I absolutely enjoy with working with my School Psychologist (SP). I say “my” in the most endearing way because I have taken ownership of the collaborative partnership we share. The symbiosis is mutually beneficial for both of us. Kind of like Thelma and Louise. I remember years ago when the psychos (as we affectionately call them) and SLPs in my district didn’t do a lot of collaboration with each other. There was so much we didn’t understand about their discipline, and there was much that they didn’t understand about ours. We tended to only come together and share information when it was time to report testing results in meetings. But, those days of separation are long gone. Hooray!

If you are working in education, there is a good chance that you’re a helper. As therapists and psychologists, we are great at making sure everyone around us is well and taken care of. For many, this means pouring from an empty glass. Burnout is a very real situation for many in the field of education. Burnout can be defined as “a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur among individuals who work with people in some capacity (Maslach, 1986).” So, how do you know if you’re at risk for burnout, and what do you do if it’s already happening to you?

1. You read testing and normative data. It’s not every day we work with someone who truly understands a bell curve, normative data, and what makes standardized scores…standard. It makes us feel understood too.
2. Another voice of reason. There are a lot of people that make up a Case Conference Committee and emotions can run high. You provide not only the data, but an objective perspective and cool head.

Collaboration with colleagues within any work environment is important, but it is especially important within the school workplace where students’ academic success is dependent upon the effectiveness of our teamwork. Though there are plenty of individuals we must work with on a regular basis, one of our most important collaborations is with that of the school psychologist. They are an endless resource of information when it comes to diagnoses, implementation of RTI, and even therapy strategies.