I’m back in special ed math teacher mode. Not that I have any students right now, nor do I have the ability to clean the kitchen sufficiently to tutor. However, I am thinking and planning. As a wise little boy once said, “I think every day,” and the same is true of his big sister.

For my students, I need to be able to figure out as quickly as possible WHY they are having difficulty in math and then formulate a plan. Since I am doing this full-time now (or as full as I can), I should find a systematic way of assessing strengths and weaknesses in various areas… a reasonably-short assessment that covers things like basic numeracy, language, visual-spatial concepts, and far, far more. (I’d be giving too much away to tell you some of the very critical ideas I’ve discovered over the past 6 special-need-student-soaked years.)

I called my father, the neuropsychologist who is ¼-retired and rarely publishes any more, with my idea. I needed not only a respected person backing me, but a psychologist who knows all the tests that are out there and their shortcomings. He’s getting excited over the project, which is very, very good.  He also knows what needs to be done to make it work and has a publisher with whom he’s published his own psychological test that is very much in use. We’ve chatted about it twice now and, now that the demographic has been narrowed to grades 6-12, we are now trying to figure out what specifically needs to be tested and determine how best to do that.

When I was in LA, I started creating a questionnaire for students about their perceived skills in math and other areas, as well as shedding light on the kind of student they are. It’s exhaustive and not the kind of thing that you just add up and say “Ah, so you are a Type G student!” but rather just an indication of what they believe themselves to be capable of and give me a jumping off point on things to start working on, so I can help with some overlying issues right away while I help them with their homework and through that determine underlying issues as we go. But, really, an hour-long assessment (to go along with that) would be awesome.

So I’m using an old project as a jumping off point; I once wrote a guide for math teachers to give them ways to anticipate students’ needs based on their IEP labels. Those anticipated needs could help determine the major areas to test. But it’s old, and I have far more experience now and new things I know to look for, so it’s just a start. However it’s a good, well-organized start.

I’m very excited to be coming out of my “retirement”, since I’d put my teacher-self on a shelf and barely dusted her off much at all for quite a while. Even if this never gets published, it will be helpful to get my dad’s ideas for ways I can assess my students and help them as soon as possible.