Thinking about COVID 19, Schools and Speech Language Pathologists...

Jun 28, 2020 by

To all you Speech Language Pathologists working with unreasonable caseloads now is the time to advocate for yourselves and your students.  Think a lot about this as the guidelines for the “new normal” start coming out in every state. This week in Massachusetts the guidelines for what school is going to look like were released.  It pretty much encompasses what I expected it would.  Earlier guidelines came out for summer opening only a couple of weeks ago.  Both these documents provide very generic guidelines and both read as if the people who wrote them have never spent a day working in a public schools or even remember going to school.  Again it is one more document that clearly shows that they do not know the role of the SLP in schools and how we work with kids. According to...

read more

How are school SLPs handling their caseload during the Covid 19 crisis?...

Apr 11, 2020 by

We’ve been out of school now for 4 weeks here in the northeast because of Covid 19.  While I only have a small private practice that I put on hold, I have been wondering how school speech language pathologists across the country are managing their caseloads, especially those therapists who are put in positions where they have 30-50-80+ students on their caseload. Even when working in schools some very creative scheduling, often with help from an SLPA, has to take place to manage a large caseload.   If you’re an SLP with a large caseload you’re often seeing kids in groups of 3-5 (basically each student is getting 6-10 minutes per session to work on their specific skills, less if you’re a big data collector).  I think of these as Band-Aid services, doing just enough for the students...

read more

The Marshalla Guide: Book Review...

Mar 2, 2020 by

I was recently asked to review a new book.  The Marshalla Guide  A Topical Anthology of Speech Movement Techniques for Motor Speech Disorder and Articulation Deficits  By Pam Marshalla, M.A., CCC-SLP.  Being fairly familiar with the quality of Pam Marshalla’s previous works and using/owning many of her books myself I jumped at the opportunity to review her new book.   The Marshalla Guide is basically Pam Marshalla’s life’s work in the areas of oral motor and articulation. Passing on Pam’s knowledge, research and remediation strategies in a structured and well organized manner,  the Marshalla Guide covers all things articulation. While in the process of reviewing this book I’ve already used it to refresh my knowledge on lateral lisp, jaw stabilization techniques and other ideas to achieve stimulability of challenging error sounds. The Marshalla Guide is a pretty big book, almost 500 pages,...

read more

How do administrators and teachers perceive language disabilities?...

Dec 9, 2019 by

It has been quite awhile since I posted anything. I apologize for that.  No real excuses, except that writing a blog is a job in itself.  Plus I think I have been a little disillusioned with the field.  However, I haven’t been sitting around feeling sorry for my situation.  After 30+ years in schools I’ve made a positive change.  I’m still running my own small private practice and it has been going well.  I take on a few private clients and a school contract here and there.  It has actually worked out well and I’ve learned a lot working as a consultant in a variety of settings with a variety of teams. The other day I needed another half credit hour to renew my license.  I found a one-credit course through Northern Speech Services called Perceptions of Children in Speech Therapy-What the SLP...

read more

Smart Goals made easy

Aug 15, 2018 by

Hey SLPs If you are thinking about your personal “smart goal” for the next school year you might want to check out my site on Teachers Pay Teachers.   A few years back the SLPs in my district were asked to put together a short in-service for teaching assistants about the role of the SLP in schools, students we work with and how they can support language development in the classroom. This was to satisfy one of our “smart goal” requirements.  Since I did put a little bit of work into it I decided to make it available on TPT.  The in-service is titled Speech and Language Services In Schools In-service for Teaching Assistants.  It is made up of a presenter’s packet and a packet for participants.  The in-service is appropriate for all levels through middle school. ...

read more

The Essential 55-book review

Apr 8, 2018 by

I was dusting some of my bookshelves and found this book The Essential 55 by Ron Clark. I remember being very impressed with this book back in 2009 and even wrote a book review. Remember something is a few years old doesn’t mean it isn’t very good or passe. Common sense and good manners go a long way. This book went beyond focusing on successful students (which seems to be the only focus these days)…it focused on creating successful people. From 2009 Your Middle Schooler: A Unique Age I’m always on the look out for common sense ideas that enhance more than just academics. In my field of Speech Language Pathology, pragmatic skill development is as important to us as receptive and expressive language development. Pragmatic skills are the social speech skills that help...

read more