Highland ES Full-Time Psychologist: A Year in the Life…�Columbus City Schools 

BY DESIREE NUTT, M.A., ED.S.

Leadership

• For a building to benefit the most from a full-time psychologist position, administration allows the psychologist to step into building leadership and climate/culture roles.
• Some of those roles include: 
• Building Leadership Team Member
• PBIS Team Member
• MTSS Coordinator/Co-Coordinator
• Crisis Team Member
• Grade level team member to provide supports for broad grade level interventions based on building data
• Regularly helping with conflict resolution between students
• Leading Social Emotional groups based on a curriculum such as PATHS, Zones of Regulation, and/or Mind-Up, etc.
• Facilitating and connecting with community partners about building data and needs. 
• Facilitating academic intervention groups

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Impact

• My typical week includes, on average, a case load of 60 students in a small group setting or individually. 
• 24 students three times per week in small group SPIRE intervention
• 20 students in social-emotional groups (ROX, Zones of Regulation) once per week
• 6 students for 1:1 social-emotional regulation check-in/check-out daily
• 10 students on social-emotional check-ins that have high mental health needs, at least weekly (often more). 

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In addition to the 60, I cofacilitate Zones of Regulation classroom lessons in ED Resource Rooms weekly with classroom teacher, social worker, and school counselor so our students build relationships with each of us to help with crisis regulation (24 student current enrollment in ED here.)

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Teamwork

Teamwork

• The full-time psychologist position really is the dream when you are part of a cohesive team. 
• Teamwork isn't always easy, but it is absolutely a necessity as you will become immersed in all three Tiers of support.
• You are guaranteed to have disagreements, working through them is crucial. Conflict is normal, there's always room for growth for all parties and growing isn’t easy. 
• Communication is key; everyone having a voice and feeling heard  and supported is key to changing building climate and culture. 

Getting to Know Highland…

• -Fall iReady Reading Benchmark Assessment- 158/270 (58%) students 2 or more grade levels below in reading (typical enrollment is usually around 340).

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Getting to Know Highland…

• -Winter i-Ready Reading Benchmark Assessment- 147/290 (49.5%) students 2 or more grade levels below in reading (typical enrollment is usually around 340).

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• Of the 147, only 33 of those students (22%) are already identified and receiving special education services. This is why intervention has never been more important in our district; Highland's circumstances, and data snapshot, are not unique in our district. 

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Getting to Know Highland…

• 183 students receiving Tier 2/3 PBIS supports
• 26 students currently connected to outside counseling agencies
• 73 counseling referrals made-1/3 follow through with connection, those students unconnected fall on support staff for more frequent crisis intervention and emotional regulation. 
• 33 students receiving intensive Tier 3 behavioral supports outside of SpEd Placement (three ED units in building)

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Increase of Mental Health Needs

• Pre-Pandemic, 2019-2020     
• October 2019 Highland SOS: 24 students needed triage, 3 students needed risk assessments 
• There were 22 Risk Assessments for 19 students at Highland. 5 students seen at NCH psychiatric crisis department. One student inpatient at NCH. 
• 74 counseling referrals made by Highland staff 

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•  Current Year, 2021-2022 
• October 2021 Highland SOS: 31 students needed triage, 5 of these students needed to be triaged both days of SOS, 6 students needed risk assessments, 1 went to NCH crisis department 
• 61 Risk Assessments for 47 students at Highland to date, grades 1-5. A total of 9 students seen at NCH psychiatric crisis department, one student seen there twice—38 risk assessments since winter break. 

Highland Tiered Support

• 48 students referred to MTSS. 
• So far, only 17/48 has progressed to suspecting a disability. 
• Keep in mind, as of January 2022, 147 students are two or more grade levels below in reading in the building—supporting TBT, BLT, and being available for frequent consult for teachers has drastically reduced the referrals to MTSS and for evaluation.

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Evaluations/Assessments (more may be added by EOY)

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Highland PBIS Overhaul

• So we did something a little crazy…

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• We completely scratched previous PBIS system and created a new one and didn’t get it fully rolled out until late October of this year. 

