Aloha Notes: My career as a School Psychologist in Hawaii

LONG TERM RETRIEVAL DEFICITS: While a student might learn information adequately, they may nonetheless demonstrate difficulty retrieving it for use in future situations. Long term retrieval difficulties vary from each individual & depend on how the different types of information are presented. When a student experiences difficulty with retrieval of learned information, there are many things classroom teachers can try to support that student. Accommodations : Limit the amount of information to be learned during an instructional session, giving the student fewer concepts or skills to retain at anyone time. Examples might be limiting the number of spelling words to learn for the week or number of definitions to memorize. Provide a cheat sheets for the student to reference in order to compensate for memory deficits. These might be taped to the students desk and should also be available at home. Allow the student to use a calculator during math computation in order to...

It's not my first time out of the country but last month I was lucky enough to visit Japan. I was so excited as it's always been on my bucket list but communication was difficult to say the least. "Speak English?"  I'd smile and ask the (taxi driver, clerk, hotel employee....) Sometimes they spoke some basic words but many times they just shrugged or just "No English."...to which I'd comment foolishly to myself something like:  "Oh. Never mind. No biggie. Thank you though. I'll figure it out. " ((sigh)) I talked to myself a lot in Japan. I was that crazy American tourist--walking into men's restrooms (yes. really), smiling to the air or pantomiming to small children, or buying sour cream when I thought it was yogurt. Oops.  When I was looking for laundry detergent, I stared at rows of identical looking soaps. I couldn't read the labels and I worried that I'd pick one with bleach in it or get the fabric s...

I had no idea what a complex school psychologist meant or how it would be different than my training in California...but it's really not as "complex" as you may think.   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- District:  The statewide school system is divided into seven administrative districts, including Oahu’s Honolulu, Central, Leeward and Windward districts; the Big Island’s Hawaii district; Maui District has Maui, Molokai and Lanai; and the Kauai district. Within each district, smaller areas are divided into 'complex' areas, based on the high schools and all the feeder schools .  Honolulu School District:  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Complex:  The complex I work in is called Kaiser Complex and is in the East side of Oahu. There are four elemen...