Austin Beer is a veteran (11 years) school psychologist currently working for Grant Wood AEA, although he also worked for Great Prairie AEA once upon a time. Austin’s current role with Grant Wood AEA is as a Child Find Lead and Mentoring and Induction Lead. This means that Austin spends his time supporting agency and LEA staff in their use of Child Find data to understand current evaluation practices, the quality of services, and to identify learning and professional practices that need improvement. He also supports new staff through mentoring and new staff professional development. Through his mentoring experiences Austin has developed some well defined advice for new school psychologists. He stated, “Stick with it. Understand what sphere of influence you have, and where you want to spend your energy and capital at the current moment to have the most impact. Never give up, because on the other side of a challenging teacher, administrator, IEP team, or parent is a student in need of targeted, high quality instructional practices, which occur when teams work together analyzing data to understand student needs.” Read More