At the Center: Your Professional Development Playbook

Thank you for joining us At the Center! In today's episode, host Dean Constantopoulos speaks with Dr. Eric Fine, the Chief Clinical Officer and Director of School Psychology at CSES, as well as Dr. Jamie McKay, the Quality Assurance and Training Manager at CSES, about the in's and out's of professional development in the world of special education. We discuss why professional development is so important when building a strong team or program, how professional development can serve the populations we wish to serve, as well as how CSES can provide professional development opportunities to your district. Interested in learning more? Come and have a listen with us here, At the Center! 

Transcript

Dean 0:01

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever time you're listening. The world of special education can seem a bit overwhelming. For families trying to support their kids to district leaders working to balance compliance, timelines, real student outcomes, the processes can seem daunting. But that's where we come in. This podcast, brought to you by the Center for Special Education Services, is here to help guide you through the special education landscape. So come and join us here at the center. Good day to you, whatever time you're listening, and thank you for joining us again at the center. Today we've got two special guests with us. First, we have Dr. Eric Fine, the Chief Clinical Officer and Director of School Psychology here at CSES. And we're also joined by Dr. Jamie McKay, the Quality Assurance and Training Manager here at CSES. Welcome to both of you.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Thank you. Thank you.

Dean 0:59

So let's hop right in. Today we've got a pretty interesting topic. So I know CSES brings a lot of school-based services to our district partners all throughout the Midwest area. However, I know that now we are also starting to get into and dip our feet into the world of professional development. Now I know a lot of people have heard PD, heard about PD, heard about professional development and why it's so important for their position. However, um, in the world of special education and school psychology, uh, professional development has um a lot of weight behind it. Can you tell us uh what exactly got CSES into professional development and why having this um this process is so important for our company?

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Sure. Roughly about three years ago, we were approached by one of our longtime district clients, and they had an issue in that they had, frankly, their social workers were now going to start to expand their job a little bit and take over a previous portion that had been done by psychologists only. And the district felt unprepared to teach that to their staff. And so, would we, C SES, come in and help them with that? And so from that little bit of coaching, then we ended up looking at our staff and saying, we have a very talented crew here. And wouldn't it be wise to tap into our own resources in-house and put together a professional development catalog that we could easily offer uh the districts that we serve?

Dean 2:44

Yeah. Well, that's really interesting to hear. So um we were actually approached, if I'm understanding this correctly, we were actually approached by the district to provide this opportunity that the district itself was unable to provide.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

And that continues to this day in a variety of contexts, a variety of subjects, as we're talking to districts, getting their assessments ready for that school year, somehow or another, during the course of these conversations, it will come up that is there a way that we, CSCS, could further support their staff?

Dean 3:21

Gotcha. So when we're talking about professional development um in a school district, especially in the in the uh in the role of the special education clinician, um, what is it that schools are really looking for? Uh have you found? What have what have you found that schools are really looking for when it comes to professional development? What sorts of needs and services are schools looking for?

SPEAKER_00 3:47

So I think schools are looking for a variety of different things. What we can offer them is support with their school psychology staff. Most of school district professional development days are really geared towards teachers and uh getting them the hours and the PD that they need to renew their license. Okay. Right? We're talking 50 school teachers, one school psychologist maybe. And the professional development is it's very general. So specifically for the school psychology population, what we can offer are um topics that are unique to school psychology, that school psychologists need to be updated on and stay current with.

