End of the Year

Here it is, the end of another school year! Hooray! Whew, I made it through another year.

Yesterday I just walked to a park with my preschool class; it's only about a half-mile or so (I'm bad a guesstimating distances like that, so it could be less) but it took about 15 minutes to walk it with 11 preschoolers and 4 adults. Also, I was not aware that we were walking to the park, so of course I did not have appropriate walking shoes on. Every other day of the year I wear comfy shoes, but yesterday I had on chunky heels. Sheesh!

I think my boyfriend and I have our apartment all situated, we're just waiting for the actual apartment number. Whew, that's one thing down. However, I am still looking for a job. Sigh. Ultimately, I probably won't be working for my contracting company in the upcoming year because I seriously doubt they'll find me a job. My HR rep told me yesterday (again) that it's going to be really hard this year because the government keeps saying that money is coming, but they haven't approved it yet. The fiscal year doesn't start until July 1st, so, a lot of schools might not be hiring until then because they won't know what kind of funding they'll have.

Also, one of the jobs that I applied for was recently filled. I had to e-mail the HR director to find this out. No one bothered to even contact me. Frustrating!

On a higher note, after calling a couple of people, filling out some basic paperwork, a $200 check in the mail and an unnecessary $40 (I failed to read that this did not apply to me), I think I can mail out my application for Mississippi Licensure on Monday afternoon and at least have that out of the way. Sigh. I hope this all works out for my job.

New Phone!

Wow, it's been a week already?!? Where has the time gone? Well, let's travel backwards in chronological order to see if I can get you caught up on the high points.

I purchased a new phone today! I have never done this online, as I am more of an *in person* kind of consumer, especially for phones that I have to use daily for 2 years. However, I have talked to two friends who own this phone and like it. It's the Samsung Alias 2. I'm excited, especially after much time and frustration spent on the Verizon page Saturday and today, tooling the website (which isn't that impressive) and chatting with reps.

Today I spent a little over an hour doing an *interview* with a new SLP who would like my job. That's right, I was the one who took her around and showed her the ropes. It was slightly awkward on two levels. One, I know her. When she was in undergrad I was in grad school and we worked on an article together. So, it was weird, but also kind of nice because I felt like I could talk to her more like a friend. Two, the director of student services had other obligations, so I was the one showing her around. On top of that, while I've enjoyed this position, we all know there are downsides to every job. So, I tried to give her the information she needed, while trying to put a positive spin on things without lying. Who knows, maybe the people I didn't like, she will get along with fine. She really seemed excited about it though, so that's good.

I've been looking for a job in Mississippi lately, so I spent some time filling out job apps Saturday. Haven't had to do that for a while (my contracting company has been taking care of that). Not fun. Went to my parents house on Saturday for a cookout and just to spend some more time with them. When Scott and I left, I realized that I won't be able to do that anymore in Mississippi and how much I'm going to miss it.

Sunday we went shopping after going to the Flying Bean/Joe which is our favorite coffee shop and we religiously go there every Sunday morning (pun intended). The shopping was to Kohl's because we had some Kohl's cash to spend. I got a bracelet and earrings to go with my new dress (to wear to weddings).

Other than that, we've just been plugging along at trying to get more details worked out for this big move and me trying to finish out my school year before the craziness that is summer begins.

"Sick Day" *cough cough*

I think this may have been my first official day of hookey...ever. There was one, maybe two classes that I skipped in undergrad, just to skip them and stay in bed, but I've NEVER called into work sick when I wasn't sick. Heck, I haven't ever called in sick unless I was basically dying.

Scott's defense of his dissertation was today. Need I say more? I have been planning for this day for, well, a week...but waiting 4 years for this day. One of Scott's friends gave me the idea of baking "Ph.D. cookies" for the dissertation, because that's what his wife had done for him. So, I planned, bought ingredients, made dough Sunday night, baked Tuesday night, and frosted this morning. It was fun!

