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Say Something Random II - Eclectic Depression


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Another one here who deffo has work related imposter syndrome. Sometimes I feel like a total fraud, but in actuality turns out I might actually know my sh!t.

 

Someone once told me if you have imposter syndrome it probably means you're really good at what you do. Being self critical is an important part of getting better at whatever skill you're trying to develop, right?

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It's part of the growth process. I worry everyday about things I do. My job is about giving your kids a good education but I have self-doubt all the time. I can't sleep at night thinking about the thing I could've done differently or how in over my head I am. I don't think I experience the anxiety levels you all are getting but I worry every day someone from the office like the principal will walk in on me and find mass pandemonia going on and me in the corner just trying to breath. But I actually am known for my noisier classroom because kids are experiencing and learning - I do a lot of project math work that incorporates science and language arts. The week before final exams for my fifth graders we learned about lumens and I had a borrowed special tool that measures the the amount of light coming from different sources. We were graphing and making hypothesis about what would have the most lumens. I had cardboard boxes all over the classroom with black cloth on the side covering a hole and a lamp with different types of lightbulbs in them as well as measuring other types of light (I had a camp lantern which required supervision and we had to turn the lights in the classroom for that one). I brought up topics like the speed of light and talked about how the light works in eyes throughout the week and I had the radiometer that was the old style one on display (it has fans painted black and white and spins depending on the light). Anyways. I just wanna say, you guys are human and I loves you.

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I believe I also grapple with this imposter syndrome thing, if I have even understood the premise correctly. Which appears to be that line between destructive self-doubt and healthy humility. I suppose it might be one of the reasons Im awkwardly explanatory and open about things, or it could be my initial British upbringing, I dont know.

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(some) Evangelicals Bibles must read like this:

 

The Book of Muricus

 

The Lord so says that cakes are holy, do not befoul the flour with those that diddle similar flowers, nor those that wonder if they even have the right bouquet.

 

Go forth and preach the Lords message of love and forgiveness. Hold others accountable, even if they cannot count, hold nothing against yourself regardless of your completed grade level.

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So. Got Noah's test scores from his dyslexia testing back finally. He's not dyslexic, but his scores were all over the place. They gave him the Woodcock-Johnson (I KNOW, RIGHT?!?) Tests of Cognitive Abilities 4th Edition. His processing speed is super-low (10th percentile), but his fluid reasoning was 99th percentile. And the rest of the scores run the gamut between the two. I would think that scores would be more "clustered". Like...where, exactly, on the bell curve does this kid land? Because frankly, he is the damn bell curve.

 

 

They also gave him the Woodcock-Johnson Test of Achievement, but I'm less concerned with those because we don't follow the standard learning sequence that most public schools do, so it's no real surprise that he had some lower scores in there. But his scores are all over the place nonetheless. In fact, it seems the more complex the task being measured, the higher he scored. Wtf is that?

 

But we also discovered that he has a "hidden vision disability". His vision is near-perfect, until you dilate his eyes so he cannot force them to focus. Then out pops this need for reading glasses. So how much does this affect all of these scores.

Oh...and apparently he completely opted out of all the writing tests. He just didn't do them. :rolleyes::confused:

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Any of you guys ever deal with impostor syndrome at work (or anywhere else I guess)? I've been in my current position for over a year, and sometimes I still don't know how I got here. A lot of the time I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing, and any minute now they're going to figure it out. Today in a meeting, one of the people a level above me announced she's transitioning to another department, so we're gonna have to take over some of her tasks soon--some of which I was called out in the meeting as having the most experience on. Really felt put on the spot and goddamn, that was scary. I mean good too, cuz I'd definitely like to learn more and move up, but then sometimes I feel like I can barely can't to five without using both hands.

 

Got a little rambly there, sorry about that. Just hoping it's not just me that gets this way, I guess.

 

This is me every damn day. I keep expecting someone to realize they made a mistake.

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Two weeks ago I went to Arizona to both visit my parents, and because one of my best friends, who moved to Tennessee, came back to visit his AZ family. I hadn't seen him in about a decade. It was the first time he and Katie met, and first time he got to meet my kids, and the first time I'd seen his daughter since she was literally a week old. Hanging out with him and his older brother, my other best friend, for the first time with all three of us together in so long was such a great time.

