I HEART Speech Therapy

I LOVE LOVE LOVE my job! There is zero question that I was born to be a speech therapist and all my years of talking have been leading up to my career of choice! I recently saw the above poster on Pinterest and I thought...."yep, that about sums it up!". How cool is it that I get to help amazing little people express themselves?? Love it! Now that being said it is not all sunshine and roses. Working in a school environment is difficult. The paperwork is out of control and there are way to many i's to dot and t's to cross. The government (gotta love 'em) does take a little fun out of the job but at this time in my life I still think it is worth it. While I can't guarantee I will stay working in this environment for ever...I can't think of a better place to serve the majority of children who have speech and language needs. Since many families can't afford private therapy, the only opportunity most children have for intervention is at school. The diverse population I get to work with on a daily basis is pretty awesome! Most people think my job is solely to help fix a child's lisp or correct a "funny" "r" (clearly /r/ is not my area of expertise considering Anna still sounds like she is from Jersey). But really my job is far more than that! While I do work with a large group of children with articulation impairments, I also work with students who are non-verbal, have autism, down syndrome, learning disabilities, specific language impairment, CAPD, ADHD, emotional disabilities, fluency impairments (stuttering), apraxia (motor planning impairment), dysarthria (weakness)...pretty much any one who has difficulty with expressing and understanding language and it's function.  At this time in my life  and in this environment I definitely feel like a jack of all trades, master of none! There is so much to know and I learn something new on a daily basis. Thank goodness I like to learn and there are an abundant amount of resource out there!  Just today I was reading an article for class and I had a huge aha moment! Then I got bored with reading studies and started browsing Pinterest (I know, big surprise) and discovered all sorts of cool new therapy ideas! One of them included the beautiful union of a Pediastaff pin board and an app. Anytime I can use my Ipad in therapy I will do it, so this really is very cool!

Speech Room News is a great blog

 I was so excited that I literally created this entire post just to mention it! I am so grateful for technology and the information that is floating around in cyber space. The amount of time and effort it takes to create fun and engaging activities for our students is overwhelming! I am a huge advocate of not re-inventing the wheel, so I love being able to incorporate other people's ideas! I do come up with a few things on my own once in a while but for the most part I use what's out there. I am thrilled when my student's tell me they love coming to speech. I know part of it is because they like leaving their class, but I also try to make it fun and enjoyable, for their sake and mine! 

Note to self: One of these days I should start my own speech blog to compile all of these great activities into one central location....or I could just keep obsessively pinning them onto my Speech Teach board! Either way...