The Hello peeps spent last Saturday evening gathered together with our special people celebrating the arrival of the winter holidays and each other’s company. This year found us gathered at Henry’s Tavern, a new-to-us venue that provided good food, good drinks, and plenty of room to mingle (and play pool!). We carried our annual theme of… (read more)
We had a great evening with Dr. Kerry Mandulak from Pacific University as she shared with us her endless wisdom and expertise on cleft palate. Most of us only get to work with a handful of children with cleft palate, and rarely is this topic included in our graduate coursework. We were thrilled to gain… (read more)
There is a lot out there on the internets about the qualities of a good boss. Inc ranked their top 10 traits of a good boss as Empathy, Trust, Loyalty, Discernment, Insight, Character, Reward, Relationship, Honor, and Conviction. Ok sure. We agree with that (even if our inner SLPs want to nitpick that those words aren’t,… (read more)
When I get questions from school-based SLPs around compliance, it usually has to do with workload, e.g. “How do I maintain compliance when I don’t have enough time to do everything that needs to be done?” Compliance covers everything from meeting IEP service minutes to managing evaluation timelines and deadlines for annual and triennial meeting and… (read more)
If you’ve followed us for any length of time, you’ve likely heard about our 4 core values: Put Kids First, Provide Quality Service, Practice Work-Life Balance, and Give. They are, as we frequently say, at the root of Our Why and they guide what we do every day. One of the best parts about them… (read more)
Every session is a challenge as a new clinician. I remember the crazy amount of time I spent preparing for each treatment session in graduate school. Luckily, as I gained knowledge and experience, I became more efficient and comfortable. I learned the right questions to ask and where to start with a student, and also how… (read more)
You would think that by October, the schedule ordeal would be over. But you would be forgetting that scheduling is never complete! There are changing service times, students making progress and graduating, and of course new referrals! A lot to juggle There are so many instructional priorities within the short school day, even at… (read more)
As any seasoned trick-or-treater knows, a truly excellent haul on Halloween night is classified by collecting just the right mix of fruity and chocolaty, crunchy and smooth, novelties and classics. We got to thinking that the same can be said for an excellent special education team — the right mix can make all the difference… (read more)
When SLPs think about telepractice, often we think of the model that is being pushed by larger national telepractice companies: An SLP in one state provides direct services online to kids at school in other areas. However, this is a limiting way to think about telepractice. When we think of telepractice as one of our… (read more)
Over the years we have often asked the special education administrators we work with what their biggest job-related challenge is. Given the diverse set of districts that we work with, the answers always have a fair amount of variation — indeed, the challenges facing a supervisor in an urban mega-district are different than those of… (read more)