...because I work for 5 separate "districts."
Bummer, right? There aren't many downsides to working for myself from home, but this is certainly one of them. One of my virtual charter schools had spring break two weeks ago, and the rest have spring break this week. In sum, I never really got a spring break. That being said, I serve three students at the school in session this week, so that's two and a half hours out of my typical 35. Not too, too shabby. ;) For being a tele-therapist, though, I've gotten super lazy about organizing my "office," because if it's out of the webcam's eye, my clients are none the wiser. (And I am none the cleaner.) So, my spring break has been a spring cleaning whirlwind of my house, office-included. I'm sure you are no stranger to KonMari and her Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I, too, bought the book MONTHS ago (cough, August, cough-cough), but never got around to it. Half of my possessions were collecting dust in a storage unit, and I didn't want to half-heartedly clean what little pile I had outside of storage. When my other half and I moved into a rental house, I decided I would hop onto the Tidying Train...and yet another month went by. But! To make a long-winded rant shorter, I will say that I have been KonMari-tidying my office this week, and so far, it's looking better! It's mostly saying "does this spark joy for my students?" and "does this spark joy for targeting a speech or language goal?" Because, let's be honest - I love my students and my job, but I don't necessarily think the mundane building-up-skills-before-we-figure-out-what-strategy-works-for-them is worthy of a joy spark. Maybe I'm wrong, but speech and language therapy is not all daisies and rainbows ALL the time. Just most. I've retained most of my therapy belongings (I'm only two and a half years out of school and also a self-proclaimed minimalist), but I did get to rid myself of some materials I've collected (freebies = YAS when you're an SLP paying student loans. right!?). Surprisingly, these were mostly garage sale or thrift store finds that I was SURE I would use. It's really the freebies that have proven to be the most useful! Also on the agenda this week? Digital tidying. I've been prepping for those long hours I'm going to need to log by listening to Note to Self while I'm sorting my office. I find this podcast super-relatable now that my livelihood is earned through technology. I hope you'll give Manoush a listen, because she holds my attention really well, and I find her topics interesting and engaging. Plus, I've got over 4,000 digital files solely dedicated to targeting speech and language goals. Yikes. Are you a KonMari fan? Have you tried the spark joy method to tidying your office, or digital workspace? XO, The Cyber Speechie
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...your client's internet connection.
Hello, again! Today's post is a bit of vented frustration. (I apologize in advance!) It's been building up in me for a while, and it's truly just making the case for spending the extra buck for quality, high-speed internet. My livelihood at the moment relies on technology. I depend upon my iMac and internet speed to get me through 8 hours of speech and language therapy, 5 days a week. Now, I'm barely technology literate (T.G.F.Y.T. - Thank God For YouTube Tutorials), but I know enough to spend my hard-earned dollars on the best internet money can buy. There is no sense in performing therapy through a sub-par connection, especially when I rely on visual cues so much. For you readers who aren't familiar with speech therapy, a ton of what we do in articulation therapy is demonstrating how a client should place their lips, tongue, teeth, and other oral structures to make the correct speech sounds. Not only does articulation therapy rely on real-time visual and audio input and output, but if a student gets reward time to play a game, it doesn't work if their internet is lagging. That being said, I completely understand if a family's budget does not allow for the fastest internet around. It's not cheap to zip through the internet at lightning speed. At the same time, how effective is this therapy when I am waiting for at least 10 minutes out of a thirty minute session, once a week, for the computer to "catch up" on the other end? If a student is enrolled in virtual school, they are administered a computer. If they qualify for speech and/or language services, they are also administered a webcam. What's so different about a quality internet connection? I was required to upgrade my 2010 white MacBook (R.I.P. MACaroni) and internet to ensure that I had a quality connection. Why isn't this a student requirement, too? Virtual school is 100% technology. My students don't even live in my time zone. How will we ever establish quality foundations for such a fundamental part of the services I'm providing, if they look like a box of pixels and sound mechanical and robotic? Food for thought. XO, The Cyber Speechie ...how much I rely on good old-fashioned pen and paper.
