It’s School Psychologist Awareness Week! Hurrah! For forever and a day I have been wanting to create a power point slide presentation that highlights what a school psychologist does, how schools typically utilize the skills of their school psychologists, the challenges school psychologists face due to high caseloads, the assets school psychologists bring to school communities, and strategies to support school psychologists.

And then pretty much every School Psychologist Awareness Week, it’s the last day of the week and I didn’t have time to do it.

BUT NOT THIS YEAR.

Thanks to my amazing cohort of Thriving School Psychologist friends and over 1100+ school psychologists who responded to my plea on my Facebook Page for help, I finally created the School Psychology Awareness Week power point I’ve had in my head for at least 15 years.

Why is School Psychologist Awareness Week so important?

Because let’s face it, even folks in our own school buildings sometimes don’t understand what we do all day and what we are actually trained to do. When that happens, we can get relegated to the role of “that lady who tests kids for special education“. And yes, while we are that lady (or gent), we can do so much more…

What folks get in theory (but doesn’t always show up in reality) is that school psychologists are trained to proactively support ALL students’ mental health and academic achievement, not just those students in special education.

For the strength and health of the profession, we need to educate the public and school decision makers about what we do. In collaboration with the participants in the Thriving School Psychologist Collective, we surveyed over 1100 school psychologists across the country about their experiences as school psychologists. We wanted to use real voices of real school psychologists.

School Psychologists responded loud and clear: We are so much more than “testing machines” and we want to be more involved in prevention and intervention efforts in our schools.

This presentation is designed be shared with parents, school staff, and school leaders to raise awareness of supporting school psychologists so we can focus on what we love to do—being champions for helping children be the best they can be in school and in life and supporting educators and families.

Feel free to download the powerpoint, share it out, and make it your own by adding your own slides specific to your school sites. It could be a very cool jumping off point for discussion about how to better utilize school psychologists to have a bigger positive impact in your school district.

When school psychologists thrive, students thrive!

Check out the slide deck and share it far and wide for School Psychology Awareness Week!*

Feel free to download and share the presentation by clicking on the “in-slideshare” icon in the bottom right hand corner of the slide deck. If you don’t have a LinkedIn account, not to worry, you can download all the Power Point slides here or download the document as a PDF here.

*One day, wouldn’t it be grand to have an Appreciation week and not just an Awareness week? School Psychologists: I AM AWARE YOU EXIST. Hurrah!
#justkiddingnotreally
#gottastartsomewhere
#ilovemyjob
#spaw2018

This presentation is brought to you by The Thriving School Psychologist Collective™, an online professional development course and community that teaches a system that moves school psychologists from being “testing machines” to do the work they really want to do: helping children to thrive in their academic and personal lives.

The course provides school psychologists on-the-job tools that they can use to organize and streamline assessment workflow, be more involved in prevention and intervention, cultivate joy in their work and prevent burnout.

The Thriving School Psychologist Collective was founded by Dr. Rebecca Branstetter, school psychologist and author of The School Psychologist’s Survival Guide and Notes from the School Psychologist blog. The Thriving School Psychologist course also earns participants NASP-approved CEUs! To see when a new cohort is being accepted and for more information, visit www.thrivingschoolpsych.com/mentor.

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