The Last Class

It's hard to believe that we just had our last regular class of the semester. Being able to her from Debbie was such a great treat for the end of the year, especially since I never got the chance to take a class with her as the instructor. The material she shared was helpful in better understanding the Mental Status Exam. The activity we did with the symptom words was really eye opening and beneficial to me because I feel like I better understand myself when I get upset or angry. I have learned a lot of helpful information from this course, and I will continue to learn and grow within the assessment realm of counseling. As I begin my career as a school counselor, I hope to use the assessment tools and knowledge I have gained from this past semester.

Spring Symposium

I had a great time at the spring symposium last Friday, both at the poster presentation and the oral presentation parts. During the poster portion I was able to share my research with a career coach from Lebanon. We both talked about career education and the differences between the curriculum in both countries where we currently work. She informed me that career education starts a lot later in Lebanon, and that teaching about careers to younger students is unheard of. Although her culture is very different from my own, she was interested and intrigued by the way we teach career education to our students, specifically those in middle school. 

Formal and Informal Assessments

Reading and learning about this chapter was interesting because I began to think of ways I do both types of assessments. Last week I touched on the fact that I have given personality tests to students, which falls under the formal assessment category. As I thought of ways I give informal assessments, I imagined every day I meet with students at my site. Each time I meet with a student I ask them how they are doing, which is a type of informal assessment through self-reporting. I do this in the hallways when I see any of my students as a quick way to check in. I also observe students in the lunch room to see how they interact with other students, if they are eating that day, and who they sit with. These observations allow me to gain a better understanding of my students as a whole, rather than by just talking with them every week, once a week. I have also done a genogram with one of my students in order to gain a better understanding of the people she would frequently mentioned, and how each one played a role in her life. 

Clinical Assessments

While planning on reading this chapter I started to think about clinical assessments and begin to process that I won't be using these, so reading this won't be that necessary. My thoughts on this changed completely after reading the first couple of pages as I began to realize that even though I may not be administering these assessments, I will come into contact with the results at some point during my career as a school counselor. I have sat in on meetings where clinical assessment reports were read to the group in order to have a better understanding of the student's life. Also, if I were to consult with my student's outside counselor through a release of information, I might want to ask about any clinical assessments that have been conducted.

Before reading this chapter, assessments such as the BDI and the Myers-Briggs were the type of evaluations I thought of when I heard clinical assessments. I didn't even connect that I have used some form of clinical assessment when I worked with the career coach at my last site, as well as when I conducted guidance lessons on career readiness for 7th and 8th grade students at my current site. All the students completed a personality assessment that left them with their Holland codes. Since the students were in class sizes of approximately 15-20 in a computer lab, I went around to each student, once they completed the assessment, and explained to them what their results me. Even though I wasn't in a clinical setting and one-on-one, I still was able to complete a clinical assessment for 200+ students. 

Intellectual and Cognitive Functioning

Last week in class we were able to complete a sample of an intelligence test. I felt pretty confident during the first couple of questions, but that soon changed once I flipped the page and started to get into more difficult questions. The seven minute time limit soon seemed daunting and just another piece to worry about while completing the test. Once time was called I realized I didn't answer all of the questions; this bothered me because I usually don't have a problem with finishing tests on time. Going through the answers I found that I got only half of the questions right, which was also bothersome to me because I usually do really well on assessments.

Completing this type of timed test made me think of myself in someone else's shoes. This "someone else" may be an individual with testing anxiety because I felt anxious when I heard we had two minutes left and I wasn't positive that all my answers were correct.

Assessment of Educational Ability

Last week the 'Why This Matters' presentation spoke on the assessment of educational ability. I was interested in this topic because I am currently, and will be, working in a school as a school counselor. The pros and cons activity helped me to really understand what the positives are of standardized testing, mainly because I didn't have strong views of this type of testing. Now that I am more aware of the positive impact that testing may have on students, I feel more prepared as a school counselor to be a more positive influence on my students and the faculty in my school when it comes to testing and assessment.

The Debate

The debate in class on March 4th was something that I wasn't expecting, mainly because I thought that it would be a lot easier to debate on biased or unbiased assessments than it turned out to be. I went into the class hoping that I would be on the "yes bias" team, and I was. However, I wasn't expecting the opposing team to have such a strong argument based on statistics and numbers because I wasn't sure how to respond to their points. I also didn't go into the classroom preparing myself to speak so much, mainly because I don't like debates because I don't like debating about things unless it is more one-on-one and personal. As I was chosen to give the opening and closing arguments, I was nervous and fearful that what I had to say wouldn't give much weight to the argument for some reason. Once the debate was finally over I was able to breath easy again and prepare for Jeopardy!. I enjoyed this activity a lot more because I didn't have to argue with anyone on a certain topic but, rather, I just had to share what I knew. 

More Statistics!

I don't really enjoy talking about statistics, so I'm choosing to share my reflection from last weeks class.