 

His neighbor just found him dead this morning. Likely OD. This is the second drug related death, and third early death (infant to another sibling) in the last four years for that family.

 

It's 7 AM, I'm at work, it's Katie's 40th birthday, and we're going to Big Bear today to stay for a couple nights. I have absolutely no idea how to process this.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Sorry to hear this Krawlie. Much like what Brando said, I can't seem to think of anything that isn't a platitude, but I do genuinely feel bad for you.

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So. Got Noah's test scores from his dyslexia testing back finally. He's not dyslexic, but his scores were all over the place. They gave him the Woodcock-Johnson (I KNOW, RIGHT?!?) Tests of Cognitive Abilities 4th Edition. His processing speed is super-low (10th percentile), but his fluid reasoning was 99th percentile. And the rest of the scores run the gamut between the two. I would think that scores would be more "clustered". Like...where, exactly, on the bell curve does this kid land? Because frankly, he is the damn bell curve.

 

 

They also gave him the Woodcock-Johnson Test of Achievement, but I'm less concerned with those because we don't follow the standard learning sequence that most public schools do, so it's no real surprise that he had some lower scores in there. But his scores are all over the place nonetheless. In fact, it seems the more complex the task being measured, the higher he scored. Wtf is that?

 

But we also discovered that he has a "hidden vision disability". His vision is near-perfect, until you dilate his eyes so he cannot force them to focus. Then out pops this need for reading glasses. So how much does this affect all of these scores.

 

Oh...and apparently he completely opted out of all the writing tests. He just didn't do them. :rolleyes::confused:

This makes a lot of sense. I am going to assume he scored lower on his math fluency score than his problem solving score. The fluency test is timed (do as many one digit problems as you can in 1 min) and the problem solving is kind of untimed. Basically this says he can do the work, but just needs more time. This is supported by him scoring in the 10th %tile in processing speed.

 

With scores of both the 99%tile and 10%tile, the composite score is almost worthless for any practical purpose. With that said, look up twice exceptional students, (or 2e or multi-exceptional) students whom are gifted with a learning disability.

 

I looked up your district (I am assuming Harris County) GT identification, and their qualification for GT is VERY archaic and outdated. GT identification generally comes with additional funding for a student. It is almost as if they don't want to qualify students.

 

https://www.nagc.org/resources-publications/resources-parents/twice-exceptional-students

 

This site is a bit bloggy and uses some non-academic terms I HATE and cringe when I hear them (neuro-typical), but overall is a good summary.

 

https://sethperler.com/child-2e-twice-exceptional-ultimate-guide/

 

As far as retesting due to the vision issue, I doubt this had any real impact since students are allowed breaks between subtests. I might be worried if he did both tests on the same day.

 

Yeah, the WJ writing section sucks. Any signs of dysgraphia?

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So. Got Noah's test scores from his dyslexia testing back finally. He's not dyslexic, but his scores were all over the place. They gave him the Woodcock-Johnson (I KNOW, RIGHT?!?) Tests of Cognitive Abilities 4th Edition. His processing speed is super-low (10th percentile), but his fluid reasoning was 99th percentile. And the rest of the scores run the gamut between the two. I would think that scores would be more "clustered". Like...where, exactly, on the bell curve does this kid land? Because frankly, he is the damn bell curve.

 

 

They also gave him the Woodcock-Johnson Test of Achievement, but I'm less concerned with those because we don't follow the standard learning sequence that most public schools do, so it's no real surprise that he had some lower scores in there. But his scores are all over the place nonetheless. In fact, it seems the more complex the task being measured, the higher he scored. Wtf is that?

 

But we also discovered that he has a "hidden vision disability". His vision is near-perfect, until you dilate his eyes so he cannot force them to focus. Then out pops this need for reading glasses. So how much does this affect all of these scores.

 

Oh...and apparently he completely opted out of all the writing tests. He just didn't do them. :rolleyes::confused:

This makes a lot of sense. I am going to assume he scored lower on his math fluency score than his problem solving score. The fluency test is timed (do as many one digit problems as you can in 1 min) and the problem solving is kind of untimed. Basically this says he can do the work, but just needs more time. This is supported by him scoring in the 10th %tile in processing speed.

