Typical Work Week

Many of you have asked for details about my job, so I thought I'd give you a brief summary of a typical week for me. (I'll be writing about last week, which was a bit more indicative of  my usual routine than this one has been.) Quick introduction: I do an academic assessment, Paul does a neurodevelopmental assessment, and then we compare our results to come up with a learning profile for the student we're assessing that day. Once we agree on an explanation for the kids of results we saw, I share the kid's profile with them (so they go home feeling good about how well they did) and then write a learning plan for them containing strategies they should use to strengthen their weak areas. This is mailed to the family as part of a long, detailed, fascinating report about the student's brain function and how it affects his/her academics. I get to do some instruction occasionally, too, but not as often.Without further ado, here's last week:

Monday
I started off the week with a medical student. She failed her first year of med school (we have a partnership with a few med schools in the area and they send us students they think we can help) and her school would not let her re-enroll until we assessed her. Her problem, like most medical students we see, is that she didn't use any strategies for categorizing information. She was attempting to memorize everything, which obviously doesn't work in medical school; there's way too much information. The upshot is that they don't remember anything, so my learning plans for them end up looking pretty similar: strategies suggesting that they take notes, make practice tests, spend time thinking about what things are details and what things are over-arching themes, etc.

Tuesday 
I spent the first part of the day writing a learning plan for the medical student, as well as finishing the learning plan for the student I assessed the previous Friday. Each one takes me between 90 minutes to three hours to compile. I also do a few other sections of the final report, so I finished that up for both students. Then I spent a few minutes editing an admissions essay for a friend of mine (I have enough down time to do things like this, which is great). After lunch, which I usually eat at my desk, I prepared for the student I was going to see on Wednesday, a six-year-old, by reading his file, looking over his test scores, and collecting the materials I would use to work with him. Finally, I did an instructional session with a 15-year-old I'd seen the week before. While Paul met with his dad, I taught him active reading strategies - like highlighting, making margin notes, and filling out graphic organizers - to help him improve his reading comprehension.

Wednesday
The student I saw Wednesday was the youngest I've worked with here. In addition to being immature because of his age, he had some pretty serious attentional/hyperactivity issues. He was very sweet, but we were all absolutely exhausted by the time he left at the end of the day. After the assessment and demystification (that's what we call the end of the day, when we share the kid's strengths/"challenges" with them), I had about an hour left before 5:00. I love it when this happens because I get to start the client's learning plan instead of having to wait until the next day. I got most of it planned out, if not actually written and formatted, before going home, which was great because all of the information was still fresh in my mind.

Thursday
I started the day with two back-to-back report consultations. I'd seen both kids about a month before, and the both families had gotten the chance to review the reports and start working on some of the strategies. One kid's parents came in to talk to me about the contents of the report and ask additional questions, and the other kid's mom called me. Both families are lovely, and I enjoyed checking in with both of them. We also talked about ways they wanted us to be involved with their kids' schools with the start of the school year. Each conference lasted about half an hour. When I'd wrapped that up, I spent a lot of time working on the report for the 6-year-old. His took me a bit longer than usual because he had a lot of different things going on - attentional issues, reading/writing deficiencies, etc. - and I wanted to be sure to address all of them. Then I spent a while editing an article I wrote for our quarterly newsletter. Finally, I prepared for a rising third grader who I'd be seeing the next day, and also for the 16-year-old I'd be seeing on Monday.

Friday
This was a strange day, because this kid's parents had divorced quite recently, and it sounded pretty messy. The poor kid definitely had learning issues - lots of trouble with recognizing and producing information in sequence, primarily - but he had lots of anxiety from being in the middle of this awful custody battle, too. We saw a lot of attentional problems, although anxiety can manifest as inattention, so we spent a long time after working with him trying to figure out what was really going on with him. Happily, his parents behaved themselves much better than expected. We were all relieved when it was over, however, and I spent the end of my day making notes about the third grader's learning plan and looking back over final information about the 16-year-old.

There you have it! As you can see, my day's are filled with variety, which I love. We see a huge range of students with a huge range of needs, and I get to see some of them multiple times; they may come in for instruction, reassessment, or both (or neither). They come from all over the place, too - today I'm working with a sixth grader from California, and I've seen a kid from Florida and one from Toronto!

Again, those interested in educational matters should check out the center's blog, available here. I write a lot of articles for it, though I'm not the only contributor, and I think it's rather interesting and informative. (I am also enormously biased.)