Week 4ish....

Ok...is it week 4 or 5???...My weeks are beginning to blur a bit.  Obviously, internship is keeping me incredibly busy, and the Ed Leadership courses are just icing on the cake! 

Internship updates.......

My most exciting venture.....what I have coined in my internship logs as "The DIBELS Project"....is starting to take on a life of its own.  Most surprising (and inspiring!!!) is how involved regular education has been.  Those teachers are working their butts off!!  And unless I'm misinterpreting the data, their hard work will show at our fifth week of progress monitoring.  I've created an entire PPT/mini-dissertation "data collection" (with the help of Mesmer) to track my grass roots efforts at two elementarys.  Stay tuned for more!! 

In addition, PCS has also implemented a "School-Wide Autism Team" (its really district-wide, but it didn't fit with the S.W.A.T. acronym).  We are modeling our program after Floyd County, who apparently has had much success.  I hope to begin training teachers with our "Autism 101" curriculum (in conjuction with the VDOE and VCU/TTAC team) next month. 

Regular 'ole school psych duties...I'm doing them as well!!! I tested a high-school student who had been homeschooled since 2nd grade (first red-flag!), one 5 year-old early childhood referrral (had to use the 'ole "teacher voice" the entire time!), and one wild reassessment that came through the IEP team fishing for a change of placement (they ain't gettin' it!). 

Oh yeah...Am I taking classess too??????  I'll say without reservation, I'm doing my best to keep my head above water.  I love the instructional material, but I've obviously spead myself a bit thin.  This week I completed textbook assignments #2 and #3, as well as the Word and Excel "Mail Merge" assignments. I'm still waiting for return entries from our HR department so I can submit the technology "Standards" and "Procurement" assignments.  Like me, the folks in IT are constantly driving from school to school in our county; so catching up with them is almost impossible.  I have faith these nice folk will come through to help me.

My grand plan for the weekend was to work on the "get-yourself-a-job-in-admin" PPT.  I did do some research on nearby positions for RTI coordinators (mainly across the border in NC); but frankly, Travis needed my attention, and I lost steam for putting the PPT together.  He certainly gets short-changed due to  my constant school/class/project drama.  The good doctor has a couple of private evaluations this week, which will likely free me up to work at home quietly (without acoustic guitars in the background!!!!!)

Crazy busy...but loving every minute of it!!!!!  

Best to you all!! 

-RH

Week 3...and a little bit of 4th...

OK...trying to keep all of this together...internship, classes, DIBELS research, yadda, yadda...

This week: elicited other PCS employee expertise for the technology "standards", "criteria", and "procurement" assignments.  All interviews on all topics have been conducted.  Many technology folk are itinerant like myself, so hooking up with them across the great PCS "divide" is close to impossible. Final submission on those assignments will hopefully occur on Monday afternoon. 

My textbook finally arrived, so I began the second and third chapters.  Assignments and quizzes on both to be submitted on Monday afternoon.  More later...

EDEL 624: Weeks 1 and 2

It's going to be a very busy year! 

In addition to beginning my internship at PCS, I am also completing the certificate program in Educational Leadership (18 more hours of financial aid!!).  After completing two of the required courses this summer, I enrolled in two more for the Fall semester.  This blog will record my weekly efforts in one of these courses -  EDEL 624:  Technology for Administrators. 

As soon as EDEL 624 was posted in D2L, I hit the ground running .  During Week 1, I completed all of the "pre-course" requirements including:  reviewing the online orientation; submitting the student survey; posting my picture in D2L (technically, this was done over the summer!); and creating the course pacing guide.  During Week 2, I submitted assignments involving technology legislation and funding.  All submissions thus far have recieved positive feedback. 

So far I am facing only one issue...where the heck is the textbook I ordered?