Well, it’s gonna be 70 degrees today… this has got to be the weirdest, warmest, winter I can recall. Not that I’m complaining, but it’s also very dry. We could use a lot of rain, or even a nice snow to help us catch up.
Today I’m working on writing a report for the first evaluation I’ve done “in the field”. Reports “marry” all the information together that you’ve collected on a kid - information gained through observation, interview, testing, review of school records - and hopefully, help explain why this child may or may not have a learning problem. Unless the school district has a standard report form, every psychologist does a report differently. Some are 20-30 pages long. Some are 2 pages long. Even different professors at school have different ways they want you to do reports. But whatever kind of report you do, the bottom line in any report is, does this kid have a problem, and does this problem affect the kid’s academic efforts.
A bright, engaging student I worked with recently has problems visually processing information. One of the consequences of that is that he’s a poor reader – but I know once we can help his very capable teacher figure out ways to help him adapt, he’ll shine. I thought about what might have happened to this child had he been in elementary school back in the 60’s when I was. Kids then were often labeled everything from lazy to mentally retarded, if not “officially”, then certainly unofficially by classmates. One student in my 3rd grade class was relegated to the back of the classroom by the coat closets for a whole year and socially ostracized because he was unable to read, and thus, unable to perform well in school. We assumed he was “stupid”. I’ve always wondered what happened to him.
1 comment:
In our fifth grade, the teacher had the "good" students in rows 3,4, and 5,and the "stupid" students in rows 1 and 2.
Pity the ones in 1 and 2. I felt badly for them then, and still do.
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