Get School Psych'd

Hey there LSSPs,

I hope every had a safe and enjoyable Halloween and are ready for Thanksgiving and the home stretch of 2020.

National School Psychology Week (Nationally) and School Psychology Appreciation Week (Texas) are right around the corner, kicking off on November 9th. I want to share that I recognize, appreciate, and am aware of all of you!

That's it. That's all I got this month. Enjoy the useful content below. :)

Keep Being School Psych'd,

Keya Saleh, LSSP, NCSP

Region 10 Educational Service Center

Stress in America 2020 Survey Signals a Growing National Mental Health Crisis

American Psychological Association sounds alarm about potential long-term impacts for Gen Z; offers ways people can better cope during uncertainty

Autism and Happiness

Dr. Peter Vermeulen of Autism in Context provides a wonderful little article for the Autism Advocate Parenting Magazine about supporting the cultivation of happiness for children with Autism and their families.

Cool Off Corner

Our Region's own Chelsie Stout provides a wonderful video tour of a cool down corner and how it can be implemented effectively.

Region 6 has an upcoming webinar with Dr. Steven Feifer on Developing a Trauma-Informed School. Dr. Feifer is the renowned psychologist and author of the Feifer Assessment of Reading (FAR), Math (FAM), and writing (FAW). If you missed him at TASP, here is you chance to hear his wonderful information.

Click Here for Registration Information.

Texas Recovering Together, the state's Crisis Counseling Assistance and Training Program, has released a handy info guide for the upcoming fall holidays along with some additional resources for support. You can access the information sheet here.

To learn more about Texas Recovering Together, click here.

The Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council and the TSBEP have completed the updates to the Consolidated Rulebook for Psychology. IT has been posted to the Statures and Rules page of the BHEC website.

You can download a copy of the October 2020 rulebook here.

The Mental Health America of Greater Dallas association will be holding the 45th annual Adolescent Symposium online this year! The conference will be a one day event on 2/11/2021 with a wonderful line-up of speakers.

For additional information about the conference, presenters, or pricing, click the image below.

For the time being, as information continues to change and get updated, I highly suggest bookmarking and referencing the TEA special education COVID-19 guidance page and general guidance documents. The documents are posted and dated with the latest updates to them.

Current Highlight resource: Special Education FAQ Updated 10/15/2020

TEA Special Education COVID-19 Resource Page

• List of Guidance Documents

During the school building closures in the spring, we started to hold weekly virtual office hours. This was an opportunity for LSSPs and diags to come together to ask questions about how we are addressing the myriad of issues that we will be dealing with and learning from each other.

With the school year starting up, we know that many of people will have ideas questions, and concerns, so we will be offering the virtual office hours again from 1:30-2:30 on the dates below. This is not a formal PD session, but rather an open forum to ask and answer questions of your colleagues.

Dates for the sessions with links to sign-up:

November 10th - 1:30-2:30

December 1st - 1:30-2:30

Sessions can be found on the Region 10 Calendar of Events.

I have always gotten a lot of questions about the books I am reading (mostly because approximately 84% of my sentences start with "you know I just read this book..."), so I decided to start sharing some of my personal favorites that I have recently read (or in some cases, reread).

This month: The School Psychologist as Counselor: A Practitioner's Handbook, 2nd Edition by Cynthia Plotts and Jon Lasser.

I am cheating a bit here, as I am not done with the book, but it is packed full of excellent, current information to support counseling supports that LSSPs can provide. From direct counseling of individual students to systems support, this book has something for everyone looking to expand their counseling game.

One of my biggest goals of GSP is to get information about our Region 10 LSSPs. I know your time is valuable and I don't want to ask you to spend half a day filling out tons of information, so I have settled on what I am calling the Two-ish Question Quiz. Every so often, I humbly ask for you to answer two questions about yourself to help us get a better picture of the LSSPs in Region 10.

If you have any questions or need support in your campus/district, give me a shout!

Email: keya.saleh@region10.org
Website: www.region10.org/programs/evaluation-special-education/overview/
Location: 904 Abrams Road, Richardson, TX, USA
Phone: 972-348-1598
Twitter: @getschoolpsychd