Workshops/Conferences Review
The School Speech Therapist is going to ASHA. It has been 29 years but in a few days I’m finally going back to the ASHA Convention. This time not as a newbee SLP but as a seasoned professional with over 30 years of experience. I’ve also decided to blog my ASHA experience.
I’ve spent the last few days perusing the course/workshop/poster session lists, hoping to maximize my learning and my acquisition of CEUs. That process alone has been a bit overwhelming but also interesting to see what others in the field are working on. There are also a hand full of non-course activities and “meet and greets” that sound like fun. With social media being such a big part of SLP world these days, I’m also looking forward to putting some names and faces together.
The other exciting part about the ASHA Convention for me is that I am presenting a poster session. For a lot of people that wouldn’t be a big deal but for me it is. For months now I’ve been planning and prepping. Anyone who says putting together presentations isn’t work, is totally wrong. Since this is a first for me, it’s probably taken me twice as long to pull this poster session together. I sweated over the title, wondered if the content would be relevant, figured out how to create a poster in powerpoint and toiled over my three pages of handouts. The good thing is that I now know my material so well that I’m not feeling nervous about presenting. I also realize I could be doing all this work and no one even stop by to see my poster. I will explain a little more about my poster presentation in a future post. For now here are the presentation details.
(To get the advance handout you need to go to the ASHA web site. I’ll post it live after the conference along with my rack card handout for administrators)
I’ve actually retitled my poster to Educating School Administrators about the Speech Language Pathologists Scope of Practice and role in Schools My poster session is based on my book The School Speech Language Pathologist, An Administrators Guide to understanding the role of the SLP in schools along with strategies to aid staffing, workload management and student success
Hope to see many of you there! If not follow along.
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Teresa
Largest gathering of SLPs in history
Attending the Welcome to ASHA meeting. Going over some of the choices for programs. I’m going to be exposed to an amazing amount of information the next few days.
Over 1700 poster sessions over the next 3 days. That might explain why so many SLPs were traveling with tubes😉 Hope you all take some time to stop bye and peeks at the posters your interested in.
There were about 6 sessions I wanted to attend this morning. My plan is to attend one focusing on capd and writing ieps to reflect capd goals. I’ll let you know how it goes
Can you spot the SLP?
I made it to Philly. It was a lot of fun at the airport. Met several SLP’s as we waited for our flight from Boston. We played spot the SLP. Which is never hard….SLPs can always scope out other SLPs…we must have some sort of cosmic connection. It helped that every other SLP was carried a poster tube with them.
Signing in was painless. No lines yet. I can’t imagine what the lines will look like tomorrow. It looked a little like they were getting ready to move some livestock. The sign up is set up in the exibition hall. Tonight there were lots of people around to point you in the right direction. The gift bags were basically program books and advertisements. There was also one cool little sticker.
Went over to the first timers event. I figured I qualified since I hadn’t been here for 29 years. It was more of a welcome to the ASHA organization rather than welcome to the conference. ASHA offered a nice little spread but if you wern’t with someone it wasn’t really that engaging. So I bailed and went to the Marriott Rewards Lounge for a drink and some nibbles.
Plan for the rest of the night is to firm up my plan for tomorrow.
ASHA here I come
I’m very excited to be traveling to ASHA 2016 today. I’m all set to go except for a few last minute details. I’ve already asked my husband to make sure I don’t forget to take my poster with me. My biggest fear is that I’m going to leave the poster somewhere since I’m not use to carrying around a tube. No I’m pretty sure I’ll keep the poster pretty close to me the whole trip.
Of course I’m wondering if there will be any interest in my poster session. It’s basically about self advocacy and recent personal experience tell me this is something greatly needed in our field. It is something I’ve worked on for years without much buy in from colleagues who are just trying to get through their day. Most of my work with administrators has fallen on deaf ears and we need to change that.
I’m hoping to get to Philly with a couple of hours of daylight to spare so I can see the city a little bit. ASHA sent an email warning us about political protests going on and to be cautious. I’m really not concerned, I don’t think SLPs are threatening targets. My experience is that most of us are too busy to even bring the subject up.
Apparently attendance for ASHA 2016 will shatter previous records. 15,000 SLPs and Audiologists are defending upon the city. I am looking forward to meeting some very friendly, interesting and like minded therapists the next few days.
Looking forward to attending the first timers meeting this evening. I figured since it’s been 29 years since my last convention It might be a good thing to go. Unless something more fun comes up.
Oh one last thing. I will have a few copies of my book available if anyone is interested. $10 if you want a copy while at ASHA.
Hope to see you there
tweet @TheSchoolSLP #ASHA16
