Interview with Dr. Carl Anserello

We trace how a northern BC school district moved from isolated specialists and nonstop testing to true collaboration built on problem-solving and simple progress measures. We share practical ways to find your first opening for change so you can reduce referral overload and feel less alone at work. 
• Carl’s path from school psychology into district-wide systems change 
• Why early “area support teams” stalled without shared process 
• Shifting from a medical model to broader assessment domains 
• Building missing skills: interviews, file review, classroom observation 
• Defining referrals in measurable terms rather than labels 
• Using school-based teams as the first problem-solving step 
• Curriculum-based measurement and local norms that teachers can use fast 
• Partnering with universities to build capacity and credibility 
• Engaging principals through shared resources and local leadership 
• Starting small: finding a crack in the system and running a project 
If this episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear about it. Share your experiments, your questions, your ha ha moments, because your experience matters and maybe exactly what another SLP needs to hear. 

https://sarahdowlingschoolslpcoaching.com

Music: Daniel Chui

Transcript

Welcome And Show Purpose

Sarah 0:02

Welcome back to the Aligned SLP. I'm Sarah Dowling. If you're new here, this is where school-based SLPs stop being clinical islands and start being collaborative partners. We're ditching the impossible caseload, embracing the workload approach, and reclaiming our joy as professionals aligned with the education world.

Carl’s Background In Prince George

Sarah 0:28

So welcome Carl. I'm very excited to have you here on this podcast.

Carl 0:33

Well, thank you very much for inviting me.

Sarah 0:35

Yeah, you're very welcome. So I'd like you just to introduce yourself so the listeners know who you are.

Carl 0:43

Certainly. Well, my name is Carl Anserello, and um I am retired uh from the profession of school psychology and special education. I've been retired for well since 2010. But prior to all of that, I um worked in the Prince George School District primarily in the um late 70s as a school psychologist, and then um stopped working and went to university to complete a PhD. And so I did that and finished in 1981 in the States and then immediately moved back to Prince George School District and began to work as a part-time school psychologist and part-time consultant to school psychologists and area support teams. And um we stayed in in Prince George from 1981 all the way to 2010. Um so that was my place to spend all of my time, basically. Yeah, yeah.

Sarah 1:53

Yeah, you had a good career in Prince George. Yeah, yeah. So um there was some things starting

Area Support Teams Start Then Stall

Sarah 2:04

in those 70s. You there was something called the area support teams. Exactly. So can you explain a bit about what you found in Prince George and and what was happening?

Carl 2:14

It was a it was a very exciting time in the 1970s when I was hired to go to Prince George. Uh, had been living in on Vancouver Island at the time. And so it was my first school psychology job in um British Columbia. And so we moved up to Prince George in 76, and um I was introduced to the school system, was introduced to a couple of um uh special education administrators who were running the show, so to speak. And uh I was uh really quite taken by them. They were exciting people, they had uh ideas that were relatively new ideas to implement, and I thought, wow, I've really landed in a great place. And so 76 to 79 was a very exciting time. Um, to my disappointment, after the first year of being there as a school psychologist, the two administrators that hired me left the district. They were not happy with the new superintendent, and uh, they left. And of course I stayed, and I thought, well, they had developed this really neat concept of area support teams where they combined school psychologists, social workers, and speech and language pathologists on teams. And I thought, wow, what a great idea. And then, as I said, the administrators left. So they had the concept of these teams, um, but they really didn't have a lot of uh direction as to how they were gonna function and what they were gonna do. Um, and it was at that time that I decided, well, you know, um this is gonna take a while to develop. I think what I'll do is I'll go back to university, finish up my doctoral program, and then I'll come back, and by that time they'll have developed it a bit further. So that's what I did. Went back to university and then uh came back to uh Prince George in 81. And when I landed there in 81, uh I was hired as a part-time psychologist, part-time consultant. And um, what I found when I arrived was they had this concept still in place of these area support teams, but they really weren't functioning as teams. Um, they had the same office, they would uh locate the staff in the same building, and referrals would come in from schools, and the teams would take the referrals and they would decide where they were going to go with the referral. So if a referral was for an intellectual assessment, everybody said, Well, this is for the school psychologist to do it, we'll give it to him or her. And if it was a language issue, went to the speech and language pathologist, but it sort of stopped there. Um, they just sort of went off and did their own thing. There wasn't a lot of collaboration going on. There wasn't a great deal of planning in terms of how can we work within the school systems as a as a team. And so um having seen all that, I decided really what needed to happen was we needed to get a broader concept of assessment and how teams would work and so forth. Um I did find that skill levels were pretty traditional models. Um psychologists were basically testing, everybody was testing, everybody was moving from a medical model.

