What It’s Like to Be a School Psychologist
LISTEN UP Sometimes giving a child a platform to express herself and validating her feelings is all she needs
Reena Rabovsky 29 is a school psychologist at Rabbi Alexander S.Gross Hebrew AcademyinMiami Beach Florida. She’s been working for five years.
My first meeting with a student is usually triggered by…
a teacher referral because of difficulty focusing school anxiety peer conflicts or achievement and motivational concerns. Parents might request that I see their child for something specific — family-related issues that are having an impact at school bullying incidents or a peer conflict. But students often come see me on their own when they need support or if they’re having a hard time in school.
The issues I see most frequently are…
anxiety attention deficits and social-skills concerns.
What most children want more than anything is…
to be heard! Sometimes giving a child a platform to express herself and validating her feelings is all she needs.
You can lead a horse to water… I deal with a resistant client by…
keeping games toys and activities in my office. And they go to good use! Students love visiting because it’s an exciting place to be. One popular activity is Mr. Face a giant face with Velcro upon which the kids can put different facial features to change his emotions. I also have stress balls and fidget toys and I’m fully stocked with crayons markers stickers and crafts.
With resistant students I try finding a topic the child connects with and I’ll begin our conversations that way. I remember one student who loved football more than anything — every time he came into my office I asked how his team was doing and that would get him started. Once he opened up about that it was easier for him to share more personal things.
For children struggling socially it’s crucial…
that parents teachers and the school psychologist work together to create a cohesive plan — home-school collaboration is key. There was one student who was having a hard time relating to his peers and the parents teachers and therapists put a plan into place that included playdates with specific students school-based social skills groups and new seating in the classroom. We all met several times throughout the year and by the end he’d made significant progress — the next year he barely needed intervention.
Even a brief walk around the block alone with a parent provides the feeling of “specialness” that each child needs
If I could give all parents one piece of advice I’d tell them…
let your child fail. Grit is such an important quality and trying and failing helps instill it.
The most out-of-the-box intervention I ever tried was…
when one class was having a particularly hard time getting along a colleague and I created a full-day interactive workshop that focused on friendship skills how to apologize and effective communication. They used these skills to work through their issues in a circle of trust and almost every student was able to effectively navigate some of their challenges.
A big buzzword now is bullying. During my first year at Hebrew Academy we collaborated with a program called Words Count which focuses on empowering students to be upstanders instead of bystanders to take action to make something wrong right: to comfort the student being bullied or distract the student being unkind or tell an adult. One parent was particularly inspired by the concept; she’d tell her kids bedtime stories about upstander superheroes. We wrote a children’s book about it which we then used to reinforce the topic in the classrooms.
Oops! We could not locate your form.
RELATED CONTENT
Rav Chaim Kanievsky ztz”l would say that the biggest segulah to be nitzal from din is to really learn what it means to be mevater
How can we make the most of this time, rather than merely endure it?
