How's school?

Well thanks for asking! School is chugging along these days. I really like my program, I really like my classmates, and I really like the general attitude of professionalism and respect radiating from the sixth floor of Poe Hall. Of course it's not all rainbows and butterflies, but it's pretty close - and we're painting the giant "Bull Pen" graduate student office soon, so it just might be rainbows!

I'm taking developmental psychopathology, behavioral consultation, and behavioral intervention. The first class is pretty straightforward - learning about disorders of childhood. The second class is focused on consultation, which in school psych primarily involves meeting with teachers and devising plans to help them improve the lives kids. That's the paradox of school psych - that to most effectively help the kids, we have to help the adults in their lives (parents and teachers) because kids aren't usually in control of what's going on in their lives.

The third class, behavioral intervention, is one that I'm pretty excited about because it's definitely the most applied out of my classes this semester. I'm preparing to meet with a local elementary school teacher to do a functional behavioral analysis - basically asking some questions and doing observation and then generating hypotheses as to why said student's inappropriate behavior is persisting (and what function it serves). That's pretty exciting because it meshes nicely with the concept of consultation (how can I make the meeting with the teacher effective when identifying the problem, generating solutions, reviewing the efficacy of solutions, etc.).

I'm also (supposed to be) doing research. I'm on the consultation research team, and for now I'm just reading and tossing around ideas for that scary dissertation up ahead. I'm interested in relational communication - aspects of the process of communication rather than the content - within consultation (for example, research shows that teachers actually appreciate a consultant/school psychologist to lead and direct meetings rather than a "level playing field" or cooperative style of communication). I'm also interested in conjoint behavioral consultation, which involves consulting with both teacher and parents - again with the goal of helping the child. So I'm thinking of those things and where I want to go with that and (I should be) reading the research to see what's been done and were I can carve out a niche. I also wanted to jump in to research and get a bit more involved after my relative hiatus over the past three years, so I'm thinking about latching on to another research team to get more experience and possibly generate some posters/presentations/manuscripts in a different area like harsh parenting or response-to-intervention with a reading fluency focus. Whew.

In my spare time, I like long runs around the poorly-paved neighborhood, watching House with Jonathan, and takeout Chinese.

And if you're still reading this, congratulations! I really wrote it just to get all of this out of my head for a little bit as I think about the research and my plan of work and get the big picture of my life right now. :)