The Thriving School Psychologist: 4 Steps to Better Time Management, Lower Stress, and More Impact in Your School Community--Beyond Testing by Branstetter Rebecca

Author:Branstetter, Rebecca [Branstetter, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TSP Press
Published: 2020-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

out permanently? Only you know the answer.

I am not saying it will be perfect or easy to work toward change in your current district. You may feel at times that your district will not budge on expanding your role, despite your best efforts. Or it might budge a little, but not fast enough to keep you from losing your mind in the process. It’s not unheard of for school psychologists to tell me they try to get involved in prevention and are told in not so many words to “stay in your special education lane.” So, then what? Quit? Bang your head on the wall? Look, if your district is flat out saying they’re never going to budge, then really, there are two options.

First, if your district isn’t going to change, and you cannot change districts, change your mindset instead. Be subversive and just go on and do what you love and don’t ask permission. Find the spaces between the bars. Sure, do your testing obligations, but also make time for passion projects that get you excited to go to work. If you can’t get principal buy-in for a school-wide math intervention program, start one yourself with a teacher. If you see a need for supporting kids with autism by providing social learning support, and your prevention team isn’t down for addressing it yet, go on and partner with your speech pathologist and do a social group anyway.

If you’re a rule follower and this idea is giving you hives right now, keep reading anyway.

Look, if you love counseling, add a therapeutic assessment session at the end of your testing cases like Estella from Chapter 4 did.

If, like me, you want to teach kids executive-functioning skills, use Pillar One strategies to get more “Simply Vera” with your reports and use that saved time to schedule it in your calendar.

Or be like Jen, from Chapter 4, who started small with creating her “mindful labyrinth path” for one student and ended up getting support to turn it into a school-wide intervention.

Find passion projects that light you up and get you excited to go to work. Re-read Chapter 4 with an open and determined mind, and write down one thing you could do to escape your gilded cage, to do more than testing, or make your testing role more meaningful. Chapter 4 is about disrupting your own mindset about limits around what is possible in your existing district.

Now, in this chapter, I’m going to share another strategy: disrupt the system altogether.

We are the Change We Have Been Waiting For

We know that one of the root causes of being trapped in a testing-only role is high caseloads, and that the burnout trap of the restricted “testing machine” role is real. The National Association of School Psychologists recommends a school psychologist-to-student caseload ratio of 1:500-1:700. The national average is more than double that, and in some areas, triple that. A few years back, when I surveyed over one thousand members of the about their ratios, I found that 73 percent of us have a higher-than-recommended ratio.

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