Hello again! It's been a while, but I have some exciting news! I picked up a handful of extra clients, and more are steadily rolling in as the days creep along. I've been itching to spend more of my days ~in~ therapy, so it's nice to feel busy again. The world of teletherapy moves only as quickly as you can churn out an email. "Paper" trails are your best friend, and so, it's a slow-moving process. The nice thing, though, is that I can quickly correspond in my brief 5-minute breaks (if you can even call them that?) between clients and usually get a response before my next break. Ahh, technology. But, that's not why I popped in today. After picking up these new students, I came to the realization that my favorite (in an I-love-office-supplies-too-much kind of way) data collection method is by far pen and paper. No connection errors, no technological glitches, no iCloud lost files. It's always there. It always works. Okay, maybe not if the pen runs out of ink or if my paper happens to rip, but you get the gist. I may not be the most gung-ho about solely relying on technology for my data and therapy needs, but I'm trying. So I use my document camera to write lists for comparing/contrasting? So I used 12 sticky notes yesterday to record each student's data points? So I print every IEP in full so they're sitting at my fingertips in case the internet crashes? So, sue me. That being said, I am a big proponent of paper recycling. I can't bring myself to throw out even the tiny dots made by my holepunch. Yes, I put those in the ever-growing heap to take to the paper recycling facility. So, sue me, again. But again, I'm trying. I've slowly made the switch over to an Excel spreadsheet of student goals with everyone's DOB, age, grade, IEP due date, and objectives listed out nice and neat. I've started keeping my therapy notes in Excel, and I type time in/time out so when I need to verify my invoice billing, I can. I even put little Sheet tabs at the bottom for each school I service (4 virtual and 2 brick-and-mortar). Fancy, fancy. I've got a ways to go, but I definitely am transitioning. For example, since I began drafting this post (embarrassingly long ago), I've stopped printing my IEPs! The printed ones have been shredded and used as scratch paper for data tracking (let me have my baby steps). I still keep my therapy schedule sticky-tacked to the wall, though, because that one time that iCalendar didn't ding for me to log in for my student, hell broke loose. (Okay, maybe not, but I was embarrassed at being a pinch unprofessional.) I also bit the bullet and bought Articulation Station. (And you, lucky readers, can take part in the sale right now, which I was not fortunate enough to wait for. I'm not sponsoring this app, I'm just saying it's pretty much fantastic for data-keeping) Half my caseload gets drill therapy every session, and then a few speech game minutes, and finally their earned game minutes. Data's done, and I have spent none of my unpaid planning time. Win. Any tips, SLPs? How do you make life less paper-dependent? XO, The Cyber Speechie Hello, again! It's been a while. A long while. After the holidays, I felt like I had to get my footing again, and a lot of my therapy time was spent re-directing my students back to my expectations and our routines. It's a different world in Cyber Speech Land, but after laying the groundwork, it gets a little easier. The super-snow-storm didn't help things, either! My students were off of school for over a week because they live in an area that was hit HARD. So, here we are again, establishing rules and expectations... But that's not what I wanted to post about today. I wanted to give a glimpse into what we've been doing so far. So let's get to it! Artic-tac-toe (see what I did there?) So original, I know. But with this group, we have issues taking turns and talking for each other, so I chose tic-tac-toe to practice turn-taking AND sound production. Simultaneously. :) Articulation pyarmid! How else can I get multiple trials per target word out of a fussy kindergartener who constantly asks for games? ;) They know we don't play until we climb to the top! A little syntax activity I whipped up in Google Docs. All the freebies for sentence order I found online were just too challenging for my little firsties. I had to improvise, and this did the trick! This was a past-tense verb activity for a fourth grader. I mixed up which words I typed in and which ones I made my student answer (some were already in past and the student had to change to present, and some were present tense). We spoke our sentences out loud, because this student can be a slow typer, which cuts down on productive therapy time. I got the image from a Teachers Pay Teachers product I bought here. I LOVE this purchase. It's amazing for language intervention in the elementary population. I had my students think of words that begin with their target sound, /th/, and search Google Images for their favorite picture of the word. When they added it to the picture, I typed the word while they came up with a sentence for the word they chose. Having them choose their image was super helpful with creative sentences! Plus, I got a word trial and a sentence trial for each target sound. I am always squeezing data out of my groups in whatever way I can.
You may notice that a lot of my activities appear to be on a drawing board-type application. I FREQUENTLY (and by frequently, I mean almost exclusively) rely on a website called A Web Whiteboard. I often screenshot purchases I've made from Teachers Pay Teachers or other website photos I find, and input them into my activity. It's a life-saver for quick therapy activities, and my online alternative to good old pen-and-paper therapy. I hope these tips helped! Anything you like to use on the internet that saves your butt in therapy? XO, The Cyber Speechie I'm back!