Dean 5:16

I like that.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

And our access to the research is gone. And to think that professional development that's presented to district wide as a whole, it's not going to be unique to a school psychologist. Uh, while we're not, you know, clinically practicing in a school setting, we still are required for legal reasons, for ethical reasons, to know what the changes are in the DSM. We need to know what the changes are with regards to eligibility with emotional disability or emotional disturbance. And not having that information puts us in a poor position to guide those assessments, make uh thoughtful contributions to team meetings to um guide eligibility and then give appropriate accommodations. So, as the research changes on anxiety or depression or self-harm or autism, if we aren't up to date on what those things truly mean and how they impact children, we're not going to be effective at our job.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Absolutely. And to Jamie's point, by way of the research not stopping, and still it's incumbent on us to keep up with the current line of thinking. Long time ago, easily 15 years ago, the thinking about self-harm, the thinking about cutting specifically changed. And the research was showing that in fact it was not suicidal behavior, that this was a tremendous, a tremendously, excuse me, you know, maladaptive response to pain in one's life. However, the thinking at the school was if a child was cutting, a hospitalization was necessary and it was imminent shortly thereafter. And so the middle school that I was with at the time had sent me to a professional development where there was a very renowned social worker who was talking about how, in fact, right-cutting was not uh that sort of behavior and that it was emblematic of other things, but suicidality really didn't necessarily go along with it. It was really with the rise of DBT at that point, um, dialectical behavior therapy. And the point of the story is that we at the middle school didn't hospitalize then at a high rate for cutting. But the local high school, which had not attended the presentation, did interesting, still send out at a tremendous rate.

Dean 8:11

So really, um, because it that that shows you right there just the impact that having these professional development, uh updated professional development has on the demographic that we're looking to serve. So these kids are we've got kids at the high school for example that you gave. Um, these kids are perhaps experiencing maybe more trauma or more traumatic uh experiences going into the hospital when maybe that's not what they need and they need different services. And it sounds like um the professional development was able to provide sort of context for what these kids are actually experiencing versus what we think they might need.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

More appropriate uh forms and and courses of treatment to be sure. You know, at the end of the day, it's like sending somebody to the operating room with a fever, right? You know, it's it's just it's too great a response. But um, you know, every degree, no matter what field it is, has a shelf life. And so this is a way of maintaining uh relevancy, maintaining a current pulse on what's going on.

Dean 9:23

Great. Uh you know, I this is I know that uh PD is now something that some schools kind of struggle to stay up to date with. It's something that we are have been offering a lot of. Um, why do you think there are so many barriers to getting updated professional development at schools? What do you think um could be some of the reasoning for that?

SPEAKER_00 9:47

So it's it there's a number of reasons, really. The first one is the Illinois State Board of Education has a great system. And I mean that truthfully, not sarcastically, it has a great system to help you track your professional development online. You enter it, it's recorded, it's in. And, you know, you need 120 hours over five years, which, you know, that you have to keep track of that and you have to renew your license. And as I said before, school districts, their their PD days are really geared towards the teachers. Uh, school psychologists have a little bit more difficulty, I think, getting professional development credits in areas that they need to be more fluent on and up to date with research. But if you check that ISB website, when you put in your professional development, you have to choose an institution that has been approved by the Illinois State Board of Education.

Dean 10:54

I see.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

And I don't know statistically, but I'm gonna say 90% of those institutions that are approved by ISB are school districts.

Dean 11:03

I see.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

So if the school district is the only place that a school psychologist can get professional development, they're sort of stuck on a on this cycle of this is the only place I can get my professional development, but it's mostly geared towards teachers. And I need to know the fact that right now in the area of autism, there's a lot of research coming out, and that has been recently published citing the differences in presentation between boys and girls.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Boys are far more likely to be diagnosed with autism, and girls are being underdiagnosed because they present differently. Right. There was a study recently done by Surgoidis, Young, and Weber in 2024 that basically stated that the typical rating scales that are being used may be actually invalid or inconsistent for females, leading to underidentification. I recently had a case last year of a young girl who, in my clinical opinion, at the beginning of the assessment and definitely confirmed by the end of my two hours with this child, was clearly a girl with autism. And the rating scales did not necessarily validate that finding. And that's that's why we need to get professional development outside of, you know, the PD days in the district. I'm not saying those are bad. They're great. Well, sure. They just aren't specific enough for school psychologists.

Dean 12:57

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

So what CSES has done is we have partnered with the continuing uh with the Office of Continuing Education for the Chicago School, which is approved by Isby, so that any professional development that you take with us, you're going to be able to enter that into your ISBE professional development tracking tool without any troubles.

