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...

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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...

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Accommodations are they really that effective?...

Jan 1, 2018 by

Every once in awhile I read back through my blog and look at the relevance and passion of my posts.  I recently reread the post called     “Are accommodations taking the place of specialized instruction”    Looking at some recent IEPs I would think the answer is yes.  I know I still write a lot of accommodations.  My reasons are because I know I either don’t have the time to follow up on every thing during the limited weekly sessions or there are things I want to address (and do address) that just can’t be measured easily.   Now I know most of the accommodations are related to testing but I have to ask are those accommodations being followed every time a test is given.  With 20-30 kids in a classroom I seriously doubt it....

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The Speech Teacher’s Handbook: Book Review...

Dec 28, 2017 by

I recently came across this book on Amazon. It piqued my interest so I bought it. It is called “The Speech Teacher’s Handbook, A Parent’s Guide to Speech and Language” by Molly Dresner, MS SLP-CCC. I found the title to be a little awkward but the information in the book to be pretty good. First of all I know a lot of you out there will take exception to the use of “The Speech Teacher”, you all need to get past that. Face it we have a branding issue, which is certainly a topic for another time. I can understand why Ms. Dresner used the title “Speech Teacher” because in the world of early intervention that is how we are known. In the book she makes it clear that she is a “Speech Language...

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SLPs, Contribute to your school newsletter...

Mar 6, 2017 by

In my state, teachers and all professional staff have to generate personal SMART goals. With all the work SLPs do, the last thing I wanted to do was have to keep complicated data on something I was doing. At that point I decided to do something very easy for me that would benefit all students not just those with language issues. My SMART goal was to write monthly articles focusing on language development. Initially, I found it wasn’t that easy to find universal themes that could be beneficial to all. However, knowing all we know about language and learning once I had a topic writing for parents was easy. I created articles about once or twice a month for that school year. The idea was well received by my principal. Basically it was free...

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Stopping the Stuttering Trajectory in the Preschool Years...

Feb 14, 2017 by

The School Speech Therapist would like to welcome guest blogger Mirla G. Raz. I first became acquainted with Ms. Raz when I was asked to review her most recent publication Preschool Stuttering: What Parents Can Do. I was duly impressed with the book (you can read my review here). As it turned out I was already very familiar with Ms. Raz’s work since I had been using her books from her Help Me Talk Right series for years. The Help Me Talk Right Books continue to be a staple in my therapy room. Ms. Raz has shared an excerpt taken from her newly developed course Stopping the Stuttering Trajectory in the Preschool Years available through Northern Speech Services.  The course is designed to teach SLPs how they can help parents navigate the emotional and...

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