Pick Your Panic — New Diagnostician Survival Guide

🌿 Breathe. You got this. One thing at a time — you don't have to fix everything before lunch.

🚨 I have an ARD and no idea what I'm doing 🔤 I don't know what any of these acronyms mean 👥 I don't know who does what 📋 I don't know the actual steps — consent, testing, drafting, publishing 😩 My caseload is impossible and I have no support 🗂️ I don't know what goes in a student folder

Panic #1

I have an ARD and no idea what I'm doing

Start with the facilitation reference — it walks the whole meeting, before/during/after, so you're not building the agenda from memory. Then check the timeline tracker for what's actually due and when.

ARD Facilitation Reference
Full meeting walkthrough — agenda, committee membership, what-ifs, amendments. Open ↗ ARD / IEP Timeline Tracker
45-day clock, annual, triennial — what's due and when. Open ↗

Panic #2

I don't know what any of these acronyms mean

Everyone talks in shorthand and nobody stops to explain it. Keep this tab open for your first month.

Texas Sped Abbreviations
130+ terms, searchable, color-coded by category. Open ↗

Panic #3

I don't know who does what

Diagnostician, LSSP/school psych, ARD facilitator, case manager — the roles blur, especially when your campus is short-staffed.

Educational Diagnostician — Roles & Responsibilities
Scope of practice, what's yours vs. the team's. Open ↗ Who's That Person in the Back of Your Room?
Faculty-facing explainer — hand this to teachers who are confused too. Open ↗

Panic #4

I don't know the actual steps — consent, testing, drafting, publishing

This is the full arc of an evaluation, broken into the parts people actually get stuck on.

Evaluation Consent & Notice Checklist
What to send and what comes back, by evaluation type. Open ↗ Consent & Notice Reference
When consent is required vs. when notice is enough. Open ↗ Report Lab
Phrase library and quick-copy patterns for FIE writing. Open ↗ FIE Data Entry & Narratives Generator
Enter scores, get domain-by-domain narrative drafts to paste. Open ↗

Panic #5

My caseload is impossible and I have no support

A tool can't give you a clerk or an ARD facilitator. What it can do is help you see the whole caseload at once so you're triaging instead of guessing what to do next. You will not get everything done today. That's not a you-problem — say so out loud to your supervisor, and use what's below to make the load visible instead of carrying it in your head.

Evaluation Caseload Tracker
Every student, due date, and status in one view. Open ↗ Testing Scheduler
Plan testing around bell schedules across campuses. Open ↗

Have five minutes instead of a crisis?

A rough map of the first 90 days, for when you can breathe long enough to read ahead.

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Weeks 1–2 — survival vocabulary

Learn the acronyms, figure out who's who on your campus, and get the timeline tracker open before your first deadline sneaks up on you.

Weeks 3–4 — your first evaluation, start to finish

Consent → data gathering → assessment → report. The hub's workflow spine (Gather → Read It → Plan → Assess → Interpret → Document) follows this same order — when in doubt, that's the sequence.

Months 2–3 — the stuff nobody tells you

Timeline math when a case falls behind, what to do when a battery doesn't answer the referral question, and the report-writing traps that trip up almost everyone once.

One more thing. Every diagnostician in your Facebook group who looks like they have it together was exactly where you are right now. Ask the question. Send the message. Nobody expects you to already know this — that's what year one is for.