Tag: childhood disabilities

The Final Countdown

“My brain is like two supercomputers working together to process one million zillion signals.” –Anonymous Student

end of summer reflections

As I near the end of my internship with The Quad Manhattan, I am reflecting on my initial goals: To learn and implement new skills of my own; learn how to map a child’s progress and structure a case study; make connections with other students and professionals in my field; get a taste for the worlds of social work and school psychology; and learn how to properly support kids who are struggling.

Over these past two months, I have learned and implemented many strategies to help my students calm down and remain engaged throughout the day. In this sense, I definitely got to work with children in more of a psychological capacity. The case study, rather than being an academic paper as I’d expected, was an end of summer report geared toward the parents. I’m glad that I gained real-world experience communicating with parents and writing something that will help my students’ success in the coming year. 

I was also pleasantly surprised by the opportunity to shadow occupational therapists and speech-language pathologists during their sessions with my students, which helped me observer how these services worked in practice. I gained further experience as an educator as well, leading a psycho-social lesson on turn-taking for my Core group. Overall, as an intern, I did more teamwork than I thought I’d do, especially with the online format. It was really helpful to have that support from my core team, and I feel like I made a lot of great connections with other students, educators, and therapists. I definitely got closer with my kids than I thought possible over Zoom and will be sad to leave them.

A drawing that I made over Zoom with my student during choice time.

Working with The Quad Manhattan solidified my interest in social work and opened me up more to the possibility of working in a school. I would still like to do social work, but I am considering a school social work track, as I really enjoyed working with educators. This internship also pushed me more toward the idea of taking a gap year before getting my Master’s in Social Work (MSW). I learned that while taking classes is valuable, real-world experience is more fulfilling for me and just as important for someone in my field.

My takeaway is that if you’re going into counseling or social work, you don’t need to work in a lab at Harvard (unless you really want to); you need to gain real-world experience by interacting with your target population. You will never know what to expect until you meet the people you intend to serve. If you’re interested in being a Psychosocial Intern at The Quad Manhattan, don’t do anything else in addition to this internship. It’s a full-time job and you will need down time in order to give your students the support that they need. If you end up at The Quad Manhattan, be ready to adjust your students’ goals no matter how robust they seem, and remain open to suggestions from your peers.

I enjoyed so many aspects of my experience with The Quad Manhattan, but I’m proudest of what my students were able to accomplish this summer and the role I played in helping them. My hope is that my work will leave a lasting positive impact on their well-being, and that I can continue to help others in similar ways.

Week 1 at The Quad Manhattan

About The Quad

This summer, I am working as a Psychosocial Intern at The Quad Manhattan, a summer camp based in New York City (now online). The Quad was founded as a learning space for twice exceptional (2e) children, a term that Psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman defines in his book Twice Exceptional: 

Twice exceptional individuals demonstrate exceptional levels of capacity, competence, commitment, or creativity in one or more domains coupled with one or more learning difficulties. This combination of exceptionalities results in a unique set of circumstances. Their exceptional potentialities may dominate, hiding their disability; their disability may dominate, hiding their exceptional potentialities; each may mask the other so that neither is recognized or addressed. (7)

The Quad’s mission is to provide a space where gifted children with learning disabilities can gain the skills they need while still being challenged in a range of creative activities. Many of the learning deficits found in our campers are related to language and academic development, as well as social skills. Therefore, we tailor our support and approach to each child’s unique set of strengths difficulties.

My Responsibilities

An image of my core age group via The Quad Manhattan.

As an intern, my job is to support campers during times of confusion and encourage them when they are inspired. This summer, I will be working with a team of educators, fellow interns, and psychologists to create learning plans for a core group of campers. My group is Core 1, which is for children aged 6-8.

I am currently in a two-week training period to grasp strategies for learning and behavioral interventions and techniques derived from CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). Although I will not be providing therapy, I will look for signs that indicate children need help during camp activities to make sure their needs are met and to avoid distress.