And now, after almost 4 full years, Scott has passed his defense. Basically, for those who don't know, it boils down to this. For a Ph.D., you obviously take a lot of classes, but you also have to do a massive paper called a dissertation. You conduct some kind of study in your area of interest and write it up into a huge document (Scott's is over 200 pages). Then, when you're "finished", you present it to people (your committee, friends, supporters) in a 30 minute presentation with 10 minutes of questions afterward then the presenter and his committee of 4, talk about the dissertation for an hour and you either pass, need revisions, or fail. SCOTT PASSED!!! He still has a few minor revisions to do, but he won't have to present again! Yay!!! I'm so proud of him! He has worked so hard and overcome so many obstacles to get this far. Hooray!

In other news, I'm feeling well enough that I think I can go back to work tomorrow! *cough* ;)

Baseball Weekend

My boyfriend (Scott), brother (Spencer), and I drove up to Detroit for the Red Sox vs. Tigers game today. Scott and I are Sox fans and Spencer is a Tigers fan, so we make quite the group. Unfortunately, my favorite player, Dustin Pedroia, was not playing today :( However, the weather was perfect! The scoreboard said it was about 62 degrees all day, however, there wasn't much of a breeze and the sun was on us all day, so it felt more like 75. Needless to say, I got a bit sunburned. We had a great time, ate Ballpark Franks, peanuts, pop, beers, and roasted almonds. Yummy!

Shhhhhhh...I'm at work

I stayed up until midnight last night trying to get my IEPs done for today so that I could also work on the high school ETR/IEP for tomorrow's meeting. However, I've been really bad this year with IEPs and got all but one done which I planned on completing this morning in my break between meetings. Obviously, I am a procrastinator of IEPs because I should have done these 2 weeks ago, or 1 week ago, or even anytime before last night; but alas, such is the way of this professional. Procrastinator to the core.

So, here I am in between meetings, and the damn program is down! This program that they use to write IEPs is down every other day, I swear! I should have turned off the stupid TV last night to concentrate better, but I didn't. Now I'm stuck with an unfinished IEP and a dead program! Rar!

While waiting, I tried looking up whether the disability one of my students has should be called Down's Syndrome or Down Syndrome. While in graduate school, one of our professors was adamant about Parkinson disease not being said/written with the possessive -'s because of one reason or another (I obviously cannot remember the specific reason). I found a section on Wikipedia about eponyms, which is apparently when the medical name of a disease is derived from a person's name. In that Wiki page is a section called Eponyms and alternatives which had interesting pro/con lists for the use of eponyms. It seems that the medical community in general is against using the possessive -'s for names of diseases/syndromes since usually the person who's name is used never had nor owned the disorder. In my search I also read something about how the *syndrome/disease* word should not be capitalized either. So, ideally it should be written as Down syndrome. I find it all very interesting and also know that to change the view of the general public away from calling it Down's Syndrome or even Downs Syndrome will probably not ever happen.

It's That Time Of Year Again...

...that's right, IEP season! For those who don't know, IEP stands for Individualized Education Program. Every student that I see is on an IEP with some kind of speech/language need. The IEP, in a nutshell, is a document explaining what the student qualifies for (Speech, OT, PT, etc.), where the student is functioning now (especially w/r/t their IEP areas of need), the goals to be achieved over the next year, and what other services (specialized instruction, extended time on tests, calculator for math, etc.), if any, the student will receive.

Back in February I did about 18 IEPs for my high schoolers. Two weeks ago I did about 13 IEPs for one class of preschoolers and this week I'm doing 6 more for my other class (have more than 6 students in that class, but theirs will be redone in December which is sweet for me because I won't be there!)