Moving Beyond Testing Only

Carl 5:40

And um it was time for a change there. So, in order to implement some change, we started to look at well, what are the skill sets like? And uh the skill sets were were great as far as standardized testing was concerned, but beyond that, people were skipping things like reviewing and interviewing and observing. There wasn't a lot of attention paid to those things, and certainly there wasn't much attention paid to a broader concept of assessment. In other words, looking at the domains of assessment, looking at uh instruction, looking at the environment. Everybody was focused on the learner, and so what we began to introduce was um some training, uh, which was based on modules that have been developed by the National Association of School Psychologists. And these models were just came in at the right time. Um, I couldn't have asked for a better situation. So we introduced some training programs to school psychologists, eventually to social workers, and eventually to speech and language pathologists as well. And the training module, the first one, focused on domains of assessment. We began to talk about a broader concept of assessment in terms of the curriculum, in terms of instruction. Um, and these were not easy domains to introduce because when you talked about the domain of instruction, you were talking about teaching techniques. And so that was one that you had to look at very carefully because, of course, teachers we didn't want to have them get their backs up in terms of, well, we're looking at your instruction. Um, so we we we looked at those concepts of assessment or domains of assessment, and then we began to talk about well, how would we go about doing these things? And that's where we began to talk a little bit more about things like interviewing, observing in classrooms, spending a little bit more time on formal interviews, uh, spending a bit more time on reviewing files and reviewing information within school systems and not just focusing on the learner. And so that training uh was really um, as I said, really timely. Um, people began to latch on to these um skill sets that we were introducing. And so at that point in time, this was sort of the precursor to introducing anything that became close to a problem solving process.

Training For Broader Assessment Domains

Carl 8:16

And so once they had the skill set, it was a little easier to introduce the idea of problem solving. And so we began to talk about problem solving model, problem solving process. Uh, we identified um steps in the problem solving process in terms of um identifying the problem, in terms of um um doing it in measurable terms, um, not just uh introducing it as um a referral for for an intellectual assessment, for instance. And at the time, the referrals that that that Aerie support teams were getting from teachers, sometimes people would would look at the referral that came in and they would kind of do the ha ha, this is a referral from a teacher, and this teacher's asking for this kid to get a tune-up. Um, what kind of referral is that? And so we started talking about well, it's not so much that we should be laughing at an inappropriate referral. What we ought to be doing is talking to individuals about how to refer a student properly, how to identify a problem, how to begin to analyze a problem, um, those sorts of things. So we talked about that as team players, and then we started to ask ourselves how could we go about introducing that at the school level? Um, and we talked primarily about working with school-based teams at that point and asking school-based teams to initially be the referral agent so that when a teacher had an issue or concern, they first went to school-based team. And that was kind of sort of the second level of problem-solving model. Um, and the school-based team then would begin to ask teachers to more appropriately identify the problem that they were having with a student, and they would assist teachers in going through that problem identification process, how to come up with a referral that was actually measurable in measurable terms. And once school-based teams began to do that, then it was it was uh certainly much easier for school-based teams to then call in a school psychologist or speech pathologist or a social worker to assist with that whole process. And when they when they would bring in the the next level, uh that would sort of be the third level in the problem-solving model in terms of bringing in someone for further collaboration and assistance in solving issues and problems. So once we introduced that, that was that was outstanding. And again, we got lucky because probably the hardest or the more difficult part of that problem-solving process was in the fact that often people were pretty good at identifying problems. They would be uh good at um developing a plan, but where it would fall down is measuring performance for students to see whether or not the plan was actually working. Nobody really had good measures of engagement in that regard. So um this was about the time that