I have been assigned two campers within my core group with whom I will work more closely to develop a rapport and solutions to problems that arise. Throughout the summer, I will keep records of these campers’ progress in a case study, which I will complete with the help of my supervisors.

The Quad in a virtual setting

Due to the COVID-19, things will look a bit different this summer with our new online format and the added stresses of a pandemic. In training, we have been discussing the potential impact and foresee that while our campers may face fewer social challenges, they may also face a new set of complications arising from technology (i.e. glitching, leaving the Zoom call, playing video games off-screen). There may also be children whose family members have been infected with COVID-19 or impacted by the systemic racism that remains pervasive in our country, whether it be at the hands of the police, the healthcare system, or both.

While we cannot singlehandedly solve these larger societal problems, we will provide support and outlets for our campers so that they can process and decompress in a safe environment. The Quad’s long-term goal is to give the children the tools they need to thrive in a general education setting and in life beyond schooling.

Summer goals & excitement

My personal goals for the summer are to learn and implement new skills of my own, such as the various intervention techniques I am studying; learning how to map a child’s progress and structure a case study; making connections with other students and professionals in my field; getting a taste for the worlds of social work and school psychology; and finally, learning how to properly support kids who are struggling and finding solutions to support their unique needs.

After days of reading about my campers, I can’t wait to meet them when camp begins and to get to know them throughout the summer!

Internship Completion at Riverside Early Intervention

Friday July 25

Jean Perez, ’15

Days and hours at the internship site: From the day that I started my internship (Jun 2) until now (July 28) two whole months have gone by and I have successfully completed 200 hours at my internship site.

My internship at Riverside Early Intervention has given me the opportunity to achieve the three initial goals that I had at the beginning of this whole journey. My first goal had to do with academics. Initially I wanted to expand my understanding of topics covered in the course, Disorders of Childhood. During the internship I observed and got hands on experience with both psychological and physiological disorders in children with disabilities. The experience has helped me to understand that that these two aspects originate from many sources including environmental factors and family genetics. As I went through many of the readings that were assigned, I quickly learned new things and how to apply these new skills to the work that I was doing with the kids. For example, one of the things that I learned was that many kids have sensory needs and so by helping the children learn about different textures I was showing them how to explore the world and learn new information. This was a therapeutic way to experience the world around them and ultimately enhanced their learning abilities.

My second goal dealt with the career path that I am most likely going to be taking after I graduate college and get my Master’s degree. After my experience at Riverside Early Intervention, I am now considering becoming a developmental specialist for children with special needs. Also, my second goal was to be able to treat children with special needs effectively. By doing charts reviews, reading articles based on different disorders, and learning about the maturation process of children,  I have increased my understanding of child development. With the training and the knowledge that I have gained at Riverside from their team of specialists, I can now detect motor disorders and developmental disorders such as Autism with ease. I can also treat these disorders by applying the same techniques and concepts that developmental specialists, social workers, speech language pathologists and physical therapists use at the early intervention center.

My third goal was a personal one. I wanted to increase my understanding of the family dynamics and intervention methods that are used to assist children with different disabilities. In this internship I have learned that one of the most important factors that can help a child with special needs is to have a supportive environment both at home and outside the house. Many parents simply do not know how to properly handle a child with special needs. At Riverside, the work that I was doing with my co-workers offered parents help, and taught them how to properly interact with their child and further their child’s learning process. These proper interactions ranged from sign language for those children with limited vocabulary, to working with children and facilitating communication by getting at their level and coping with their needs instead of taking a hostile approach. Many intervention methods included communicating with children and engaging them by using simple and short vocabulary, usually one to three word phrases. Also, using visuals is an excellent way to communicate with children with special needs. Specialists at Riverside use a computer program called “Board Maker” with which they create a curriculum for kids using pictures and words to communicate the action of the picture. This way, a child can make sense of words by linking both the words and the picture. Other intervention methods include the social aspects of daily life. At Riverside, children are taught how to socially interact with others by simply saying their name. However, other intricate forms of interaction can include sharing and learning to say “thanks” and “excuse me”. As simple as it sounds, these kinds of methods are the ones that can help a child with special needs to do better later in life. Overall, my whole experience was a successful because I had fun doing it and I do not regret any of it.