Dean 13:22

Oh, that's great.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

And we have such a wide range of school psychologists who have such a wide variety of backgrounds and experience and exposures because we're not all homogenous in one particular little group that we have a wealth of information and we have practitioners who are constantly learning and seeking out new resources. It's also more difficult to keep your professional education license if you're not NASP certified. Okay. Because ISB does not recognize NASP as a provider, as an improved provider. So we're really kind of stuck in between a rock and a hard place. And I think we've really found a nice avenue to mitigate how school psychologists, not even how they get trained, but what they get trained on, what they get their professional development on. That's more important than clock in the 120.

Dean 14:24

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

It needs to be the right 120.

Dean 14:27

Yeah, exactly. You know, that's it's interesting that you um just going back on what you were saying before um about how a lot of the information is still changing, a lot of the information is new. I mean, this uh this study that you're talking about is just 2024. Yeah. It's just a couple of years ago. And so it sounds like we're still learning uh all of these new things that, and and so um, our clinicians and our school sites really need to stay on top of this professional development. You also mentioned that CSES has a lot of different uh clinical staff that can help uh provide these professional development opportunities, as well as a a wealth of different topics that we can talk from. And that's something I actually wanted to bring up as well, because I know a lot of school districts, like depending on where you are, uh depending on what your general demographic is, there might be a lot of multicultural differences that some practitioners may not be aware of or may uh need to learn a bit themselves about uh before uh completing any professional development. So are there any uh staff members or such that are able to speak to this multicultural uh facet of professional development?

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Yes, we have several because the populations that we service have changed in general. Um, you know, even districts that that may have been at one time fairly homogenous at this point in time are no longer. And so um we have a variety of staff members here who are bilingual in different languages, who come from different cultures, who frankly come from different countries. Yeah. Um, and they contribute widely to the services that we can offer school districts. We have a range of topics that we've put together. We have a catalog. This catalog is always developing. Um, it's not quite cheesecake factory menu sized yet, but um 250, by the way, 250 items minimally. Oh, wow. On that menu at any point in time. It'll take me a little bit to get through the menu then. That is something we are striving for here, but we're we're we're not there yet. But my point is that that menu is always under construction. They always give kind of a rough estimate. And that's our goal here is to always have kind of a rough estimate because with everything that we offer topic-wise, we also need to be able to be flexible enough to deliver services to districts for whatever tailor-made thing that they are asking for. Um, like I said, that that Basque training for the social workers was not initially our idea. Okay. Um, you know, the district presented us. Would we do that? And similarly, we were approached just about a month ago or so by a fairly large district where the 504s, the 504 plans are being turned over from the psychologists to the counselors at the high school. Interesting. And the counselors don't have the background to know exactly how to handle them, what the legal ramifications are, what the ins and the outs are. And so, would we put together a program in order to give them the the skinny on what they are and also how to do the transition?

Dean 17:48

So we it sounds like we are um really open to providing whatever it is exactly that the district needs, as opposed to having a list of PDs that we provide and then being able to like, oh, sorry, we don't actually work about we don't work with that topic or something like that. We are able to address anything that a district needs.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Whatever comes up, whatever their need is, or whatever the needs are on top of the catalog of services that we offer, um, we can absolutely and should continue to accommodate what they need because every district has a set of unique needs.

Dean 18:25

So I know that CSES doesn't just work with school psychologists, we work with a number of school, uh school-based staff, such as uh SLPs, OTs, PTs, social workers, bilingual staff, BCBAs. Um, are we able to provide PD opportunities for more than just school psychologists?

SPEAKER_00 18:49

So we gear our professional development not just towards the specialists in the schools. I would have to say that, you know, in talking about professional development being important for a school psychologist to stay current is sort of a different component where we offer uh professional development to the general school staff on our specialist areas because they are often misunderstood. Yeah. And or it's sort of a service where if you don't need the school psychologist for your student or an OT or an SLP or a BCBA, uh many combinations of alphabet soup, um, you don't necessarily know what they can do for your student.

Dean 19:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

You don't know how you can utilize their services, and you may not know how to support any uh additional um services that are or instruction that's given to these kids to then support and reinforce those skills that they're learned, like in the classroom. You should need them to generalize it.

