Article archive / December 1, 2012
Originally published: . Volume 4, No. 4. Source pages: 1, 8, 9, 10.
Over 200 school psychologists took on the critical topics of how to help at-risk youngsters build on their strengths and stay connected to their educational settings at the recent Louisiana School Psychological Association (LSPA) meeting in Lafayette.
This year’s annual LSPA conference drew a large group of professionals to examine research and theory about “Resilience and Reconnection.”
The conference, held November 7 through 9, 2012, gave attendees a strong list of experts from around the state and also from across the country to outline state of the art concepts and challenges for school psychologists.
The program also included continuing professional development approved by the National Association of School Psychologists.
LSPA President Dr. Yael Banai told the Times that this year’s theme was chosen because the association wanted to emphasize two important directions.
“By emphasizing Resilience, said Banai, “… the thought was to spotlight the particular strengths that students bring to the table, something that often gets lost in that we tend to look at deficit areas which are in need of intervention.”
She explained that since students are often referred for some problem in performance, either academic or behavioral, “We are obligated to make recommendations for remediating deficits.”
“This year’s theme of Resilience helped conference attendees focus on students’ strengths in reaching performance goals,” she said, “areas which can sometimes be neglected.”
“For some students,” she said, “the ‘solution’ is special education classification.” But, she noted, “… this may well have been used too liberally, as many jurisdictions have been targeted as having over-identified certain groups in particular special education categories.”
“This phenomenon falls within the ‘Response To Intervention’ [RTI] movement,” she explained. The RTI movement promotes focused, research-based interventions “… applied with fidelity prior to triggering the evaluation process.”
“One might easily hypothesize that this has resulted in students being classified as special education students, when, with properly applied interventions, such classifications might not have been warranted,” Dr. Banai said.
Resilience topics were combined with the theme of “Reconnection” in this year’s conference. Attendees reviewed critical issues of youths staying connected to adults, to the educational setting, and to their life goals.
“There is concern that youths who become disconnected from the school community may also become disconnected from the community at large and engage in delinquent behavior,” Banai explained. “… this phenomenon has often been called the school to prison pipeline.”
The association leaders wanted to provide skills to “… promote student resilience and to interrupt or slow down this dastardly flow in the pipeline and to promote reconnection with both the educational process and ultimately society as a whole.”
The conference themes were woven through the three days of presentations, including the keynote address on Wednesday, November 7, by Dr. Phillip Lazarus, former president of the National Association of School Psychologists. Lazarus is Director of School Psychology Training at Florida International University and founder of National Emergency Assistance Team. He has provided direct crisis assistance in the aftermath of tragic school shootings and national disasters.
Speaking to an overflowing audience, Dr. Lazarus said, “Though so much has improved for our profession during the past three decades, our nation’s children have not fared as well. Since I began my practice, levels of anxiety and depression in children have increased dramatically. Youngsters are cutting themselves in record number to ameliorate the pain and stress they are experiencing. Within every four hours in America a child commits suicide.”
He pointed to the MECA Study (Methodology for Epidemiology of Mental Disorders in Children and Adolescents) that estimated almost 21 percent of U.S. children ages 9 to 17 had a diagnosable mental or addictive disorder associated with at least minimum impairment.
“… in child samples, anxiety has increased almost a full standard deviation during a 40-year period,” he told the audience.
Adults have similar changes in anxiety levels he said. “This means that we have highly anxious administrators, supervising highly anxious teachers, who are teaching highly anxious students, who come home to highly anxious parents,” he said. “This cannot be conducive to learning.”
Studies show that the “two most important variables are high environmental threat and low degree of social connection.”
“While our students’ cognitive IQs rise each and every year, it appears that their emotional intelligence has fallen and fallen precipitously.”
He explained that social- emotional learning boosts academic learning by 10-11 percentage points, and reduces conduct problems and distress.
“… school connectedness is positively related to healthy self- esteem, self-efficacy, optimism, and positive peer relationships, and is negatively related to the development of conduct problems, antisocial behavior, depression, anxiety, emotional distress, and suicidality,” Lazarus said.