A very valuable lesson that I have learned that can be useful in the classroom at Brandeis and beyond in the workforce is to always accept any good advice that others with more training and professionalism have to offer because that advice can help one to improve and to keep learning. It is important to also be patient and to reflect about how far one has come. It is impressive the amount of information that one takes in with such an internship. Overall, the biggest lesson that this whole experience has taught me is to never limit myself and to always think big because the world is full of possibilities and it is up to the individual to shape his own destiny and future.

Upon graduation, I want to get a job in the same type of environment as my former internship and work for a year so that I can gain more experience in the field. This way, I would be doing what I love the most—working with children—and I would be entering the workforce and learning even more. If I could advise any intern looking to work with children with disabilities, Riverside Early Intervention is a must go! Riverside became a second family for me in such a short amount of time. I would definitely encourage an intern to spend a summer working there! The only thing that I would warn a student about is that he must love what he is doing, be patient, have an open mind to learn new things, and be able to take advice from others to increase his understanding of child development. Lastly, I would remind any student that no one is going to get rich by working with kids. There is not a lot of money to be made in this industry or field, but it is a decent job and it is extremely rewarding.

My First 2 Weeks at Riverside Early Intervention!

I started my internship at Riverside Early Intervention in Needham Massachusetts on June the 2nd and on June 13 I completed my first 50hrs!!!

Riverside Early Intervention provides young children ages 0 to 3 with a wide variety of therapeutic services. These children may be having difficulties walking, speaking, interacting with others or may be cognitively delayed. Riverside focuses in helping these children develop their physical and mental skills at an early and crucial stage in their lives, so that in the future, they can live a better life. The program involves a wide variety of professionals including social workers, a physical therapist and a speech pathologist focusing on programs that offer home based therapy, group therapy and evaluations. In my opinion the work that the professionals do at Riverside is priceless because changing a child’s life for the better involves more than the financial aspect. They show caring, love, interest and a genuine feeling of seeing these kids overcome their challenges.

I have been interested in working with children with disabilities since I was young. This is because I have had personal experiences with family members who grew up with me who have physical and mental disabilities. I always thought that I could make a change. In the spring semester of 2014 I spent time volunteering at the Lemberg Children’s Center at Brandeis University. I talked to two early intervention workers that frequented the daycare. We discussed internships relating to social work, and the two women referred me to the head supervisor and internship coordinator at Riverside Community Care Center in Needham, Massachusetts. I reached out to the head coordinator over email and she told me more about the type of work that she does at Riverside. After two months of communication, she interviewed me and gave me an internship at the Intervention Center.

My major responsibilities at this internship involve working alongside a multidisciplinary team within the Riverside Community Care Center, treating children from birth to age 3 and servicing their families living in neighboring communities. I work closely with these children as well as their parents by participating in child-focused and parent-focused groups, which provide parents with training on how to respond to their child’s needs. I develop curricula and therapeutic activities to further increase their development. This position also requires me to record and monitor children’s progress while communicating these results to clinicians. Additionally, I prepare classroom space to accommodate every child’s special circumstances.

This summer I’m expecting to educate myself on a broad variety of childhood disorders. My career goal is to become a clinical psychologist with a focus on child development. The training that I am receiving at the Riverside Community Care Center is helping me to gain insight and skills that will ultimately help me to treat and diagnose children and adolescents with psychological disorders. Also, personally, I want to increase my understanding of family dynamics and intervention methods that are used to assist children with different disabilities. After the summer ends and this experience is over, I am hoping to have gained experience and understanding of the psychology of children, especially those with different kinds of disabilities. I am also hoping that this internship will be one of the biggest stepping-stone of my college career that will ultimately grant me a spot in the professional world.

Jean Perez, ’15

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