Get School Psych'd

Hey there LSSPs,

Welcome back! This is, for me and likely many others, the strangest most challenging start to a school year of my career.

For those of you who are new here, this is the Region 10 newsletter to provide information and updates to LSSPs in our LEAs. New issues come out on the 1st Monday of the month during the school year with a bonus summer issue as well. I am Keya Saleh, the LSSP consultant at Region 10 and this is one of the ways I attempt to provide information and support for the LSSPs within Region 10.

As an educator married to another educator with a pre-school age child, I know this has been the "summer of no summer" for many. With constant shifting guidance and information combined with continued limitations on travel and activities, there has been challenge and strain. If this sounds familiar, I see you.

Region 10 is a year round gig, so my fellow consultants and I have been working to try and sort through the information and recommendations to be able to support our LEAs the best that we can for this upcoming year. While our building and in-person trainings are still closed for the time being, we are bringing in some amazing webinar opportunities and will be looking to expand our on-demand course offerings to continue to provide service and solutions to evaluation staff in Region 10.

As always, I am here if you need me (supporting all of you is my job after all)

Keep Being School Psych'd,

Keya Saleh, LSSP, NCSP

Region 10 Educational Service Center

In Uncommon Times, Uncommon Sense is Best

From Project Achieve, Dr. Howie Knoff's wonderful blog, comes an excellent article on identifying students with Back-to-School SEL and behavioral needs.

3 Ways School Psychologists Can Take Action to Fight Racism

Dr. Branstetter from the The Thriving School Psychologists Collective with an excellent article on steps to take as a school psych to address systemic racism.

The Dark History of IQ Tests

Dr. Stephan Dombrowski and TED-Ed bring us a great reminder about the history of our field related to IQ theory and assessment.

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 ARD Guidance and Contingency Plans During Remote Learning (Training) July 28 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. The first session of 2020-21 will be on 8/19 from 1:30-2:30. This is not a formal PD session, but rather an open forum to ask and answer questions of your colleagues.

Sign Up information for the session is available here.

Several well regarded and respected psychs and researchers in our field recently wrote and made available the wonderful paper, Conducting Psycho-educational Assessments During the COVID-19 Crisis, that dives into many of the major concerning evaluations during remote learning and after the fact. The article is available for free here.

BONUS CONTENT: Drs. Farmer and Lockwood went on the School Psyched Podcast to discuss remote assessment and concerns.

Link to the Video Podcast Episode

Teams from Regions 10 and 11 have joined together to curate a list of back to school mental health resources. This 1 pager is chock full of hyperlinked resources to help you address students, staff, parents, and communities with the ongoing mental health challenges that are out there.

Additionally, Dr. Stephen Brock has developed and shared a Returning to School Mental Health Risk Matrix to assist with evaulating the level of concern and response for addressing student mental health needs.

Click here for a copy of the Mental Health Resources

Click here for a copy of the Back to School Risk Matrix

The new Texas Behavioral Executive Council (BHEC) is up and running online!

The BHECw website will become a hub of information related to the administrative components of our roles, such as license renewal, so you will want to bookmark and make it available to yourself.

In addition, if you have not yet begun to get them, the BHEC has begun a mailing list to send out announcements and updates. If you have not gotten emails about updates to applications and renewals, you might want to hop on the BHEC website and sign up for the emails at the bottom of the main page.

Are you a new LSSP or Diag? Do you know one who is excited but also anxious to start their new career? Well then we have the training for them.

This Friday (8/7) from 8:30-11:30, we will be hosting the Eval 101 meeting for all 1st year (and intern and practicum) LSSPs, Diags, and SLPs. The session will cover some basic tips for translating the academic theory into real practice to perform your job and not drown in responsibilities for the 1st year.

Attendees can sign up here

P.S. if some of your new staff haven't gotten their district emails to verify their access yet, you can have them make a region 10 account with their personal information and use the promo code 'NEWEVAL' to get into the session for free. Any issues with registration can be directed to me (keya.saleh@region10.org)

We have some wonderful sessions planned to for this semester. With the uncertainty of travel and space options, we have scheduled a number of webinar sessions with some amazing professionals in the field (plus some from me :). Save the dates and look for more information about registration soon. (LINKS WILL BE ADDED AS THE SESSIONS BECOME LIVE IN OUR SYSTEM)

Utilizing the New WIAT-4 for Identification and Instructional Recommendations

9/11/2020 - 9:00-12:00

Session # 2630198

Presenter: Dr. Anise Flowers

Social Justice and Low Income/Economic Marginalization

9/15/2020 - 9:00-12:00

Session # 2630266

Presenter: Keya Saleh

Legal Update and Ethical Review

Session # 2630267

9/15/2020 - 1:00-4:00

Presenter: Keya Saleh

Using the Cipani Classification System for Conducting FBAs

10/7/2020 - 11:30-1:00PM

Session # 2633976

Presenter: Dr. Ennio Cipani

Assessment and Interpretation of the CAS-2 and PASS Theory of Intelligence

10/28/2020 - 8:30-11:30

Session # 2635471

Presenter: Dr. Jack Naglieri

Follow-up Case Review and Application of the Cipani Behavioral Classification System

11/11/2020 - 11:30-1:00PM

Session # 2633978

Presenter: Dr. Ennio Cipani

Assessment and Interpretation of Executive Functioning

11/18/2020 - 8:30-11:30

Session # 2635473

Presenter: Dr. Jack Naglieri

So I have been thinking about the links that I post in this newsletter and it dawned on me that 'Hey, wouldn't it be nice if all of these links that show up every month could be pulled together into one easy to find place?" Well, that idea is now a reality. Presenting:

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:

From Dr. Charles Barrett, an amazing School Psychologist, comes a wonderful dive into the his expertise and experience. Charles is a wonderful speaker, writer, and psychologist who brings to life his examples and offers great reflections to help you improve your practices.

You can get the book on Amazon or directly from Charles' website.

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.

For this months Quiz, we wanted to get a little more information about what districts plans look like as they relate to the needs of evaluation. Please take a few minutes to complete the following questions to the best of your knowledge.

If you are having trouble viewing the survey within the newsletter, here is a direct link to the survey.

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