2 Comments

1. 

   Susan E. Anderer, Psy.D. licensed psychologist, certified school psychologist on December 5, 2019 at 12:50 pm

   Dr. Walter & Dr. Gotthold – I appreciated your conversation about children and learning challenges on your most recent episode. I agree with Dr. Gotthold that while grades can be helpful in tracking a change in performance and potential interference from attention issues or other learning challenges, an overemphasis on grades misses the opportunity to focus on what really matters – fostering academic independence. Rather than ask about grades, perhaps it might be helpful to explore how the homework is going – can they keep track of it and complete it on their own, do they feel there is too much of it or that it is too difficult, is it keeping them up past a reasonable bed time – these are questions that might better tease out whether there are underlying learning challenges that are interfering with their competence and confidence. For future episodes, it might be helpful to discuss how psychoeducational evaluations can be helpful not only in identifying learning problems, but also in helping students to better understand themselves as learners to re-engage them in the learning process. Children are very rarely inherently “lazy” and this is a red flag that something else may be going on. Thanks to both of you for shedding light on so many important topics and for keeping me up to date on all of my TV theme songs.

   • 

     podped1985@gmail.com on December 8, 2019 at 9:42 pm

     Excellent points! Agree that a well done psychoeducational eval can do much more than identifying specific learning
     issues. The many billions of dollars spent on No Child Left Behind and Common Core testing should have been used to better evaluate the individual student’s learning strengths and weaknesses AND especially to teach our hard working teachers better ways to help children learn, with an emphasis on reading.
     Also happy to keep our loyal listeners savvy on classic TV tunes.