This may come as a shock due to my user name, but I am a psychologist. Specifically, I work in the public school system as a school psychologist. My job entails assessing students with education-related disabilities, providing and developing academic and behavioral interventions, counseling students for social skills/trauma/emotional regulation/grief, analyzing academic data, threat assessments, crisis response, and helping determine the least restrictive environment for individual children to learn in.
It's a busy job. Working in the school system is very frustrating at this current time. More and more responsibility is placed on the school and less and less power is being granted. Parents now expect us to not only teach their children academics, but also teach them how to behave and even communicate. The number of 3-4 year-old students who are coming in not speaking or aren't even close to toilet trained is very frightening to me. Behavior is a major concern as students can effectively destroy classrooms and attack staff without much fear of lasting consequences. Districts are terrified of lawsuits which paralyzes our ability to act. This country has a major parenting crisis that needs to be addressed.
I can't also fail to mention that the number of folks going to school to be teachers has diminished greatly. Many schools are having a terrible time finding qualified staff members. Unfortunately, the job is difficult and the money is not worth it for many.
