a few changes...

Since the last post, I was assigned to work at two different schools. I am at Olympia Heights Elementary School on M, W, and F. I am at Banyan Elementary School on T, Th. It has been interesting to say the least because the therapist that was there before me had not left much documentation and the files were definitely not up to date. I have spent the last 3 weeks trying to get things organized, figure out the school system, and pull the 80 kids I have on my caseload for therapy twice a week. I start at about 8:15 and pull groups of kids for therapy until almost 2 everyday. At that time, I am supposed to do all testing, paperwork, and meetings by 3:15 when the kids get out of school. I am not sure how they think it is possible, but due to the lack of funding in the schools they don't want to pay me past that time. This has been a source of much discussion/debate.

Since I was hired through a contract agency, I am voicing my frustration to them, but in the end, it is the district that is paying the agency...therefore the agency tells me not to work past 3:15 if the district won't pay for it. In theory this makes sense, but in reality I am not going to leave if there is work to be done, and I want to do a good job and actually make an impact with these kids. Side note: the previous therapist had not pulled the kids for therapy for the first 6 weeks of school, so the teachers thought I was the greatest thing when I came to get the kids :) Hahaha.

I hope I don't sound too negative because I am definitely grateful for my job and the kids are a lot of fun, but the politics of the school system is very interesting. I also found out on Tuesday that they are switching me to a middle school in place of one of my elementary schools because they are putting a district speech pathologist at the school I have been at. I am not sure the rationale or how that is fair after I finally got things settled, but I am embarking on a new journey come Thursday. In talking to my young women at church today, I found out that one of the girl's younger sisters goes to the school I will be working at. Mind you, the school is for grades 6-8. She had lovely stories about a kid who had a fresh tattoo (sixth grader) and beat some kid because he accidentally bumped into his tattoo, and about two girls sharing knives to cut themselves. Scary right? I think I was still wearing winnie-the-pooh sweatshirts in the sixth grade. Hahaha.

I will keep you posted on how things play out. Hopefully the kids receiving speech therapy will be the angels of the school :) I can always hope!!

bilingual by tomorrow

I have some good news!! I finally started my job yesterday after 6 weeks of waiting. The bad news is that they thought I was a bilingual therapist :( I am attempting to channel all those Spanish skills I had once upon a time so that I can fulfill my role as bilingual speech therapist.

I am on a Pre-K Diagnostic team that does assessments for kids 3-5 that have been referred for an evaluation. They are also seen by a social worker and a psychologist. All others members of the team are fluent in Spanish, which is not a huge surprise to me since I do live in Miami. When I first arrived we sat around and talked about how we are going to make this work since I am lacking in the bilingual department. I felt pretty awesome since I was only half solving their problem of being without a speech therapist. Fortunately, they were assessing a child in English that day, so I was in luck, kind of...I would bet my life that the child has severe ADHD. Luckily, I was able to assess him first, before he lost all wits.

Today I went to work with a therapist in a different region and actually administered one of the tests in Spanish. That was interesting. As a side note, my Dad told me last night that it was probably about time that I became bilingual due to my current location and that I should set aside a few days a week where Kevin and I only speak Spanish to one another. That could possibly be a disaster, but hey I guess it is worth a try. It just might be kinda quiet around our place...and I might have to revert to sign language.

So, I am going to work tomorrow in my current position, but that position might be changing, hahaha. I will keep you posted.