Seattle Public Schools: Better Hearing And Speech Month

Press release from Seattle Public Schools:

05/27/2021

May is Better Hearing and Speech Month

Each May, Better Hearing and Speech Month provides an opportunity to raise awareness about communication disorders and the role of audiologists; speech-language pathologists; speech, language, and hearing scientists; audiology and speech-language pathology support staff in providing life-altering treatment for students with disabilities. We want to recognize and express our gratitude for all the work these staff do to support our students’ learning!

To celebrate, we interviewed Andrea McCarthy, one of our excellent speech-language pathologists (SLPs):

I have always loved working with kids and studied linguistics in college. After college, I taught elementary and preschool for a few years and noticed that I Ioved focusing on language development and skills with my students, so I went back to school to be an SLP. I love being a school SLP because I get to work with a variety of students across age levels in small groups and build relationships with students and families. I also love being able to collaborate with a wide variety of professionals in the school. Every day is different, and I get to be both creative and analytical every day to help students succeed.

What does your work look like day-to-day?

In an all in-person world, I may be in a Developmental Preschool classroom for the entire day, working on communication skills in the context of play. The next day I’ll be having various small-group sessions with students where we target skills such as articulation (how to say specific sounds), language (telling stories, understanding directions), and social pragmatic communication (how to ask questions of others, how to interpret emotions, how to problem solve with peers). Some days I’ll be working with teachers to lead a class circle, helping make visuals to support their learning in the classroom, and programming student communication devices to make sure they have their friends’ names and favorite activities on it!

The days go fast, and you can go from working on helping a student request “more goldfish” to helping another student practice analyzing non-fiction texts in the span of an hour!

How does your work support racial equity and inclusion?

As SLPs, we do a lot of work to ensure that we honor and advocate for student language differences. We love analyzing and learning about language and make sure we are thoughtfully considering each student’s strength and need. We also collaborate with families and teachers to make sure that goals and skills we practice are culturally relevant and meaningful to the student. As a whole department and in smaller groups of SLPs and interprofessional groups, we are doing a lot of work to make sure we are learning more about anti-racist strategies to prioritize students furthest from educational justice, particularly at the intersection of race and disability.

What's one way your work has changed in a remote setting? Any positive things you've learned about your practice since buildings closed over a year ago?

Like all educators, we had to learn and adapt to delivering instruction online. We’ve learned to use digital games and resources to practice skills and motivate students, and I feel fortunate to have an amazing group of over 80 SLPs to learn from! I have loved being able to work even more closely with families and caregivers on a day-to-day level in sessions to ensure what we’re practicing will be relevant and useful at both home and at school. Online learning has made it easier to collaborate with my colleagues and share resources, and I look forward to keeping that up when we are all back in-person together again.

Many thanks to Andrea and her colleagues for their very important work!

This press release was produced by Seattle Public Schools. The views expressed here are the author’s own.