Part 1: Candidates will conduct a case study on a student identified with a disa

Part 1: Candidates will conduct a case study on a student identified with a disability or a student identified as giftedincluding a thorough review of records, interviews with teachers, case managers, and service providers, and classroomobservations. (2 hours for records reviews, 3 hours for interviews, 5 hours for observations)——————————————————————-The school can be Banyan Creek Elementary here is an Example Paper
Nina is an eleven years old sixth grader in Harpers Ferry Middle School. I first met her during the first week of school. She spent an hour in my office because she was too anxious to go to her class. It was my second day on the job as a school counselor. I did not have much experience or any proven techniques to work with students, but I sincerely cared and was willing to listen to any student. A bond was developed during that first meeting, though I did not see Nina again for a few weeks after that initial meeting because she was often absent from school. Then in October, I was assigned to work with her because Nina became a truancy concern for our assistant principal.
Nina would come to my office as soon as the school bus dropped her off. She was very shy and nervous when there were a lot of people. Due to building construction, all our sixth graders would start the school day in the gym before being dismissed to individual classrooms because all sixth grader classrooms are in the temporary modular buildings outside the school building. This made things especially difficult for Nina who did not do well in a large setting with a lot of people. So, we started a routine where Nina would get her breakfast and eat in my office with me.
As time went on, I got to know Nina as she opened up more and more to me. Instead of the quiet and shy girl that one often sees, I know that she can be animated and chatty. She has an extensive vocabulary and a cynical sense of humor. However, despite our good rapport, I had a hard time getting Nina to attend her classes. She would find all kinds of excuses to stay in my office and if that proved to be unsuccessful, she would ask to see the nurse to go home. She also had a tendency to have thoughts of self-harm. In accordance with our county policy, we must call parents to pick up their child from school if words of self-harm are mentioned. I had to send Nina home on several occasions because of this. Nina is aware that whenever she mentions self-
harm, we have to send her home. Special measures were put into place to ensure Nina’s safety in school.
I read her full IEP to try to gain a better understanding of the situation. I found that Nina was referred for a psycho-educational evaluation to determine eligibility for gifted services in the state of West Virginia. In our state, giftedness is under special educational services and the service is delivered under IEP. On the WISC-V, Nina obtained a Full-Scale IQ score of 117 which fell within the high average range. She displayed a relative strength in the area of Verbal Comprehension, obtaining a standard score of 131, which fell in the 98th percentile. Additionally, on the WJ-IV, Nina’s Broad Reading fell at the 98th percentile while Mathematics fell in the 90th percentile. Currently, Nina only receives gifted services in the subject areas of English Language Arts and reading.
In our meetings and counseling sessions, Nina’s intellectual ability was evident. We talked about many books, and she shared her many ideas about the books she had read. We even discussed the pros and cons of educational systems to which Nina was critical. Nina was eager to talk whenever we talked about her areas of interests, however, whenever we discussed going to class, she would become dejected and started to not feel well. I found that Nina craved individual attention. She is a wonderful communicator in a one-to-one setting. However, she can be easily overwhelmed in a setting where more people are present. She also struggled in finding friendship and support groups among her peers because her style of communication and her choice of topics and interests are not that of a regular eleven years old. Therefore, she has a hard time fitting in with the general student population. Students would either avoid her or bully her because she was different, though the bullying situation is closely monitored and stopped quickly whenever
observed or reported. Nothing could be done on the friendship side of things. So, Nina often had lunch in my office.
I knew that even though she could find some support in me, she would benefit from a friend her own age. Nina also struggled with consistency at home. Her parents are divorced with 50% custody on each side. Nina rotates from each house on a weekly basis. While both parents are support and loving, they do not agree on how best to deal with Nina’s feelings toward school. Nina’s father sets high expectations and believes that going to school is not negotiable, which Nina’s mother believes that Nina’s health and feelings are more important factors. She wants Nina to be happy. Nina is a very smart girl. Sometimes, she does take advantage of this situation. We had several meetings with Nina’s parents, her IEP coordinator, our school psychologist, and administration to find ways to best serve Nina’s educational needs.
Despite Nina’s absence, I believed that Nina enjoyed school because she talked about how much she liked her gifted class and enjoyed the book that they were reading. However, she had trouble fitting in. I noticed that Nina liked drawing various cartoon characters with the stories that she made up. I knew another little girl who was a loner with a bubbly personality who was on our principal’s radar for always doing her own thing and being late for the bus every day. She was known as “the homeschooler.” I decided to introduce the two girls to each other to sit together at lunch since they both sat alone.
The friendship turned out to be better than any therapy or counseling. These two lonely girls who were considered to be on the fringe of middle school are now inseparable. They share the love for drawing cartoon characters with their own stories and they are both prolific readers. Since then, Nina has come to school each day, though some days she wants to spend a bit of time in my office to start the day. I have not needed to call home once to pick her up. Sometimes, we
focus on what we believe to be important for a child and miss the simple things that make life enjoyable, in Nina’s case: a good friend. “The voluntary nature of friendships gives adolescents a sense that their interests, ideas, feelings, and personal characteristics truly matter to others. Adolescents often feel they are able to be their most authentic selves when they are with their friends” (McGoldrick, Preto, and Carter, 2016). Though Nina still has a few things to work through, her newly found friendship is given her the support and encouragement that she needs to come to school without too much of a struggle. This demonstrates the importance of making a human connection.
Bibliography
McGoldrick, M., Preto, N., and Carter, B. (2016). The Expanding Family Life Cycle: Individual, Family, and Social Perspectives. Pearson.