“We need to have a serious discussion in our country not just on high stakes testing and academic achievement,” he said, “but about the best ways to foster the emotional well-being of our nation’s youth.
“As our founding fathers believed, when we teach our children we should value character first, then knowledge and lastly academic facts. The foundation of our educational system must be safe, supportive and nurturing schools that emphasize character and social-emotional learning,” he said.
“As President Teddy Roosevelt once said: To educate a person in mind and not morals is to educate a menace to society.”
This year’s conference showcased an array of experts in school psychology from around the state and also professionals who have connected with the Louisiana people and culture.
Drs. Stacy Overstreet, Michael Cunningham, Conni Patterson, and Bonnie Natasi, all faculty from Tulane, presented topics to the 200 plus attendees.
Dr. Overstreet, Professor and Chair of Psychology at Tulane, presented Wednesday “Building Resilience and Fostering Reconnection Among At-Risk Youth.” Overstreet’s research has focused on the impact of chronic stressors on children and the resulting risk of maladjustment.
She has recently studied trauma-informed school-based mental health services and is working on developing faculty for a doctoral specialty in Trauma-Focused School Psychology.
Dr. Michael Cunningham, Full Professor at Tulane, presented on “Building Resilience Among African American Adolescents,” following his research on racial, ethnic, psychosocial and socioeconomic factors that affect African American adolescents adjustment to chronic stressful events.
Cunningham is Executive Director of the Center for Engaged Learning and Teaching where he serves as Associate Provost. He is appointed to both the Tulane Psychology Department and the African & African Diaspora Studies Department.
Dr. Conni Patterson, Professor of Practice at Tulane and school psychologist, has taught in the school psychology program and served as director of the internship program. Patterson’s presentation covered, “Challenges in Working with GLBQ Youth in the School Setting.”
Also from Tulane faculty, Dr. Bonnie Nastasi, Full Professor in the school psychology program, spoke on “Child Rights Framework for Promoting Personal, Interpersonal and Collective Well-Being.” Nastasi is an Associate of the International Institute of Child Rights & Development, Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria, British Columbia. She has served as president of APA Division of School Psychology and is currently a member of the APA committee on International Relations in Psychology.
Dr. Alan Coulter, with colleagues Holly Paczak, Ed.S., and Jennifer Koehler, M.A, from T.I.E.R.S. (Teams Intervening Early to Reach All Students) Group, Human Development Center, LSUHSC New Orleans, presented “Keep Your Principal From Getting Fired,” on Wednesday morning.
“School leadership is second only to classroom teaching as an influence on pupil learning,” Coulter told the audience, noting research that emphasized principals’ needs to be fluent in the use of data as a leadership tool.
He noted, “Principals need to know what data could answer key questions, and how to use and array that data to stimulate conversations and encourage actions.”
Koehler told the Times, “School leaders must not only stress the importance of the quality of the myriad data collected in schools, they must also stress the importance of using that data to improve results for all students.”
Coulter, Paczak, and Koehler outlined a model for school psychologists to help support the larger social system changes in their school, drawing from organizational psychology themes and highlighting factors in the changing conditions for principals and school psychologists who work in a consultative capacity.
Dr. Coulter is Director of the Louisiana School Psychology Internship Consortium (LAS*PIC), an APA-accredited doctoral internship. He has a long-standing involvement and interest in early intervention and nondiscriminatory identification of disabilities, and is Co-Director and Lead for Technical Assistance for the national Data Accountability Center.
In their presentation, Paczak and Koehler asked, “It takes 13 years to take a new healthcare innovation from the point where we’ve demonstrated its benefit to the point where it has been established as the standard of care. How long does it take in public education?”
They pointed out that successful principals establish measures based on data, reporting progress based on data, and provided time for collaborative planning with others.
The three-day conference offered an array of other workshops, roundtables, and presentations.
Dr. Kevin Jones, Director of the School Psychology Program at LSU Shreveport, and past president of LSPA, led a “Roundtable discussion of Value Added in Louisiana,” on Wednesday.
