Hey guys! I'm Laura and this is my Wiki page. I love traveling and just spent last semester sailing around the world. I went to ten different countries in one hundred days. I've been on six of the seven continents and I hope to be going to Antarctica in the next couple of years to see the whales migrate and see the penguins :) It's all about the penguins...and the bunnies. I'm going to RIT in the fall to get my masters in school psychology :D
The following 1 pages belong to LauraDutton:
Psy498PracticumLog
My practicum log:
On Wednesday March 1st I started my practicum at the Alternative Learning Center (ALC) in the West Seneca school district. The ALC is a place where students go if they've had problems with attendance, behavior, or earning the necessary credits for graduation. I am working with their school psychologist, Danielle Dotson. She basically just showed me around the school and told me about the program. She then took me on a tour to see all twelve of the schools in the district and told me a little about them. We then came back to the ALC and we looked over a couple different tests she had given the other day. She also let me score them. It was a Connors Parent rating scale test. (9:30am-1:30pm)
On Monday March 6th I went back to the ACL. Danielle had CSE meetings so I went to some classes there to observe the kids. The first class only had five kids in there. There were two kids in there who decided either not to particpate in class or that the work was too hard. The other students talked a lot. I felt it did not take a lot for the teacher to get angry with the students, but then again having to deal with that on a daily basis can be frustrating. The second class had ten students in there. There were two students in there who seemed to strongly dislike each other. They had a running commentary of insults throughout the class. The teacher ended up kicking both of them out of the class. Another student decided to walk out of the classroom because he was fed up with the assignment he was given. He thinks that they are not in high school, but in a day care center. The next class I observed was an art class and it was not very structured because the kids were working on their projects. The group of kids that I sat near have behavior problems. One kid threw a chair at someone and then he retaliated by throwing his crutch at the other kid. The last class I observed the kids worked on homework. The kids need to carry sheets with them and give them to the teachers at the beginning of class. The teachers mark down whether or not the kids were respectful, staying on task, things like that. They have a privilege system there. When a student first starts there they have no privileges. Eventually they can earn the privilege to wear a hat during class, or drink a beverage, listen to music, etc. Later in the afternoon I went to Queen of Heaven School to observe a third grade boy. Danielle wanted me to observe him because he knows who she is and she wanted an accurate idea of his behaviors. She wanted me to pay attention to whether or not the teacher was using positive reinforcement with him. The teacher did not use positive reinforcement with him or with any of the other students. (7:15am - 1:30pm)
On Wednesday March 8th I went to Queen of Heaven Elementary school. I watched Danielle administer a Stanford Binet test to a five year old boy. He has a central auditory processing disorder. It was fun to watch him take the test. She decided to give him more tests than just the first two sections. If she had based his IQ on just the first two sections it would have been a 115 instead of a 100, which is what she found it to be after doing more tests. He did very well in fluid reasoning. You could tell when he did not know the answer or was just unsure of what was going on because he kept answering the same letter for a bunch of questions in a row. We scored his test when we got back to the ACL. We then went to Potters Elementary to meet with a girl in fifth grade. Danielle will be testing this girl later on, but because she is extremely shy she wanted to meet her ahead of time to help decrease anxiety and explain what the test will be like. Dave, the other school psychologist there (who we met with later on), Danielle, her teacher and mother are trying to figure out if she should be put into a regular classroom when she changes schools or if she should be put on the life skills track, and if so which school would be best for her, East Middle or West. This girl is has a younger sister and is realizing that she is doing harder work than her right now. Danielle and the teacher are both worried about the girl turning to the attention and approval of boys because she is not doing well in school. (7:30am - 1:30pm)
3/13
Today I went to Queen of Heaven to meet a student. This girl has trouble with reading so I will be helping her with her reading skills, study skills, and help her break up assignments into smaller, more manageable ones. While Danielle was talking with her she got the impression, as did I, that this girl is just starving for attention and feels that she does not get enough one on one time with mom. Danielle thought that her problems in school was this girl’s way of getting attention. Later on that day I went to East Senior high and observed some classes. Then we went back to the ALC and did some research on bullying. We found something called the “No Blame” approach. It is a seven step process that involves the absence of blame, the encouragement of empathy, shared responsibility, and problem solving. I think this is interesting because it has the bully become part of the solution, no one is blamed. The only thing that I don’t like, is if I were a parent, I would want the bully to get some form of punishment. (7:15am – 1:30pm)
3/14
