Pennsylvania school psychologist of year is ‘exemplar’ of profession
Isaac Tarbell did not take atraditional avenue into psychology. The psychological services supervisor for the Pittsburgh Public Schools started his career as family and consumer science teacher at Sharon Senior High School.
It was there that he discovered the important role school psychologists play for students, families and staff members.
“It was a weird segue because I ended up doing a lot of child development stuff, a lot of teaching stuff, and then I also got to see what a school psychologist did just through the referral process of working in a school,” he said in a recent video interview. “It all came together, leading me down the path that I found myself here in Pittsburgh pursuing.”
Six years after arriving in Pittsburgh, Mr. Tarbell has been named one of two school psychologists of the year for 2020 by the Association of School Psychologists of Pennsylvania.
In an announcement in January, the association said Mr. Tarbell and Amber Sessoms of the Central Dauphin School District in Harrisburg exemplified the role of school psychologists and demonstrated outstanding commitment to the field.
“Mr. Tarbell and Dr. Sessoms embody the core of school psychology and school psychological practices,” the association said in a statement. “They are exemplars of school psychology and how school psychologists can have a significant impact on the lives of educators, students, families and communities.”
Mr. Tarbell, 32, of Mount Washington, was credited with advocating for an expanded and more comprehensive role for school psychologists, increasing equitable practices, and placing greater emphasis on prevention and intervention efforts in his time with the district.
The most notable initiative he said he has worked on in his role has been training more than 500 staff members — from teachers to school bus drivers — on youth mental health first aid. The training helps to identify typical and atypical developmental markers in adolescents and stresses building and fostering connections between children and adults.
“Just like we have nurses and health service professionals that are certified in first aid, mental health first aid is probably one of the most important skill sets we can have in working with our student population,” he said. “That way, if any student is experiencing schoolbased mental health issues, [ staff members] are equipped with a kind of toolkit to support that student and being that conduit to care.”
Under Mr. Tarbell, the district has clustered psychologists by feeder patterns, meaning students can stay with the same mental health care providers when they transition from elementary school to middle school and high school.
He said having consistency helps to alleviate student anxieties that frequently occur, such as concerns over moving from a smaller elementary or middle school to a much larger high school where they do not know anyone.
“It’s not going to be like we hand you off to a new teacher and a new staff completely,” he said. “You’re still going to have the same psychologist and you’ll see them once or twice a week and they’ll help you with unpacking any issues you have around transition and how those two settings are different.”
He also has worked to improve the district’s psychologist-to-student ratio, raising the number of school psychologists from 14 to 21 since coming to Pittsburgh. The district now employs about one psychologist for every 1,000 students.
“Our psychologists have the time and capability to do individual and group therapy when it comes to working with students around anything that a school team deems appropriate for sociallearning or mental health intervention,” he said. “It could be anything from attendance to truancy, [to] working with a school-based team to foster pro-academic skills with both families and students, to psychologists working in groups to address grief and loss.”
The position of psychological services supervisor allows Mr. Tarbell to do everything he hoped to do when he decided to transition from teacher to psychologist. He still works with children, but he also utilizes data to help adults help students.
The job, of course, comes with many challenges, but he finds the results rewarding.
“I get to support psychologists, students, principals, school teams,” he said. “Whenever I’m called in, it’s usually pretty difficult because there’s a lot of problem-solving. But it’s also a field where at the end of the day, all that problem-solving is to remove barriers to learning.”