School psychologist gets national recognition

MAT-SU -- Joe Gerard has worked with troubled kids for nearly 27 years. For a quarter century he's held discussions, small-group sessions, role-playing exercises and a host of different classroom presentations with students in the Mat-Su Borough School District.

Recently Gerard was recognized by the National Association of School Psychologists as the top school psychologist in the entire nation.

"I was a little surprised that someone from Podunk, Alaska was getting the award," Gerard said, "but I couldn't have gotten it without support from the teachers and administration. I think the Mat-Su Borough has one of the best school psychology departments around."

Gerard was nominated for the national award by the Alaska State Association of School Psychologists. After answering several questions and writing an essay detailing his career, he was chosen for the national honor.

Gerard works at several different schools throughout the district, moving between Swanson Elementary, Sutton Elementary, Butte Elementary and Glacier View.

Over the last 25 years, Gerard said his job description has changed a bit.

"Initially school psychologists did mostly assessments to determine if students were eligible for special education," he said. "Now we are more at the front lines, doing intervention before the need for assessment arises."

Gerard said he spends more time assessing early literacy skills, such as determining how well young children understand and recognize different sounds and images that later translate into an ability to recognize letters and words.

Many of the issues Gerard addresses these days are different than they were when he first started.

"Talking to teachers who've been here a while, I think there's definitely more disorders now," Gerard said. "Maybe we're just identifying disorders earlier or maybe it's a reflection of society. The types of issues in society have changed and kids are more sophisticated both in levels of maturity and immaturity. Twenty-seven years ago we didn't see kids who had been institutionalized. Now we see kids coming in with a psychiatric diagnosis."

Gerard said he spends quite a bit of time working on social skills in classroom settings.

"We deal more with anger control, dealing with divorces and single-parent families," Gerard said. "My job is so varied. I talk about people skills, teaching kids to be good listeners, following directions and making good choices."

Gerard doesn't do a lot of one-on-one counseling, however, preferring to take a more active approach to the issues kids face.

"If someone has a problem with anger, I do role playing. It's more hands-on-learning. Afterwards, I'll send them out to recess to practice what we just learned. It's not just talk therapy."

Time is one of the biggest challenges for Gerard and he said he could very well spend more time in all the different schools, especially when faced with disabilities like autism.

"That disability is still a mystery," Gerard said. "Autistic kids are pretty needy and you get tugged in this job from one thing to another."

While he spends a lot of time putting out fires, Gerard said there are definite rewards to being a school psychologist.

"It's a privilege for parents and teachers to let me work with children," Gerard said. "When kids come up at this little age and talk to you and remember some of the things you taught them, that's rewarding."

After 27, years Gerard has seen some of his students grow up to become parents.

"It's kind of scary, some are very successful and others I read about in the paper."

Contact Joel Davidson at joel.davidson@frontiersman.com.