Building A School Problem-Solving Model

Carl 11:44

curriculum-based measurement was gaining some momentum. Uh, University of Minnesota, University of uh Oregon. Um, Mark Shinn was in Oregon at the time as a university professor, um, and he was really pushing the CBM movement. Um, we managed to hook into that movement. We brought Mark Shinn into the school system to talk about curriculum-based measurement and to talk about that as a way to get the problem-solving process further momentum. And um, we were taken with it to the point that we decided to develop our own norms in the school district. And at that point, we got even luckier because uh, in addition to bringing in curriculum-based measurement and to starting to develop our own norms, we engaged with the University of British Northern British Columbia. And we had a professor from the university who was very keen on helping us develop the norms, and of course, he was going to get research out of that project, and he had grad students that needed research uh areas and so forth. So we had the University of Northern BC engaged, and um, we started to introduce this curriculum-based measurement approach, and it really took off with teachers. Teachers finally had something in their hands that they could administer. We developed these little probes that they could use in reading and writing and arithmetic in a variety of areas, and so a teacher, once we had our own norms, could measure student performance by administering a one-minute probe. It only took one minute to administer the probe, and the probe would just be basically around words read correctly per minute, and there was a definite correlation with performance, a definite relationship. So teachers found it really useful and um really got excited about it. And in point of fact, I think after crooking-based measurement came into play, um, they then brought in uh DIBELs, which was um a dynamic assessment for kindergarten kids in terms of language performance and so on. And they developed norms for that area as well. So it was a really exciting time in the 80s because we really got people ramped up about that problem-solving process. Um, one of the other methods we used to encourage this process to be further developed was we started to engage principals more often and more frequently in the process. Um, as a school district administrator with in special education, uh, we would have funds available, I would have funds available through my department to administer to schools, give them resources to work with special needs students and so forth. And rather than me monitor that, we began to uh develop what we called area resource committees. And we would have a principal and a learning assistant, a special education teacher on a committee, and they would receive funds from our office, and those funds would then be in their hands, and they would determine uh how to use those funds within the area that they were in. So that area resource team might have uh a group of seven or eight elementary schools and a junior secondary school, and they would be given funds, and it was up to them to figure how to best deploy those funds. And that really took off. Uh administrators began to develop a sense of ownership and a sense of responsibility, and they were far more open to engaging in um group projects, in uh being um more considerate of speech and language pathologists, school, psychologists, social workers, coming in and working on group levels, uh, working on a school plan as opposed to an individual student. Um we saw less suffering of referral overload when we brought that model in. Uh, and that had been a frequent complaint prior to bringing in the problem-solving model, was people would say, I've got 30 referrals. Uh, how am I going to deal with 30 referrals? My entire year is set with these 30 referrals. I will see nobody knew beyond this point. And um that was a huge problem. And by introducing uh a problem-solving approach and and giving people ways of measuring interventions and determining whether interventions were actually working, and doing it in a way that was quick and easy, and uh very simple to understand, um, we began to to really reduce the referral overload um and engage people in more serious kinds of issues at the school level. So it was a fantastic setting. Um, we had our ups and downs, no doubt. I'm not painting a you know uh an entirely rosy picture. Um there were issues throughout the system. There were

