here -- Thank you Dr. Christ and Scott from Stillwater Public Schools! This was the first year of school-wide benchmarking for reading at one of my schools. My supervisor was the only person in the school who knew how to do all the stuff required to make this successful. I'm glad I could get in there week 2 of my internship and really contribute -- as I was fully trained on the administration of the benchmarking probes and vaguely familiar with the data entry system. This project has become my baby, I am one of the go-to people in my school for questions and organization of the project. My supervisor has pretty much let me run the show with organizing materials, data input and interpretation, and setting up progress monitoring schedules for at-risk students. I've also got to spend alot of time with the special ed kids, completing reading assessments with them -- I have some really cool kids in my school! I overheard my supervisor talking to the speech pathologist about all the hard work I've done on the project -- Kim (my supervisor) said, "This was my first test for my new intern," and the speech path responded, "Well, she definitely passed," and Kim replied, "Yeah...with flying colors!" -- I don't mean to brag -- but it was nice to hear that I passed my first major test on internship!

I am really loving my internship. One of my schools is really trying to implement the Response to Intervention model. It is really interesting to see how all the pieces fit together and how it is really supposed to look in a school. I am learning so much about the process and what it really takes to build a school with good supports and procedures in place -- it kind of makes me wish I had some serious money so I could start my own school, and implement all of the wonderful things I am learning -- in my own way (because there are definitely some things I would do differently). This internship has also sparked my interest in Educational Policy and reform -- as much as I'd love to say that everything that happens in a school is controlled in the school -- its not, and in order to really make a difference, we've got to change the education system (and the early environments these kids are coming from) in the U.S. -- but that discussion is for another day when I want to spend hours on my soapbox.