Thinking about COVID 19, Schools and Speech Language Pathologists

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

Jun 28, 2020 by Teresa Sadowski MA CCC-SLP

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...

Schools have to get back to normal in the fall….not the “new normal”...

Jun 17, 2020 by Teresa Sadowski MA CCC-SLP

***I actually wrote this article about two weeks ago and did not get a chance to post it. Since then the powers that be are hinting at how Covid will effect summer services and school next fall but nothing seems definite yet. Just about every news outlet is starting to do stories on what school is going to look like in the fall. The buzz word “new normal” seems to be the current catch all phrase starting to surpass “we’re all in this together but apart” (another phrase which is being use to calm people fears, face it we are alone in this and most of us are looking out for number one. But that is an article for another day). All kinds of crazy things are mentioned in news trailers and in on line articles. I just hope...

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

Apr 11, 2020 by Teresa Sadowski MA CCC-SLP

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...

The Marshalla Guide: Book Review...

Mar 2, 2020 by Teresa Sadowski MA CCC-SLP

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,...

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

Dec 9, 2019 by Teresa Sadowski MA CCC-SLP

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...