Brooke Rafdal
Ph.D. candidate,
school psychology,
Department of Educational Psychology
Brooke Rafdal, a third-year doctoral student in the school psychology program, has a special interest in early childhood education and language development. She works to ensure that families have resources to adequately prepare their children for kindergarten through the Center for Early Education and Development’s 500 Under 5 project, based in North Minneapolis.
Twice each year, she evaluates preschoolers to ensure they’re on track for kindergarten. “If they deviate from that trajectory, I make referrals within the district or county to ensure that they have access to needed resources,” she explains.
Rafdal will be teaching language-promotion techniques, including more frequent and inquisitive verbal interaction, to parents of at-risk children in the program. For her dissertation she plans to study early childhood language development interventions within a sample of participants.
Rafdal also worked in the Mounds View Early Childhood Special Education program, where she assessed preschool children to determine what district services they needed.
She has found these hands-on experiences valuable. “For me, practicum experiences have helped to solidify what I have learned in the classroom,” Rafdal explains. “I feel much more confident about my ability to provide school psychological services given that I have had the opportunity to work in several settings with many different children, parents, and teachers.”
Upon graduation, Rafdal plans to continue community-based research work as an early childhood school psychologist focusing on at-risk populations.
—B.M.