Curriculum-Based Measurement And Local Norms

Carl 17:08

some instances where there would be some schools that would be less likely to engage in the problem-solving process, and it took more time and more effort to engage those individuals, um, which is normal. Um, but um that was sort of the the routine that we went through. And um, I think if I was to look back at what were the key components, I would say that um the key components were paying attention to the skill levels that staff had and making sure that everybody was up the snuff uh prior to trying to introduce a problem solving approach. You can't really ask people to engage in a problem solving approach if they don't have the skill set that's involved in it. And then I think another major component for us was bringing in people from university settings to talk about practical approaches and to help us engage in practical approaches at a school system level. And then the final one was engaging someone from our own university and giving them a partnership with the school system so that there were things that they gained from that experience as well as things that we were going to gain. I mean, we would have probably never done the norming project without the university involved. It was a significant amount of time to be invested. You had to have somebody that had a good background in statistics and knew how to collect the data and analyze the data. And um so that was kind of the help that we received from them. They also received things from us in terms of having access to schools to engage in research and so forth and so on. So um, those were big factors, engaging university staff uh at your local level, um, giving principals and administrators some sort of leadership uh role in the process, and um paying attention to skill sets and skill levels would be. Yeah.

Sarah 19:20

Yeah, that's fantastic. That's a wonderful description of the process. And you know, I walked into that in the early 2000s, and um, you know, it was still running very strongly. Um yeah, yeah. And the um the the system that you created for the assessment, the learner, the environment, the curriculum, um, that became the LEIC, which is what POPFASD created. So for the provincial outreach programme for FASD in BC. Um and it's still used and it's been evolved. Um I haven't seen it most recently, but I know it's kept on evolving. There was some wonderful colourful charts with it all mapped on. And um so uh, you know, that that framework, you know, that you developed that in the early 80s, you know, that that that still detected.

Carl 20:08

Yeah, I felt really proud about the whole situation in the sense that um we were as a school district, uh, Prince George School District was one of the first districts to engage in that whole uh curriculum-based measurement approach. And we were certainly one of the first school districts to develop our own norms. I mean, that was just unheard of. People prior to that, it was all standardized assessment based on normative data across the United States and sometimes in Canada. Um, so that was a huge process, and many more school districts then followed, developing their own norms as well. So uh it was a very heady process at that point. And um I remember when we applied for POPFASD, when POPFASD was first created, um the Ministry of Education had uh asked two or three school districts to submit an application or to submit a process uh for uh taking ownership of that of that program. And so we we submitted and um we uh were given the the grant to go ahead and develop the program. And it was it was a wonderful program, uh people very involved, uh as you yourself know. Um and I've heard nothing but good things about it even recently. Um I've still engaged with occasionally uh a couple of people from Prince George that were involved in that process, and I still hear about it rolling right along and just being an outstanding service.

Sarah 21:44

So yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is, it's got a really good reputation. Yeah, still, still solid. And the people who are in there right now are totally solid doing exciting things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great. That's just fantastic, and there's people Out there that are probably saying, Well, yeah, that was all okay because you were leading it. Um, so you know, what would you say to people who are who want to make some changes or feel frustrated that they're not in a system like you you created in Prince George that I walked into and you know found my place? Um you know, like what would you say to people who who, you know, how do they start?

Carl 22:24

Yeah, yeah. I think it's you know, it's it's um it depends on the individual, but overall, I think that um you can feel very lonely as as a practicing uh speech language pathologist, school psychologist, or social worker, whatever your profession happens to be. It can feel very lonely uh at times, especially if you've got if you're receiving a ton of referrals and you're trying to figure out how to handle your caseload and all these things. I don't have time to do anything else. You really have to stop and think about what's important to you. And if it is important to you to make a change, then you just have to look for your first crack in the system. Uh, maybe it's a classroom teacher who has a um um an interest in a particular area that you're working in or you want to work in. Uh maybe it's a learning assistance teacher, uh, maybe it's another one of your colleagues, um,

Principals Take Ownership Through Funding

Carl 23:30

and and you're gonna present to a uh school, a school principal, or you're gonna present to a classroom teacher. Uh it could be any one of those individuals. It could be maybe you talk to somebody at the university level in terms of are you interested in running a project? Or I have a really good idea about looking into a particular aspect of referrals. Is there anybody in that university or that college setting that has an interest in helping you develop that? Um, you just have to look for your crack in the system and um start small and you work from there and don't expect it to happen overnight because it's not gonna happen overnight.