I spent the day observing different classes at East Senior High. They were inclusion classes. The one class was a global class. They took a midterm that they had no notification of. But it was just to see how much they knew, instead of what they didn’t know. The class was a team taught class. One of the teachers is a special ed teacher the other is the general ed teacher. They told me which one was which, but while they are teaching you cannot tell who is who. One teaches the subject material while the other goes around and helps the kids if necessary. All of the kids are doing very well in this class. Another class I observed was a self contained class. There were only three kids. There was one kid in there who decided he was not going to do anything and the teacher ended up having to call his mom. She spent most of the time with this student and the aid took over the class. After class I talked with the teacher and after that Danielle and I went and saw her again. The teacher feels that this student is only looking to get suspended so he does not have to come to school. So this teacher and others that he has try not to write him up for some of the things that he does. (7:30am – 1:30pm)
3/15
There was no school today. It was a staff development day, however I came in with Danielle anyways. The first part of the days events involved all the teachers getting together, and we were invited as well, to attend a lecture on “Health and Safety and Our Right to Know”. The next part involved all the school psychologists getting together, as well as myself and a grad student from UB. They discussed the building of the new West Seneca school psychology website. There were some other topics they discussed, mostly dealing with committees and such. After lunch we went to West Elementary where we heard Dr. Michael Cummings speak. He is the director of child and adolescent psychiatry at ECMC. He spoke about cutting. He said it happens in 15% of the female population and 10% in the male population. He said he looks at a cutter in a couple different ways. One, there is a difference between cutting and being suicidal. The cutting is used as a coping mechanism. The cutter says the cuts do not hurt. Other kids cut because it is an experiment; they see other kids doing it so they want to try it too. He talked about how kids are getting diagnosed with more serious problems at earlier ages. He said that’s due to more sensitive screening for younger kids. Also, the threshold for behaviors is down. I was surprised when I heard that Buffalo and Rochester have the two highest rates of teen pregnancy in the country. He said he spends a lot of time saying to his patients you don’t need to be on this medicine or that one. He talked about the average bi-polar person spending eight years being untreated. But he said that early symptoms of it look like ADHD, or just a typical kid being a “pain in the butt”, or a kid having problems at home. (8am – 3:30pm)
3/16
I was at East Senior today. Today I observed a few different classes. One of the classes was an inclusion class. It was an English class and was team taught by two great teachers. You could not tell which one was the special education teacher and which one was the general education teacher. I observed two math classes today. The one math class was a self contained class. The teacher told me that they had been working on the same couple of concepts since Christmas, and the kids still were not getting it. He was going to switch what they were doing because he did not want to keep frustrating the kids. The other math class I observed were all special education students. The teacher was teaching life skills math. The kids were learning how to manually keep score for bowling. He had one of the students try to teach me how to keep score. The teacher wanted to see if the student could verbally explain to someone else what they had learned. Danielle and I also met with a student whom she had tested. His mother thought that he might have attention problems and even a learning disability in math, but all of his scores were fine. Danielle had me read over his test results and then asked me what I thought. It seemed as though this kid was capable of doing well, he just needed to work harder. After meeting with him I still felt the same way, as did she. She recommended getting study skills help, and extra help from teachers, as well as some other suggestions. (7:30am – 1:30pm)
3/17
I was at the ALC today. Danielle was assigned to work on a certain part of the school’s website. She has to look up links and information that would help parents with different issues, such as learning disabilities, ADHD, bed time troubles, etc. I helped her look things up online. I found some great websites on dyslexia, which Danielle told me that many parents have been asking her questions about. There were also some good websites about general issues that come up in the lives of parents, such as sibling rivalry, death, pets, friendship, etc. (7:30am – 1:30pm)
3/20
I went to Queen of Heaven today to meet a student's teacher. I will be working with an eleven year old who has trouble with reading and also helping her with her study skills. This girl is in fifth grade. The teacher gave me the list of assignments and due dates for the big projects for the rest of the year. I want to check to make sure she is writing down all of her assignments. I want to look at her big projects due, especially the book reports and break them into smaller, more manageable tasks. Then it does not seem as overwhelming and then she is not waiting until the last minute to do it. She tends to read more for just the sake of reading and does not seem to take the time to understand or remember what she is reading. Danielle seems to think if we slowed her down this would help. She suggested having the girl read out loud to me to get her in the habit of not reading as fast. I want to tell her that if the reading seems boring to ask questions while she is reading. That way it helps her actively read, she hopefully will remember more and it might help her to pick out the main points. I am going to suggest to her to take notes on what she is reading. This will help her remember what