 

With scores of both the 99%tile and 10%tile, the composite score is almost worthless for any practical purpose. With that said, look up twice exceptional students, (or 2e or multi-exceptional) students whom are gifted with a learning disability.

 

I looked up your district (I am assuming Harris County) GT identification, and their qualification for GT is VERY archaic and outdated. GT identification generally comes with additional funding for a student. It is almost as if they don't want to qualify students.

 

https://www.nagc.org/resources-publications/resources-parents/twice-exceptional-students

 

This site is a bit bloggy and uses some non-academic terms I HATE and cringe when I hear them (neuro-typical), but overall is a good summary.

 

https://sethperler.com/child-2e-twice-exceptional-ultimate-guide/

 

As far as retesting due to the vision issue, I doubt this had any real impact since students are allowed breaks between subtests. I might be worried if he did both tests on the same day.

 

Yeah, the WJ writing section sucks. Any signs of dysgraphia?

 

YES. Harris county is perhaps one of the worst in the state. They do not want to spend the dollars on this.

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Harris County has a million school districts. We're not in HISD. We're technically in Cypress-Fairbanks ISD. They tested him into the gifted program halfway through kindergarten, but we pulled him to homeschool before 1st grade. I'm not a fan of gifted pull-out programs in general.

Noah's results said that he tested positive for a "specific learning disability", but they gave no indication of what that learning disability is. They also gave me a list of suggested accommodations that are pretty useless for a homeschooler. Mostly it was a lot of "extra time to complete assignments" and "allow student to complete work at home". Nothing that we don't already do. So I'm unsure of what to do now.

I have a friend who has a lot of experience with 2e kids (she has 3 of them) plus a degree in psychology and special education or something along those lines. I shared his results with her to get her opinion. She believes that he's just weak in some foundational skills (like phonological awareness and math fact recall), probably due to the fact that he showed proficiency early, so we didn't teach or drill on it like we should have. For example, he began reading at 3 and was reading at a 3rd grade level by the end of kinder (and the time I decided to homeschool), so we never did any phonics or reading (decoding) programs. So we're going to spend a few months tearing through some phonics, spelling, handwriting, and math fact memorization. It'll be simple stuff we can do in an hour or less, which will be great while he's recovering from his next surgery.

 

Oh yeah, I also found out we've been correcting his clubfoot wrong. So I'm going to contact an expert (either one in St. Louis or one in Iowa City) to have them do the final surgery. That's sure to be an ordeal. But at least our modified school schedule will be light.

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Doubt it. Despite scoring low on the math calculation parts of these tests, he pretty much topped the chart on problem-solving and matrices. In fact, I've recently learned that he doesn't even read his textbook before working his math problems. The math program we used is specifically for mathematically gifted kids. The text is actually comic-book style and teaches the basic concept through examples and dialogues with the characters, but then the workbook contains a bunch of different problems and puzzles not actually seen in the book. It makes the student use the concepts in varying ways to actually problem-solve versus just using the standard algorithms. But Noah apparently doesn't bother to learn the concepts first. He just jumps into the problems and figures them out almost intuitively. Every so often he's had trouble figuring it out on his own. I did have to bust out some visuals to help him solve systems of equations, but once it clicked, he was off. Despite his insistence that it's "hard" and he's "not good at it", he rarely has problems and he rarely gets things wrong. I think he's more upset that it takes him longer than he wants it to. That's partially the low processing speed and partially not having some of his facts memorized.

 

If I had to guess, I would say he's still dealing with stealth dyslexia and possibly some mild dysgraphia.

 

Oh and the beginnings of puberty. It's making him slow and dumb. But apparently that's pretty normal development. Preteens just get dumb. One friend described it like updating a computer system - they have to shut down and reboot for the changes to take appear. He's almost in total shut-down mode. I don't know how he manages to get himself dressed each morning.

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We did manage to get in with the ENT on a cancellation today. They said he probably does have sleep apnea but his tonsils look fine. They want us to do a sleep study before they try an endoscopy to check on his adenoids. (Because that's general anesthesia.) I don't blame them but a sleep study is going to be hell.

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