We had the privilege to Skype in with a current master-giver of assessments. This experience was really neat and interesting for me. I have never heard about the process of administering an assessment to a client in the way she shared with us, especially the parts when she talked to us about the assessment reports we were able to work with earlier in the semester. While I don't think I will be getting into the testing and assessment field anytime soon, I do know that I will be working with school psychologists and social workers who may conduct assessments on students of mine. In fact, that just happened yesterday at my internship site! I was able to hear about the assessment reports for one of my students who was being tested for SPED services. I was able to appreciate the reports a little bit more after our experience last class because I know how much of a difference assessments make!

Test Worthiness

Reading this week's chapter reminded me of the beginning of last summer. When I think of summer I always think about tanning in the sun, warm days that turn into long nights, and fresh fruit by the pool. While this chapter didn't make me think about any of these wonderful things, it did make me think about how I started last summer with a class on statistics. This class was interesting due to the fact that it was being taught to a bunch of counselors and I kept thinking "how is this relevant to me as a school counselor?"

My question was answered after a few weeks into the class when our professor explained to us that all she wants us to do at the end of the course is to be able to understand how to read research journals in their entirety. Now I can thank my statistics professor for pushing that on us because I am reading more journals now than I was at the beginning of my program and knowing how to read them is a huge skill to have. I am now able to carry this skill over to my work with assessments. 

The Assessment Report

Reading up on the assessment report process wasn't very intriguing to me since I won't be doing clinical intakes in my job as a School Counselor. However, I was interested in the form of an unstructured interview process as a way to talk to students who may come in to see me with certain concerns or issues, such as academic problems in the classroom. 

While I will not be writing up a formal report like the ones discussed in the reading, I may have to read over some that come my way from outside counselors, the School Psychologist, the Social Worker, or the Special Education teacher. Knowing how to read the report is the most important take away from the chapter this week for me.

Diagnosis in the Assessment Process

This weeks reading focused heavily on the DSM-V and how this tool is used in the field of Mental Health. Luckily, from being fresh out of the Psychopathology course from last semester, I am very familiar with the DSM-V. However, I am not, and probably never will be, familiar with diagnosing individuals who come in for treatment. This is mainly because I won't have the knowledge, expertise, or qualification to diagnose clients and, secondly, because I don't want to have that responsibility. I am going to be a School Counselor and, as you know, School Counselors are unable to diagnosis students - although I'm sure there are SC's out there who have diagnoses made up in their minds about certain students who present to them distinct qualities that fit into a disorder in the DSM-V.

Anyways, back to the assessment piece of this chapter. While I believe that assessing patients and clients is completely necessary before actually diagnosing them with a disorder of some sort, I highly hope that these assessments are reliable, valid, and cross-culturally relevant. The chapter touches on the fact that there are some ethnicities who are over- or under-diagnosed in certain circumstances. This scares me because there are lots more ethnicities in our nation than the ones the DSM-V caters to, which is a white American. As the Mental Health field continues to grow and learn, I hope that the instruments we use to assess individuals for mental disorders also continue to grow and develop in a more culturally accepting way. 

Ethics in Testing and Assessment

Last weeks conversation about equality for accessing test preparation really got me thinking about the post this week. I have a strong belief that the standardized testing system, such as the SAT and GRE, are unethical in the way test prep materials are made available to students wanting or needing to take the said tests. I didn't take an SAT prep test like many of my peers did in high school, mainly because I didn't have the time to take a Saturday class in the midst of my club soccer season. Not only was the class time consuming, but it was also expensive. I have no doubt that my parents would have had a problem paying for the class fee, but I felt bad since they were already paying for my SAT testing fee as well as my ACT testing fee. 

Don't even get me started on the GRE! I will just say that I downloaded free apps on my phone to study the verbal portion of the test. I wasn't about to pay 200+ dollars for a course or a book on a college budget. 

The test preparation system seems very unethical to me because I get the sense that it weeds many individuals out of the test taking process. There should be a new system that allows equal opportunity for all individuals interested in taking these tests. I'm not sure what this system would look like, but in order for the system to be more ethical, something needs to change.

The History of Testing and Assessment

The first chapter managed to combine my least favorite topic with something I have grown to dislike over the months of training to be a School Counselor: history and testing. History has been a subject that I have despised for as long as I can remember (and is my worst category on Trivia Crack for a reason!). Testing, on the other hand, has recently presented itself to me as being overbearing, daunting, exhausting, and a chore. To be honest, I'm mainly talking about standardized testing like the SOL's. I understand that in order for the college application process to be competitive and for colleges to have a stronger "edge" over other schools, standardized testing, like the SAT and ACT, is necessary. At the same time, it makes me so angry to see teachers teaching the test rather than their curriculum in order for their students to pass and go on to the next grade. 

This chapter was tough to read because of the countless references to historical testing measurements, but it also showed how much we, as a society, have progressed in our ability to test and assess individuals. The Army Alpha test is a great example of how much we have grown in the testing realm. Since I got a mental score of 11.25, I would say that this test is very inaccurate.