This is my 12th year working with The Hello Foundation and my 11th year providing speech therapy services via the Hello There model. I’ve worked in five states in over sixteen school districts or ESDs. Each placement has its own unique students, staff, relationships, problems, solutions, climate, and culture. I’ve been fortunate to have the… (read more)
THFers gathered for our 10th annual (!!) winter retreat last weekend. Looking back, we sure have grown over the years! In 2008, twelve of our clinicians gathered at a mountain cabin for a cozy, casual event. This year, we hit our record with 39 attendees. Wow! Our growth meant that we needed to change venues… (read more)
If there is one area where school-based clinicians always feel they can grow, it is in serving culturally and linguistically diverse populations. If you work in a school with a large number of Spanish-speaking families, there might be a system in place for supporting their needs, but everyone is acutely aware of how different the… (read more)
Happy New Year! Here at The Hello Foundation, we are very thankful for the wonderful School Administrators we work with. We appreciate all that you do to put kids first on a daily basis. We understand how stressful your jobs can be and truly value all that you do to make a difference! We are… (read more)
I started a new budgeting program a few months ago and one of the core tenants of the system is that there is no such thing as a surprise expense. All of the things that we consider unexpected expenses are, in fact, incredibly predictable. Oh no! My timing belt needs to be replaced! What a surprise!… (read more)
Our Hello family partnered with Michelle’s Love this holiday season to provide gifts for a single mom fighting breast cancer and her two boys, ages 13 and 10. Michelle’s Love provides financial assistance, healthy meals and home cleanings to single parents undergoing treatment for cancer, and this is our second time supporting their amazing work. … (read more)
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)