Pursuing my Psy.D in school psychology

Working with individuals with Tourette's Syndrome and related disorders like OCD and ADHD

The Winston School is a private and non-pubIic school for children grades 7-12th with autism spectrum disorders, ADHD, learning disabilities, and other emotional or behavioral needs. I will work with 1 teacher for the entirety of the school year and help students with assignments, understanding new concepts, behavioral management, and other important educational and social lessons.

My second year working at the fantastic Nierman Preschool at the JCC in La Jolla California, working in an inclusion setting with 3-5 year olds

I work at the STAR Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders and Neurodevelopmental Disorders at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute of UCSF. I work 20-30 hours a week alongside psychologist, psychiatrists, social workers, and behavior analysts to help do research and provide treatment to people with autism spectrum disorders. I help to score assessments such as the CBCL, ADOS-2, ADHD-RS, BREIF, WASI, DAS, TTAP, PPVT, ADI-R and others. I shadow and sit in to observe assessments and also help write literature reviews and papers. I also help with data collection for some of our studies and am listed on our IRB information.

I was a preschool teacher’s assistant in an inclusion style setting for the months of June-August. I worked one-on-one with children as well as in large groups, doing indoor and outdoor activities. I was responsible for keeping the children safe, teaching them important skills like sharing, patience, and taking turns, and I created and executed different daily activities. In this setting I worked with children with Cerebral Palsy, autism, ADHD, stroke impacted challenges, and children with genetic syndromes.

I am the founding secretary for the University of San Francisco’s Delta Alpha Pi honors society. Delta Alpha Pi is an honors society specifically for those individuals on campus who are registered with the student disability services. This national honors society aims to raise awareness for people with disabilities and provide them with an opportunity to be acknowledged for over coming adversity. My job is to help with campus awareness of students who are differently-abled and create programs for these students to come together and have a community. We hold events that do charity work for the community as well.

I took notes for students with disabilities that could not otherwise take notes for themselves, or found it difficult to do so thoroughly. This volunteer position is something I have done for seven different courses since my freshman year and volunteer for whenever the need arises. I am responsible for taking neat and thorough notes and posting them to the note-taker portal in a timely manner so my anonymous recipient can use them promptly.

I was Marketing coordinator for the Associated Students of the University of San Francisco College Players theater group, which was founded in 1863. College Players is a theater company entirely run and directed by students. I was in charge of selling tickets, advertising the productions, creating media that supported the production (hand bills, posters, flyers), and supporting all the productions of the clubs from behind the scenes.

I was hand selected by the language department to tutor American Sign Language students for their level 2 classes. I demonstrated proficiently and working capabilities in my three previous ASL classes. This job had me working side-by-side with a deaf teacher who held two classes of 30, and I was responsible for 10% of my students' grades. My students showed up to my hour long weekly sessions to receive tutoring and conversation skills. My class was conducted primarily in sign and I used limited spoken language. The students used me to help with projects and prepare for tests if they needed out of class help. I was essentially a supplemental teacher and was responsible for grading these students.

I had an internship three days a week at a therapy center that specialized in occupational, physical and speech therapy. Here I assisted therapists in treatment plans of children ages 20 month to 11 years with a range of different diagnoses, strengths, and weaknesses. The clients I saw had autism spectrum disorders, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, obsessive compulsive disorders, feeding problems, motor planting, and processing challenges. While at the office, I created activities for each child to work on that session to help contour specific skills that needed improvement. I worked side by side with all types of therapists, and assisted in moderating activities, charting and scoring diagnostic batteries, and doing research on new therapies to help integrate into a child’s program. I did observation and hands on work and when I left this internship, I had gained skills in scoring developmental tests, understanding developmental milestones, and I learned how to talk to parents about their children’s progress and what they could keep improving on at home.

I worked alongside esteemed psychiatrists and neurologists to learn about new medication development for rare and/or chronic ailments. I split my time evenly between these two sections of the Therapeutic Delivery Unit and focused a lot of my work on Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal muscular atrophy, bipolar disorder (pediatric), schizophrenia (pediatric and adult), and autism (pediatric). Through this internship, I was able to learn symptom profiles of the aforementioned disorders, read real-life case studies. Most importantly, I was involved with research to further develop medications to help alleviate suffering in these patients. I attended meetings with the doctors running these studies, worked with people around the world, and was able to attend the 50th Annual Drug Information Association conference in San Diego. My work with this quality Fortune 500 Company helped me realize that I am good at finding solutions to problems, thinking critically, and I am an independent worker who produces quality material.

I worked with typically developing and special needs children, ages preschool to middle school over five summers. In this inclusion camp, I worked one-on-one with campers and lead large groups of children. This camp is what got me interested in working with special needs children because I found that I had a knack and understanding for these campers that went past what other people seemed to offer. I worked with the parents of these children as well to learn what I needed to do to provide comprehensive support and keep their children safe. I enjoyed teaching typical children about how to best communicate with their special needs peers, and I liked the challenge of finding activities that both groups could do together.