Ten Things We Love About You (Happy School Psychologist Month!)

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.
3. You Give us the 411. We dig into all kinds of cool information when we are building our reports. We assess gross motor, fine motor, communication, but from you we get a specialized perspective on specific cognitive functions and a whole host of other goodies, behavior much?
4. Bring up the hard stuff. When big diagnoses are being questioned, like autism or cognitive impairment, you are the first to broach the subject with grace and tact.
5. Bring the Heart/pay differential. There are other areas of your profession that would pay more, it’s often true, but you chose where you’re at out of a love for what you do and a heart for the families you serve.
6. Show us how to live out a suitcase. A heavy one. You show us how to get the job done, at more schools than people can keep track of. You take the office on the road in all those fashionable and featherweight assessment briefcases.
7. Copy and paste kings and queens-collating reports into something semi cohesive. When there is a multidisciplinary report to be written, you guys bear the brunt of the hard work taking all our pieces to make a greater whole.
8. Consent writers. Again, with the team working together you are a point person for writing consents to evaluate and reevaluate with all the rationale that needs documented.
9. Medicaid signers. Who has to write a signature and date for every single consent for recommended services for Medicaid? You do. You deserve one of those rotating stamps a notary has or a lifetime supply of really slick gel pens.

You use more batteries than the Energizer Bunny: In the search for the information needed to make all those recommendations, you exhaust every option. It may be extra effort, but in the quest for detailed understanding no stone unturned, right?

Author: Amanda Owens