MacGyver Psychology

Assessing the needs of children where schools don’t have access to the kind of tools I’m used to having in the first world is proving to be a journey in itself. I was once told by a mentor of mine that school psychology is as much of an art as it is a science. 

With Escuelita Nazareth’s tight budget, asking for norm-referenced cognitive assessments or subscriptions to testing software is like asking for the moon. This means my practice has had to emphasize the “art” part of the field. Observations become more detailed, parent interviews regarding a child’s behavior and academics begin to carry more weight, and individual test items (for what they are) are scrutinized for suggestions of disorders like dyslexia or dyscalculia. 

It’s working conditions such as this that bring up the question: how many issues in countries like this would be mitigated if access to psychological services was as good as it is in richer countries?

Guadalupe waiting for assessment