Dr. Rebecca Nolan, also from LSU Shreveport, school psychologist and medical psychologist, presented a talk on Thursday, “Medications Use for Treatment of Anxiety & Depression in School Aged Populations.” Nolan has served on the Louisiana Board of Examiners of Psychologists and also maintains a private practice in the Shreveport area.
Dr. John Murphy, professor of psychology at the University of Central Arkansas, and internationally recognized author (Solution-Focused Counseling in Schools) presented “Creative Techniques for Resolving Persistent School Behavior Problems.” Murphy’s focus lies in “emphasizing strength based counseling as a method to both recognize the strengths the student brings to the table and as an avenue to building resilience,” LSPA president Banai told the Times.
Dr. John Simoneaux is a psychologist and trainer from the Alexandria area, and owner of Professional Training Resources. He presented, “Violence and Aggression in School Aged Children and Interventions,” on Friday.
Other highlights of the conference included Dr. Chavez Phelps, a school psychologist for ReNEW Charter Management Organization in New Orleans. Phelps originally came to Louisiana as an intern in the LAS*PIC from Indiana State University. His background includes helping youth in residential treatment facilities, alternative high schools, juvenile justice centers, and adolescent mental health hospitals. Phelps spoke on “Building Resilience in At Risk Youth Using a Whole Child Approach.”
Dr. Brad Dufrene and Dr. Joe Olmi from the University of Southern Mississippi presented. Legal and ethics topics included a presentations by Jim Comstock- Galagan, Executive Director and Senior Attorney for the Southern Disability Law Center, and graduate of Tulane School of Law, and Dr. Wayne Stewart, school psychologist, attorney, and former president of LSPA.
A popular workshop was “RTI [Response To Intervention] for Students with Behavior Disorders,” presented by Dr. Kristin Johnson. Johnson presented to an overflowing audience and followed with another well-attended workshop, “Writing and Implementing Effective Behavior Plans for Disconnected Adolescent Youth.”
Susan Ratterree, the LSPA national delegate and practicing school psychology serving a Charter School in New Orleans, hosted “Roundtable Discussion: School Reform and the Role of School Psychologists in the Charter Schools.”
LAS*PIC pre-doctoral interns presented an array of topics at the conference. Shasta Ihorn spoke on “Multicultural Counseling Perspectives,” David Klingbell spoke on “Selecting and Comparing the Effectiveness of Universal Screening Measures in Reading,” and Erin Leichman, presented “Predictive Validity of the Individual Growth and Development Indicators.”
Also, LAS*PIC intern Tera Bradley, presented on “Using Miscue Analysis within the RtI [Response to Intervention] Framework.” Elizabeth Roberts spoke on “The Relationship between State RtI Practices and National Academic Performance.” And also, Evan Dart presented “Utilizing Students as Behavioral Change Agents: An Example Using CICO [Check In Check Out intervention].”
The annual “Parade of Posters” included presentations from Tulane University students, Amanda Borja, Zainab Siddiqui, Xzania White, Dustin Mars, Heather Henderson, Patrick Bell, Allisyn Swift, and Jorge Verlenden.
Students presenting from LSU Shreveport at the poster session were Amber Easley, Josh McCormack, Allison Fippo, Renee Mobley, and James Terry.
Keynote address at Louisiana School Psychological Association meeting in Lafayette.
Dr. Stacy Overstreet, Chair of Psychology at Tulane, presented to attendees at the Louisiana School Psychological Association in Lafayette, November 7, 2012.
L to R: Dr. Carmen Broussard, Professor, Department of Psychology and Counselor Education at Nicholls U., Dr. Katherine Wickstrom, Professor in Psychology Department at LSUS, and Susan Ratterree, LSPA Representative to National Association School Psychologists, talk with Dr. Kevin Jones, Professor from LSUS. The group worked hard to keep the convention running smoothly for attendees.
Drs. Steven Welsh (L), Phillip Lazarus (C), and George Hebert (R), at the recent gathering in Lafayette for the LA School Psychological Association. Dr. Lazarus, the keynote speaker said, “School psychologists know and understand. We know more about education than anyone in psychology, and more about psychology than anyone in education.”
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