Sarah 24:13

Yeah, yeah, you always encouraged us to have a project.

Carl 24:17

Absolutely.

Sarah 24:18

Yeah, you always said you've got to do, yeah, you've got to get the other work done, the casework and this classroom work and working with the schools. But if there's something that you want to do, you know, make time, have a project. You always encourage that. Yeah, to to allow ourselves time to have that thinking, that you know, um, creating new things, trying things out.

Carl 24:38

And there's always, there's always a school administrator somewhere in the system who has ideas similar to yours, or who has just been waiting for the opportunity to try something different in his school or in a classroom. Um, you just have to start knocking on doors, you have to introduce yourself, and you have to be respectful. You have to be respectful of the fact that teaching is a difficult job, uh, especially in today's system. Uh it's a lot of work, it requires a lot of time. Most teachers I know still take work home with them. They never they never get away from it. Um so when you go into those classroom settings or when you go into an administrator's office uh or building, you need to be respectful of of what they've done. And it's not always the attitude that, well, this particular school is so far behind the the eight ball, uh, nobody knows how to do anything, everybody's doing the wrong thing. That's not the way to go in. You have to go in in terms of supporting them to the best of your ability and finding the things that they're getting right and emphasizing those, you know, and it's not easy, it's it's a difficult process, yeah.

Sarah 25:56

Yeah. Yeah, I'm a big fan of uh positive feedback to teachers and being respectful and you know, really valuing what they're doing. Because I've thought in my career when I was still in the UK, I thought twice about becoming a teacher. And each time I thought, no, I don't have the skill set. I don't have the skill set to do it. Let's I'll stay on the I I'll be the person helping in the classroom, but I'm not gonna be the person running the classroom.

Carl 26:23

Well, that's interesting because my first my first foray was to get a teaching license. I mean, that's I went to university initially um to uh to get a teaching license. So I did my four years basically as a as a uh uh getting background as a teacher. And uh when I finished my bachelor's and I was ready to go into the system, I thought, you know, I'd done some student teaching at that point in time. And uh I thought, yeah, you know what, that's a really tough job. Um I really like the psychology end of things. Maybe I'll continue on in that vein. And uh then I went back and did my master's in psychology, and I thought, well, this is a much better area for me to be in. Um, but I still wanted that educational background. And I think that was a that was a real plus for me, is that I came from an educational background. So it wasn't the traditional psychologist who would walk in and uh administer intellectual exams and talk about personality and so forth and so on, and and not be able to relate it back to the educational system. So that's where I think speech and language pathologists had a bit of a plus in the sense that they seem to have a much better understanding of that than school psychologists did at the time I came into the system.

Sarah 27:45

Yeah, so that's we are doing therapy, we do have to create teaching plans and therapy plans.

Carl 27:51

Yes, exactly.

Sarah 27:51

So we have a little we have that similarity at that level. Yeah. Just one-on-one or in small groups. Yes, absolutely. That's fantastic. Yeah, yeah, that's superb. That's a really good description of what was going on and what I walked into. And I was so pleased to find you. Like I remember being interviewed on my couch in Scotland, and uh, you know, there were three of you interviewing me over the phone, and and apparently I'd used the term problem solving quite a few times because I was already into it. I was already, that's where I was, you know, from my experience in the UK, and and I'd already got to that point. And so it was it was I knew that you know, changing countries, I knew I could end up in a school district that was very

What Made The Change Stick

Sarah 28:36

traditional, you know, pull-out model. And I didn't want to go there because I'd already made a big journey myself, philosophically and practically. So to find Prince George was actually quite perfect, to be honest.