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• Highland fully adopted the restorative justice model for our building PBIS

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Restorative Practices at Highland

• What does this mean? 
• Morning Meetings/Restorative circles in each classroom every morning
• Restorative circles facilitated by admin and/or support staff for staff-student and student-student conflict resolution and disciplinary referrals. 
• Building wide PBIS celebrations of community for Tier 1 celebrations, there is no contingency attached. We celebrate everyone, every quarter—staff too– to build a community our students are proud of and want to protect. No one is to ever be excluded for any reason. 
• Very few rules, only rules are set around safety and respect towards others—Framed as what we should do rather than what isn’t allowed. Connect-Care-Repair. We also separated procedures from labeling of characteristic values. 
•  Focusing on equity with discipline regarding race, gender, and special education. 
• Created suspension re-entry plan with restorative measures so students come back in knowing they have a clean slate. 

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Restorative Practices at Highland

The Dynamic Trio

The Dynamic Trio

• Highland is the only elementary building in the district with a full-time social worker, psychologist, and counselor and we are still spread thin! 
• We have open communication and a daily “Check-Out” with each other to communicate student crises intervened and outcomes, so we are all always on the same page. 
• We co-facilitate restorative practices/circles for student-student and student-staff conflict resolution as part of the building PBIS discipline plan. We often co-facilitate therapeutic groups (grief, anger management, coping skills, etc).
• A great working relationship with your support staff is key in managing behaviors, crises, and a true supportive and inclusive PBIS system. 

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Psych PBIS Responsibilities

Building Leadership Team-Psych Responsibilities

Psych TBT Support

DIBELS for K-3

• Authentic assessment data to accompany benchmark data from i-Ready. 
• Allows for better creation of needed interventions for struggling students. 
• Even students that may perform well on receptive assessment (i-Ready) may struggle when it’s put into context. (Ex: i-Ready shows that our student population has a great grasp on sight words; however, Highland data for oral reading fluency on DIBELS indicates the sight words are being missed in context within a passage.)
• Teachers love easy, admin love free— it’s easy buy-in from teachers when the progress monitoring for an intervention takes literally one minute every two weeks– admin love that it costs zero dollars. 

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Ruling Our Experiences (ROX)

• 10 Fifth grade girls
• Co-facilitated with SSW
• 22 lessons long
• Focus on self-esteem, body image, healthy relationships, social media, assertive rights, verbal self-defense and physical self-defense. 
• During 5^th grade lunch/recess block

 Zones of Regulation

• Four small groups ran, Two third grade and two second grade groups
• Classroom ZOR weekly lessons in ED classrooms and fourth grade-Rolling out building wide 2022-2023 school year
• Dynamic trio collaborating on creating a curriculum that combines Mind Up and ZOR broken down by grade to roll out for next year for our building as part of 250 hour project. 

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SPIRE Academic Intervention Groups

• Had 24 students in intervention groups and or individual 1:1 academic intervention caseload (across grades 2 & 3) throughout the course of the year that were identified as being Tier 3 from I-Ready assessment in Phonics and Phonemic Awareness. 
• A total of 6/24 students moved to referral for identification; A total of 18/24 were able to make sufficient gains to continue intervention monitoring. 

Wrapping it up...

• I have never felt more tired but more fulfilled. It's amazing to feel like I can  make progress and impact with students instead of treading water. 

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• It's not a "me" thing, it's a "we" thing. Yes, I get to do more projects, but it’s the impact of making a stronger collaborative building team that truly makes the difference for our students and ultimately changes climate and culture to a growth mindset. 

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Acknowledgements

• Highland teachers and staff for working so collaboratively to meet the needs of students. There is an amazing passion here among staff that’s contagious, even when they're tired. 

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• Psychologist supervisors and Dr. Mikki Nelson for making this opportunity a possibility. THANK YOU for advocating our full spectrum of supports we are available to offer! 

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• I truly believe that each psychologist in our department could have an equal impact with one building and will continue to work to advocate to make this a possibility because it is what Columbus City students deserve! 

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