More than Hours...

The local news stations have been busy talking about local school districts that have extended their school day. You can read more about it by clicking here.

I'm not here to validate the longer school day nor will I debate the effectiveness of it. If you are interested in that information, you may find this interesting: http://www.nea.org/home/14511.htm (remember this is just one opinion).

However, I'm here to stress one point: Simply increasing the amount of hours students are in school will not increase long-term outcomes.

What is important: What are we doing with this additional time? Longer school days could just as easily result in more suspensions, tired students, and less learning.

The additional time being added to the school day needs to be done wisely. As reported in the WTNH news report, some schools will be adding nearly 300 additional hours of education. Those 300 hours need to be used wisely. It would be foolish to assume that all 300 hours should be used for instruction only. This time could also be used to help promote social/emotional literacy and increasing social interaction time between peers.

Sometimes less can be more..especially when not done effectively.

First Day...for the kids

In the world of high schools our lives are driven by the bells. The bell rings everyone gets up and moves to somewhere else. What would happen if the bell didn't ring? Would people still move around? Would we even know when the classes end? Or do we only know a class ends because the bell rings? Heck, why are they even called bells? They do not sound like bells; they sound more like a low level ding. Sure doesn't sound like a bell though.

These super interesting thoughts came to me as I was drafting my start of the year e-mail to all my parents. I do my best work when I'm thinking about multiple things at once--I think that might for for all School Psychs! Anywho,  I highly recommend writing these e-mails! I send a quick e-mail to all of the parents of the students that I will be working with during the upcoming school-year. Yes, I even send it to the parents of the students who I have been working with for numerous years. I have found it is a great way to build an immediately rapport with the parents and rebuild the relationships with the parents. If you have not tried, give it a whirl. It certainly will not hurt and will help to further connect with your parents!

I'm off to monitor the bells!

A Message for the First Day of School...

Everyone who works with children should consider the following as we begin our new journey of a new school-year with our students...

“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.”

-Haim Ginott

No Cable, No Internet, No Problems???

I recently moved and thought I had scheduled the Direct TV and Charter cable internet to be installed on our move in day. Well after a back breaking day we did not have Direct TV nor did we have cable internet. A couple of phone calls later I had everything set up for today (roughly three days later). How bad could it be? I was even looking forward to the "peace and quiet."

Well those three days did not bring any peace, nor quiet, nor comfort. It resulted in a quickly dying cell phone battery on my Samsung Galaxy and much frustration on my end. Although it is the summer school e-mails kept coming, personal e-mails regarding CASP kept flowing, and Words with Friends and UNO were simply not cutting it anymore. Even worse I missed my Sunday night #iaedchat and Monday night #sbmhchat on Twitter.

I quickly found myself getting upset with my inability to respond to e-mails with any detail and getting worried with what auto-correct would say for me. I even found myself looking forward to heading into the high school so I can could check my e-mail and use the full internet. The mobile version of the websites, especially most school based sites..STINKS.

What did this all teach me? I like routines, I like checking my e-mail, I like my Twitter chats, I like non mobile versions of websites, I like cable and the NY Mets. The best things that came from this? Watching the Meteor shower and luckily this was not during football...that would have been devastating.

8 and 8 is Low Average???

While writing a report for an upcoming assessment I realized something: I still enjoy looking at the numbers! Those of you who know me, know that I believe " a monkey could give an IQ test." It really is not that hard. Read the bold, write down and/or circle what they say, stop after 3 wrong, and add. If you can do that, you too can give an IQ test.

My real enjoyment of these assessments are revealing what the numbers say. When I have the time I would rather hand score any assessment then run it through scoring software. It may take another 15 minutes, but who doesn't love watching the scaled scores be located one at time? Think way back to graduate school...back when you hand scored everything. Think about the first time you got two scaled scores of 8 on the PSI but your Index score was 89...does not make sense...unless you like numbers! Then explain that to a parent!

School Psychologists write lots and lots of reports. Most of us complain that we write more reports than we care to. However, reports should be interesting. They are not just numbers, not just templates, they are something unique to each of us. I challenge everyone to sit back and hand score just one assessment this school-year. See how you feel, see if how you write the report is different. You might just feel empowered!

And We Are Off and Running....

I have been reading Blogs for several years now. I have my sports ones (www.gmenhq.com), my weather and life ones (http://www.geofffox.com/), and my education related ones (dumais.us/newtown/blog).  Up until this moment I have been a semi-passive bystander. I contribute superficially to a sports related blog and I keep a National Honor Society Blog, but neither is true blogging.

Tonight, I participated in my fourth consecutive Twitter Ed Chat; we call it #iaedchat. If you cannot figure out what the hash-tag means go to twitter.com and find out for yourselves. It is wonderful! After engaging in great conversations with fellow educators from across the country (and mostly Iowa), I was motivated into creating a blog focusing on School Psychology.

So, I have a blog and a fancy School Psych related name...We shall see where this goes from here. My early guess is that this will be my voice into all things School Psych related on the State (Connecticut) and Federal Level.

Tonight is Step One...let's hope step two comes soon...