Carl 28:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but it was uh it was a great place to be at the time. And um, I can remember interviewing. Uh, yes, uh, we would have done a phone interview with you, and we did a number of phone interviews where I would have uh another speech pathologist sitting there with me, and and uh we'd make the phone call and we'd have the discussion, and then we'd all sort of hang up at that point, and then the little group would get together and what you like about this person, and you know it it was a number of situations for Prince George being as far north as it was. I mean, 500 miles north of Vancouver. Yeah, um, it was uh we did a lot of overseas hiring and and and distance hiring. Um and so we had to it was interesting because you always had an image of what that person was going to be like, and it was never really quite the same once they got there.

Sarah 29:48

We didn't have Zoom, so I thought you I imagined you with like curly hair for some reason then.

Carl 29:53

No, there was no it was uh it was it was a great place to be. It was uh you were there at the right time, I was there at the right time, and uh it was it was a good lineup at that particular point. Um we had a number of people with some very, very good skill sets um when we were developing uh curriculum-based norms. Uh, we had one school psychologist in particular that really bit off a big chunk of that, had a real desire to do it, and got very heavily involved. And uh same thing with other projects. We had people with certain skill sets, and uh, once they were given the opportunity to take off with something, it was it was great. Um people really enjoyed it. Great for students. Students at the end of the day, they they came out ahead of the game, and schools certainly came out ahead of the game, and the whole idea of such a vast difference from when I first got out of university as a school psychologist, I think my first job was in Florida, and I had spent all the way up to my master's at that point, and I got into Florida and worked in the school system the first year, and I thought, this is crazy. I hate this job. All I'm doing is testing, I'm not even going into classrooms. The department would just hand me referrals and I would go out to a building and I would meet the student and assess the student. And I thought, boy, I've I've spent five or six years education-wise, and I hate this job. This is not what I signed up for. Um, and so that's when I stopped and I thought, well, no, I gotta go back to university because this isn't working. And that's when I went back to university and uh spent a little bit more time there and then went out and did some more practical things. So yeah, I can really identify with how tough it would be to work in a more traditional model.

Sarah 31:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, there are people who are listening who uh probably identify exactly with what you've just described. Um, you know, that they're not sure why they're doing this job and and what to do about it. And that's what I'm trying to help people with is seeing a way out, you know, that they can redesign their way into a job that they enjoy much more. Um so what you've described is is perfect, you know, the to support what we're what I'm trying to do, and those people out there who are trying to do the same things. So yeah, yeah.

Carl 32:30

No, I I certainly, you know, what you're doing, I think is extremely important. Uh schools can take advantage of of the kind of things that you're offering. It's it's really important to to have that door open.

Sarah 32:44

Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, thank you very much. Um so I think you've covered, yeah, I think you even gave some advice halfway through. I was going to ask you for some some uh pieces of advice, but we've we've had them in the talk about you know, finding the crack in the system and connecting with people and using local universities and checking the skill sets and people you're working with. And yeah, and uh not j judging the teachers for getting it wrong, but giving them the tools and the the information so that the processes work, um, getting them excited about how to support us as well as we support them. So that's fantastic. So on that note, um yeah, we'll finish.

Carl 33:26

And uh the time. Yes, I really, really enjoyed it.

Sarah 33:30

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for spending time with me today. Here's what I want you to take away. You're

How To Start Change Where You Are

Sarah 33:38

not failing. The system is asking you to do the impossible, and you're doing the best with what you have. But there is a different way. And remember, you're not alone in this. We're building something new together. One conversation, one collaboration, and one small change at a time. If this episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear about it. Share your experiments, your questions, your ha ha moments, because your experience matters and maybe exactly what another SLP needs to hear. Until next time, stay curious and be kind to yourself. I'm Sarah Dowling, and this has been the Aligned SLP.