Dean 20:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

A lot of the things that we present on really are for staff-wide, uh, with more nuanced towards that special education perspective, which is rather unique. And although albeit a smaller part of a school functioning, it's a hugely complicated component of school functioning. And it is one that carries many legal ramifications if things are not done in such a way or in such a timely manner, et cetera. And a lot of the uh professional developments that we can offer really center around those soft skills and nuances that aren't necessarily even taught in a school in in a, you know, in your graduate program. Right. Right. For your, you know, for your education professional.

unknown 21:00

Right.

Dean 21:01

You know, and it's it's interesting that you say that because I know uh just working in a school district myself, if you are in a classroom and you see that there are a number of students pulled every day to go speak with such and such specialist, or and if you're not constantly involved in 504 IEP meetings with this student, you might not know what's going on. You might not know what this student is working on. It would be a great way for even parent-teacher conferences when a parent or guardian is talking to a even just a classroom teacher, they will be able to help explain what's going on when the student is leaving the classroom to go to these services or something like that. I think that's an awesome idea to really educate the entire staff as opposed to just this only the staff that are going to be utilizing uh the PD.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

So, for example, one of our we've two presentations that we've recently Um been asked to provide for uh administration staff, but that would be very appropriate for general staff as well as specialists. And that is how to sort of navigate those really difficult conversations in IEP meetings. And while it is geared toward functioning in an IEP meeting, those skills you could apply them in any setting in education. And really, all of our conversations in the school settings are pretty crucial because we're, you know, we're talking about a student's future. Right. And then another area, we have put together a presentation on presenting results of evaluations to uh families of uh where English is their not their native language. And while that might be on its face geared towards school psychologists, it really is appropriate and applicable to anyone in a district's staff position because we're all having to converse with parents of different cultures. And we have our bilingual staff help us put that together. So we really do have like a very wide range of opinions and experiences, not opinions, but experiences, life-lived experiences of different cultures.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

And we learned a lot by putting that together, um, that presentation, by way of there's a tremendous amount of legal requirements that go into those IEP meetings above and beyond the IEP itself. Interesting. In regards to what the district responsibilities are for finding a native language speaker who is qualified through ISBE to deliver these kind of procedures and explanations to the parents, um, which is not something that we knew prior. And these certifications are very difficult to get. And it's not uncommon for a school to fall short of these requirements.

Dean 24:08

So it really, at the end of the day, we're needing to get that approval from Isby uh to make sure that we are kind of uh staying in compliance and staying uh compliant with the laws according uh to what we need to provide for our students and such. So it sounds like CSES is really getting into the forefront of professional development and able to uh to be able to provide these opportunities to our school district. So I'm interested. Tell me what are some professional development opportunities that CSES kind of has in our in our catalog here?

SPEAKER_01 24:45

Sure. And again, the catalog is wide-ranging. And so we have things like like Jamie said, you know, we're not only psych focused, but in terms of psychology, we have those difficult conversations that we map out. We have uh presentation on building uh positive behavior systems that are school-wide. We work with uh special educators who come in and talk about how to write meaningful IEP goals that are legally defensible and accurate. We have BCBAs here on staff that talk about behavioral data collection, not only the practical how-tos, but also the what for, right? The more analytical parts of that. Um, because regular education teachers get asked to do parts of FBAs or functional behavioral analyses, um, less so the behavior intervention plans, but nonetheless, they need to be versed in the behavior that are happening in their classroom and and how to collect and document it. Gotcha. We also have presentations on like schools that have alternative placements. Not every student is able to do uh public school. Sometimes kids, especially adolescents, can have a psychiatric hospitalization and to come back to the public school is too rocky an option for that year. So there are non-therap, sorry, there are non-public therapeutic options. So sometimes public school staff knows about them. Right. Sometimes they do not. Gotcha, gotcha. We do assistive technology evaluations. Uh again, not every student is able to communicate verbally quickly, and schools are bound under what's called FAPE, fair and appropriate public education, and having assistive technology as part of classrooms is just part of daily life. Right. And they need to be current with what it is. You know, back in my day when I started this 25 years ago, there was something called an FM unit, which was just nothing more than an amplifier. Interesting. You know, it now students have iPads and tremendous, you know, much more technology in a much smaller package than they used to. Um, we also have executive functioning coaches that that are under our umbrella that that can come and talk. And we also have projects, current projects, um, that morph into PD as well, talking about MTSS systems and how to build them or strengthen them in schools that either have a very skeletal system or oftentimes in high schools don't have them at all.