she has read. I also want to mention not waiting until the last minute to study or do the assignment and to find a place at home that is distraction free so she can read and study. Later on Danielle and I went to Potter's Road to test a girl who is in fifth grade. We needed to see if she should continue on the path she is on or get her into a life skills class. She was very shy and quiet throughout the test. Danielle administered the Stanford Binet test. This girl seemed so emotionless, she never smiled or anything. She ended up scoring very low and Danielle is going to suggest putting her in the life skills class. Danielle met with two parents of kids she had tested. I was there for one of the tests, so I was able to talk with the parent as well, with the other parent I just observed her and Danielle. The one parent was rather difficult and did not seem to want to hear what Danielle was saying. She was very negative about her son as well. We then went over to Allendale Elementary where I met the teacher who's class I will be observing next week. (7:15am - 1:30pm)
3/22
I was at Queen of Heaven and I worked with the girl who needed study skills help. She seemed very excited to work on everything. We spent some time getting to know each other then I started working with her and planning out how we should break up her assignments to make things a little easier on her. Then Danielle and I went to East Middle to look at the life skills class. There is a student that should go into a life skills class but we wanted to see which class would be better for her; the program at East Middle or West Middle. The program at East was very low functioning students. Some of them were non verbal. There was one student who had a dog that stayed with him. The dog was there to let someone know ahead of time if the student will have a seizure. We observed the kids in the class room setting briefly then we saw them while they were in gym. The class was split up and some went into the pool and some stayed in the gym. After observing this class we went to West Middle. We could immediately tell that this would be a better fit for the student. This class did teach academic courses. After this we went to East Elementary and met with the school psychologist there. Her and Danielle will be teaching a workshop to teachers about Functional Behavior Assessment. They were explaining what this is and how to go about it. They told me that you need parental permission to do one of these. It was very interesting to sit in on this. (7:30 - 1:30)
3/27
I was unable to be with Danielle today because she had CSE's, and permission was not given ahead of time for me to be there. I went to see the student I am working with at Queen of Heaven. Her and I talked for a little bit. Her big book report was due the next day. She spent all of her weekend trying to finish up the reading. She did actually enjoy the book, which is good because if she actually likes what she’s reading she’ll want to read. She gets to choose the next book she’s reading. We talked about possible books. She is interested in sports, so we looked at stories that included them. She will decide within a week what she will be reading. Although she needs the approval of the teacher. I asked her if her mother helped her with her book report, but she was too busy. It wasn’t an actual written report. It was more like write a summary, write an alternate ending to the book, tell what you like best about the book, etc. Then I went to Allendale Elementary to observe a 12:1:1 class. Then I went to Winchester Elementary to observe an 8:1:1 class. That is the poorest school in the district. I also spent time talking to the school’s social worker. (7:30am – 1:30pm)
3/29
Again I was unable to be with Danielle today because she had CSE's, and permission was not given ahead of time for me to be there. I spent the day observing different classes at the ALC. Danielle suggested different students that would be “interesting” to watch. There was a new student in that day. He just came in from West High. Many of the kids at the ALC already were acquainted with him. He had a problem with a couple students in his art class. He seemed to have a short temper, as he got very angry with a student who accidently bumped into him. (7:30am – 1:30pm)
4/3
I went to Queen of Heaven to work with the student I’m helping with study skills. She finished the book report she had to do and then her mom picked out a couple of books for her to choose from for the next book report. She thinks she will choose Three Little Women. Her mom is splitting up her long term assignment for her, but Danielle wants me to try and get her to do that kind of thing on her own. Danielle and I then went over to another parochial school to test a nine year old girl. She gave her the WIAT-II test. We talked to the girl’s teacher after the test. She is almost done with her MA in literacy, but she said she gave this girl an IQ test. Danielle hopes she misspoke since she said that she shouldn’t be doing that. This girl was somewhat difficult to understand and had problems saying her “R’s”, but she did not qualify for services. Then we went to East Elementary and Danielle and Diane worked on their development of a presentation for teachers on FBA’s. (7:15 – 1:30)
4/5
