i'm a school psychologist

i'm a school psychologist. "oh, so you can analyze my brain right now, huh?" "that's cool, so you're like a school counselor, right?" "so you must do a lot of therapy then..." these are the typical responses to the first statement. not many people actually know what i do. i don't think the people in the next office really know what i do. in fact, i didn't even know school psychologist's existed until about 6 years ago.
my friend's husband got me interested in the field (thanks Rob!). to be honest, i researched it and talked to many people, but i still didn't know what i was in for until my internship.
this is my first year doing what i do. so...what DO i do? i guess that is why i'm writing on this blog. but to put it in a nutshell, i work with students, parents, teachers, and school administration to make sure every student is learning to their potential. when they're not, due to learning difficulties, behaviors, or environmental factors, i also play a role in determining if they would be eligible for special education services. i do a lot of assessing for processing disorders and other things like emotional disturbance or autism. the catch is that school psych's go by california education code, and lot's of other clinicians go by the DSM-IV criteria...
anyways, this will be an interesting experiment - writing on this blog. it's mainly to be able to sort out my daily infusion of intense situations. i think if i get the stuff in my head out, then i will be able to function a bit better after 4pm. cause at the rate i'm going, i feel supremely overwhelmed with all the different student cases re-playing in my head from the past few months.
so my first step was to start this blog. my next step is to have a brain dump...when i have some more time. for now, i'm putting a bunch of websites here so i can remember them later:
alert.com
parentmagic.com
pent.ca.gov
interventioncentral.org
sparktop.org
feat.org
cfchildren.org
save.org
pbis.org
positivediscipline.com
worldstrides.org