Dean 27:32

That all sounds amazing. So if you and this is a question for both of you, if you had a piece of advice for any school staff or district leaders that are listening to this podcast and really want to learn more about these PD opportunities, um, really want to provide more PD opportunities that are really applicable to the school district, um, how what piece of advice would you give to these folks?

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Dean, when you ask a psychologist for advice, you're opening yourself up for so many other things. But thank you for reaching out to me and asking me my advice. Of course. But on a serious note, um, what I would encourage administration to do is to change and shift their view of professional development. Yes, it is a legal requirement. We must have it. We must get, we must clock 120 hours to renew our license. That is that's law, right? Um, secondly, there's an ethical perspective, which, you know, really should be the driving motivating force, which is that we need to stay updated with the changing landscape of the challenges that our children face. And in the end, it's really, I don't want to say that it's just good business practice, but when you invest in professional development, you are taking care of your staff. And there's a human resources theory where uh you have to distinguish between the demands of a role, such as your caseload, compliance pressure, these complex cases, and then the resources that you have available to your staff, such as the skills, the supports and tools. Well, professional development should be re should be viewed as a resource. And when demands outpace outpace resources, what you get is burnout. But when you provide staff with professional development, you can shift that ratio for them. So you're not only taking care of your legal requirements and you can sleep better at night because your ethics are are working for you, but you're also taking care of your staff.

Dean 29:42

Which of course leads to more staff sticking around, less turnover. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

And CSES is all about easing the burden off of staff. We want to take those evaluations off their hands because there are so many. And we want to give back and provide some support to your staff so that they are better able and equipped to deal with behaviors and MTSS and the demands of the mental health crisis and all of the things that come with being in special education.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Excellent. Dr. Fine. We're just going to say that it gives school administrators a chance to modernize their thinking. And along with that, much in the same way, like the NFL evolves over time. Yeah. Right. And certain coaches who are a little bit older and had their glory years, you know, back in the 90s on a certain system, they they kind of age out. Right. And so this is a way of keeping your team, the thinking in your building fresh and up to date, as up to date as can be, in a very cost-effective kind of way. We have options that are in person. We have plenty of options that are virtual training. And it's very accessible, it's very convenient, and you don't want to get caught in the situation that I personally got caught in in a 17-year public school career. I was trained in legal updates twice, once in either district that I worked in, once on the front end of my career, and once on the back end of it. And in 17 years, it's fair to say that the legal mandates within Illinois and federally changed a lot over that period of time. Um, however, I was only introduced formally to that twice. Gotcha. So it was dealing with a lot of antiquated thinking and was frankly practicing under an antiquated model for the whole district was.

Dean 31:44

So really, it it kind of sounds like CICS is trying to change the script a little bit about how not only we deal with professional development, but how schools look at have school districts and school partners look at professional development. Um, and we have lots of opportunities for them to kind of change the way that they deal with professional development, to stay compliant, to take some of that stress off of the district leaders. So if any district leader or school uh service staff member is listening to this podcast, they want to learn more, they want to uh incorporate one of these professional development um services that you've talked about in the catalog uh with their districts. How can they go about reaching out to us to learn more about it and to uh get involved with our PD process?

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Great. They can absolutely contact me directly uh either through the website. My email is available through there. Um that that's www.csgroup.com. Or you can reach me directly at eFine f-in-e at csgroup.com.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

Likewise, I'm available via the website, and my email address is jmcai at csesgroup.com.

Dean 33:01

Excellent. Thank you both so much for your time today. This is really important information. And also it sounds like it's information that can really change the the trajectory of a lot of school districts when it comes to their professional development, but also just their general knowledge about the special education landscape and what's coming up on the horizon. So thank you both so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

It was a pleasure. Thank you, Dean.

Dean 33:31

Of course. And for everybody listening, stay tuned for next time. Thank you so much for joining us at the center. If you're looking for more information about the Center for Special Education Services and what we can provide, head over to our website at www.csesgroup.com to learn more. Thank you so much, and we'll catch you next time.