Addressing the Professional Minority Gap

There are disproportionately few minority and bilingual school psychologists available to serve both regular and special education students.

Ethnicity of School Psychologists

Source: 2004-05 NASP membership survey (69% response rate)

Ethnicity - Percent %
White/Caucasian 92.55%
Hispanic/Latino 2.99%
Black/African American 1.94%
Asian-American/Pacific Islander 0.94%
American Indian/Alaskan Native 0.82%

The United States is hastily becoming more and more culturally diverse. As is seen in the above chart there is an overwhelming amount of Caucasian school psychologists. In urban districts, such as Jersey City, there is a very diverse population in schools. What challenges do we as future psychologists face in dealing with children from other cultures? How can we become more culturally sensitive to their needs and the way that we assess them? How can the field of school psychology make a proactive effort to recruit different ethnicities into this field?

"The greatest distance between people is not space.

The greatest distance between people is culture."

Jamake Highwater (Native American choreographer, author and lecturer, 1932-2001)

This Blog was created by Desiree Antas and Melissa Picariello.

Let Me Get Back to You...

Today I had a parent come to school crying and wanting to talk to us, the child study team, about her son. He is a high functioning autistic boy in Kindergarten. She picks up her son at school everyday and discusses her son’s progress with his teacher. His teacher does not agree with his placement. He is currently mainstreamed with pull-out resource room and a full-time personal aid. The teacher reports to mom her difficulty with keeping the child engaged, seated, and from doing whatever he wants. The teacher comes into the meeting and she’s persuading us to reconsider his placement. Mom continues to cry and repeatedly voices her apologies to the teacher for her son’s inability to listen.

As the school psychologist, the faces around the room (including the principal who’s joined the meeting) are looking in my direction for answers. I know nothing about this child, so I immediately start trying to gather information. I ask mom if she also has the same problems that his teacher voices and ask her how she works with her son at home during homework assignments, transitioning from play to bedtime, etc. Mom allows him to throw a tantrum and then spends a great deal of time cajoling him from the floor with prizes and promises to prepare for bed or whatever is on the agenda. The teacher looks to me and says things like, “I can’t just let him throw a fit on the carpet, he’ll distract other kids, it’s not fair to the other students to keep rewarding him, for allowing him to do whatever he wants, etc.”

I ask for more time to at least observe the child, for the team to evaluate his placement, and determine if there are any interventions that can be put in place. The principal defends the teacher by saying, “You all are here only 1 day a week, we are on break next week, so we won’t see you guys again until 2 weeks…in the meantime, the teacher has to deal with these issues and the student loses out on education.”

I have observed autistic kids in classroom settings, but I have never directly worked with an autistic child. I have read the basics on autism, but I do not have a repertoire of skills to use immediately as this teacher and principal wanted. How do we handle situations where we really don’t know how to deal with a particular student or an issue? I tried the, “let me get back to you” and luckily we were able to convince the parent, teacher, and principal that we needed more time and it was in the child’s best interest.

As new psychologists, do you feel that we have been prepared to handle situations like the one presented here from our educational program? Do believe that your externship will give you the tools you need to handle situations where you have absolutely no hands on experience with a particular disorder and decisions are needed immediately?

This blog was created by Rosa DeAngeles