Danielle had CSE’s again today so I went to East Elementary to be with Diane Marasciculo. But before this I was at the ALC for a little bit to observe a student. This is the first student in that school to have an FBA done. First they wanted to see what he is doing in the classroom and see what the intensity is and how long his behaviors are lasting in the classroom. Also Danielle wanted me to see if I could pick up on what might be setting these behaviors off. He mainly is just insubordinate. He does not want to do his work. I observed him both Monday and today and of course, he was absolutely fine in class both times. When I got to East Elementary I went to an AIS meeting with Diane. They talked about four different students and it was great to see how all of them were working together; the social worker, the principle, the nurse, and all the others as well. They worked well together. Then Diane had me observe a 12:1:1 class. However the regular teacher was out and this one student was acting up and not doing her work. So they had me work with her. She was a nine year old who was learning disabled and emotionally disturbed. She was a challenge. But she said she liked games, so we made what we had to do into a game. All she had to do was copy down seven simple sentences like “The war of 1812 began in September”. She was into cheerleading so I pretended to be a coach and say “give me, then fill in whatever letter”. It worked for half of it and then she got bored with the game, so we changed the rules. It took her about 40 minutes to get this done, but I actually got her to finish it. I followed the class to their art period. It was very chaotic, but it was only the art teacher in there. I felt bad for her, the aides didn’t come in. Also part of the class was doing one thing, and the other part was doing something else. Then I observed a regular fifth grade class. There was one student in there that Diana said to watch. He’s been a challenge for the teacher, he has ADD and various other problems due to a poor home life. It seemed like the teacher was quick to anger with him and with other students as well. But then again, it’s almost spring break for them, and it just might be time for a brake for everyone. (7:15 – 1:30)
4/10
I went over to Queen of Heaven to meet with the girl I’m helping. She aloud for me and we worked on breaking up an assignment of hers. Then we went over to Potter Road to discuss some test results with some parents. Danielle and I had tested her, along with the school psychologist of that school. The teacher of the student was also present. Danielle explained the results of the test to the parents. This girl has a low IQ. Danielle was making suggestions as to what to do with her next year since she will be going on to middle school. The father was having trouble believing what Danielle and the other psychologist were saying. He seems to think that his daughter has central auditory processing disorder and that it is the cause of her problems. Danielle said even if she did it wouldn’t change what they recommend. The mother was at least open to acknowledging her daughters problems and wanted to do whatever she could to help her. When we got back to the ALC I observed a particular student in one of his classes to see his behavior. (7:30 - 1:30pm)
4/12
We went over to West Elementary. Danielle had a meeting I could not go to so I went and observed a teaching consultant. She started off working with two five year olds. At the beginning of the year the kid barely talked, but now, he wouldn’t stop. They both could read very well! I remember I didn’t start to learn how to read until first grade. I asked the teacher about that. She said they need to be able to read when coming out of kindergarten. She worked with a five year old boy who had Down Syndrome. She was working with him on his reading abilities as well. He did very well. I watched her teach a group of fifth graders who had trouble with math. They changed the way they teacher how to multiply number by decimals and she had the kids teach me how to do it the new way. Danielle and I were supposed to go test a student, but due to a miscommunication she was told by someone that I had gone on the field trip with the class I was observing. So she left the school without me. So I just observed classes for the rest of the day until she returned to pick me up. (7:30 - 1:30pm)
4/17 and 4/19: The school district was on Easter break
4/24
I started out at Queen of Heaven. I worked with the girl on her study skills. We did some reading. Her reading seems to be improving. She's remembering more of what she read, and she's reading at a slower pace. She did well on her last book report. Then we went to East High to test a senior high student. His mother wanted to make sure he was ready for college. Then we went back to the ALC to observe a particular student. Danielle wants to do an FBA on him, but every time we've observed him he has behaved. (7:15-1:30pm)
4/26
Danielle was doing home visits and I could not come with her, so I observed classes all day at the ALC. (7:30-1:30pm)
5/1
I started out at Queen of Heaven working with the girl on her reading and book report. Danielle and I went to St. John’s and tested a five year old boy. She used the WIAT-II. The boy was very difficult to understand. At times I thought he was speaking another language. He has been working with a speech therapist for awhile now. Danielle had tested him earlier in the year and did not want to do it again, however the parents requested it. We went back to the ALC and talked about different topics in school psychology. We went up to the office and there was a student there who was upset and not feeling well, so Danielle suggested that he come down and relax with us. He just needed someone to talk to and vent. But afterwards he felt much better and went back to class. (7:30 – 1:30pm)
5/3
We went out to Frontier Middle School to test a student. He was a Boces student and we were testing him to see if he needed to be exempt from his foreign language requirement. He was not performing well, and did not have a passing average any of the 3 quarters. His testing indicated that he should be exempt from it. When we got back to the ALC we were just in time for a fight. The fight was between two girls. While breaking it up one teacher got a fat lip and bruise on his face. The other teacher was thrown into a blackboard and hurt her back. Only one of the students was injured. She had a black eye that had become swollen shut. The fight was about a dog, which was surprising, if anything I would have guessed a boy or something. Danielle never got the chance to talk to either of them because the school had to call the police. (7:15 – 1:30pm)