Law & Order: Bay Area

In my fourth semester as a School Psychology Ph.D. student, my involvement within the school has gotten real real fast. After hours and hours of observation and practice tests, I am in my assessment placement and working on my first IEP evaluation with a 7th grader. The experience has been nerve-wrecking, but it has also filled me with importance. The data that I'm collecting are legal documents and are being aggregated to the benefit of a real student in need. Although some of my superiors in the field are burnt-out with their caseload or disenfranchised with the process, it is all very new and exciting to me.

Today, I was imagining I was a detective in Law & Order. At one moment I was testing the student's IQ, then (play Law & Order transition sound) I was interviewing the parents about their son's stregnths and weaknesses, and then (replay transition sound) I was watching the student interact with his peers at P.E. Next, I bring piles of records and data points back to the office to crack the case (or in my situation, prepare for a triennial). I even went as far to imagine the IEP meeting to be the courtroom scene where the true culprit is revealved to the audience. In Law & Order: Bay Area, however, no culprit is present. Rahter, the panacea for helping a special education student, which was overlooked by everyone else, is revealved in a eloquet and sophisticated monologue by me.... Roll credits... Created by Dick Wolf....

Okay, I've taken this vision too far, and in reality, I forsee no epiphanies for a child who has been in special education for three years and is only being reevaluated because of a federal mandate to keep records current. Nonetheless, putting the puzzle that is this student together has been challenging and envigorating. And here's to hoping that the newness never wears off! Who knows, maybe I'll get a TV show out of it... (I hear there's an opening on NBC these days.)