It's been about 5 weeks, and yet, I've only just finished week 1. In true fashion, Speech Language Pathology is mainly behind-the-scenes stuff. I've been busting my butt getting through the licensure needed for all the states I'll be working in, and those State Boards of SLP do NOT expedite for anyone ;) My first week was spent with a brick and mortar elementary school, which was awesome. Maybe I'm biased because I lean towards early childhood education, but having only Kindergarten through 2nd grade clients is awesome! I know I'll only begin to touch on the dreaded /r/, and yet, I'll see a heckuva lot of progress with those other pesky sounds! In short, it was a week of how-do-you-do's and nice-to-meet-ya's and hey-your-speech-teacher-lives-about-300-miles-away-so-she-only-will-see-you-in-the-computer's. Little minds were blown! Other than my standard platter of introduction questions, we just gathered baselines and played some short reinforcer games. (Looking at you, FunBrain) Hopefully, I'll be back sooner next time, because I'll actually be doing some teletherapy! XO, The Cyber Speechie Hello!
Welcome to the Cyber Speechie site. Join me for my adventures in Cyber Speech Language Pathology as I begin my journey into tele-practice! Here's some background into my choice to become a Cyber Speech Therapist: I began working as a Speech-Language Pathologist in Florida immediately after earning my Master's degree in my home state of Pennsylvania in December 2013. I worked in a center school for students with cognitive and language impairments, working primarily on alternative means of communication (AAC) with students 3 through 21-years-old. While I had 80 students to service on my caseload, I actually "saw" just about every student in that school due to their other health impairments and developmental delays which affected how they communicate. As a contracted therapist, I unfortunately did not continue with my students into the following school year, but was placed in a general education school, working with students with speech and language impairments, including fluency, speech sounds, and language deficits. My students ranged from 3-years-old to 5th grade, which was a smaller range but a bigger challenge, in my opinion. My previous position focused mostly on Augmentative and Alternative Communication devices or methods (think, sign language or communication devices), while in this school, every one of my kids was a talker! Mid-way through the year, I had a big life change (read: began a long-distance relationship) and chose to move to Ohio when the school year finished this June. I knew that living in Ohio while my boyfriend completed his Master's degree would be a challenge, but I didn't realize how much it would impact my career choices and professional goals. Come June, we packed all of my belongings in a 10-foot U-Haul (I thought I had more junk than that!) and cruised up to Ohio. NOTE: if planning to move cross-country, do NOT decide to pack a truck and make the journey all in one day. Split it up for your mental health and your passenger's. Many, many, many coffees later, we made it. While I had been searching for positions while still living in Florida, I remained hopeful that something would come my way when I actually lived in Ohio. I had my license already, so I had been confident it was going to fall into my lap, much like my Florida positions had. Four anxious weeks later, I found a listing for a position in a Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) about an hour away from where I was living. My mantra in undergrad and graduate school had been "I'll never work in a nursing home," but I realized that the circumstances were karma's way of forcing me to be flexible. Initially, I was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed (-haired?), young SLP in a setting where the clients closest to my age had me beat by 40+ years. I enjoyed the change of scenery, but it was too different from the educational settings I knew. I'm glad I tried working in a medical setting, but for me, it's part-time or summer work. I have no interest in making an SLP career out of medical settings. To each, his (her) own! When my contract expired, I was hopeful that a maternity leave or retirement would leave a spot for me, but day after day and hour after hour of searching proved me wrong. Plus, my boyfriend is looking for a permanent position and has the opportunity to complete his Master's degree online for the final semester (read: I'm a transient nomad). This complicates things for school positions, and as I realized, the SNF is not for me. Two companies contacted me about a relatively new tele-practice position in the same school district I had worked in Florida. Cue my squeals of happiness! I already knew the IEP systems, some of the SLPs, my supervisor, and the student population. Now, I could do it from behind the screens. Except for that adage, if it sounds too good to be true..., because two weeks later, and no word about it. Picture me, a new SLP with a couple student loan payments and bills down on her hope. It's hard not having a regular income. At least at the SNF, I knew I could screen clients and I had a meager caseload, but it was something. No schedule (Type A's worst nightmare), no income, no plan. Lo and behold, a position opens up: tele-therapist wanted for Speech Therapy services. Too good to be true? Maybe. I inquired nonetheless. And here we are! I'm currently finalizing applications for licensure in a few states to add to the collection. So far, I'm licensed in 3 with 2 processing. A trophy case, of sorts. Stay tuned for my journey into Cyber Speech Therapy! |
AuthorHi! My name is Meghan, and I am a tele-practicing Speech-Language Pathologist. Join me along the ride into cyber speech therapy! Archives
August 2017
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