As a new practitioner to school psychology (first year getting paid!), I of course have some trepidations about my skills as anyone working without a net should. A new decision from the Dept of Elementary and Secondary Education from the department of special education made it possible for school psychologists to find children with attention issues eligible for services without a doctor's diagnosis. This has led to a massive influx of attention assessments for me, resulting in a need to be extremely well versed in all the facets of attention and cognitive processes.
I had a student in first grade referred to me for an attention assessment. I sent home the appropriate protocols to the parents and teacher, and did a classroom observation. Looking at the student, it did not look purely attentional. I took my notes, mulled it over in my head and waited for the protocols to come in. I got both in just before vacation, and lo, they were inconclusive. I had just purchased the BRIEF, as I had been seeing an increasing number of students looking more executive functioning than attention impaired. Surprise! The student came up with issues in memory and executive functioning, not attention!
I would not have diagnosed that particular student as having an attention disability, because the evidence was so inconclusive. It was a wonderful feeling, scoring the BRIEF, to find yes, my instincts were on point.
1 comment:
I have read a few things about executive functioning in the past couple years and that more and more students are found to have issues with it. I am pretty sure NPR did a piece on it a couple years ago (probably on The Infinite Mind but not sure). Way to go on figuring out what is going on with your student; (s)he is blessed to have a school psychologist who looks at the whole picture!
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