Anyway, also throughout the year there are always a couple of students who are either identified as needing testing to see if they qualify for services or possibly they move into the district and need their IEPs redone to work with the new school. Well, the psychologist informed me of a high schooler a few weeks ago who was in need of some testing. At the time I asked her when it needed to be done by and she said she didn't know, but sometime before the end of the year. Well, I tested him last week and haven't gotten around to writing up his report yet. I got an e-mail at 9:30 this morning informing me that his ETR/IEP meeting will be this Friday at 9am! (ETR is Evaluation Team Report and is a report with all of the testing that is done rolled into one overly long document). I was furious! I am in the midst of preschool meetings and she tells me I have less than 48 hours (and 2 full days of work) to write up this report and make up an IEP for this kid?!?

So, here I am, typing a blog entry, watching TV, and trying to muster the mental energy to pound out these damn reports! Bah!

Babies!!!

My roommate, Sparks, and I went and saw the movie "Babies"Sunday . Amazing and adorable! It's a documentary of 4 babies from 4 different countries; USA, Japan, Mongolia, & Namibia. I think the beauty of the movie is that there was no commentary or *fakeness* to it. It was simply clips of babies from birth (not any of the birthing process) through walking at roughly 1-year-old. It may sound boring, but if you watch the trailer and like babies at all, you'll understand how you can be entranced by such a feature for 80 minutes or so. Also, as the movie went on, Sparks and I began doing commentary of our own.

Seeing as how I work with babies and toddlers on a regular basis, I also found the documentary interesting in the developmental milestones of the babies. This is assuming that the clips were in chronological order and that each baby was at about the same age as the others for each *set* of clips. As a speech path, I look for beginning babbling, imitation, as well as eye contact, play skills and interactions with adults among other things. The baby from Namibia began babbling and making vocal sounds quite a while before the other three babies. The baby from Mongolia, once he was unswaddled, moved around a lot more and problem solved situations quite well. The parents from Japan and the US both seemed to be a bit overbearing (and the parents from the US were not what I would deem *typical*) and talked to much.

While I think we, in the US, at times see child rearing in other countries, especially in the ones portrayed here, as *weird*, *neglectful*, or even *abusive*, my thought on the whole thing is that if it didn't work out fine in the end, there wouldn't be anyone in those countries anymore, right? Everyone would have died off. The baby from Namibia is a great example and seemed to be the definition of being raised by a village. We saw *mom* at times, mostly for swinging a boob in his general direction, but most times he was being held by other children only a couple years older than him, or playing off seemingly alone. My roommate and I joke that he had pica, because he kept tasting rocks and dirt and other things within reach, but again, he lived through it as all the other Namibian babies have before him.

Even if you don't particularly like babies but perhaps simply like observing people and differences in culture, this is a great movie to show that. The US is not the be all, end all of how things are done in the world (even though we like to think we are). Open your eyes, watch a great documentary without all of the narrative, and laugh along with some adorable babies.

Craziest Day I've Had in a While

The preschool teacher that I work with on Wednesdays has an assistant/aide in the class. This aide is rather useless in my opinion and does little more than sit, check folders, and run a pointless center during *center time!* This aide was out today, so the teacher asked me if I could be in the classroom the whole time (sometimes I'm in and out doing various tasks) to help out since the sub-aide wouldn't be there for a while. I agreed.

The morning went well. I enjoy just getting down and playing with the kids in a language rich kind of way. Being invited to help out made me feel like less of an outsider. I played with the kids who needed my services and while I wasn't sitting down doing 1:1 *therapy* I got to guide the kids into some really nice play schemes. During my 90 minutes between preschool classes I wrote some HS interim reports, wrote some e-mails, talked with a HS teacher (DRAMA in the HS), and wrote lengthy notes to parents in our speech notebooks. It was a rather productive 90 minutes. Then I realized I hadn't eaten lunch yet and was due back to help in the classroom. Now, a sub did show up later during the morning session, but we all know how children do with subs. It doesn't matter the age of the children, they all know what's up and that it's time to be crazy. So, I took a swig of water and went down to the classroom.

The afternoon class is a bit more crazy than the morning class, but still a good group. All was well until the teacher was choosing some students to write the letter of the week on the dry erase board. She only chooses some students (why, I do not know). One particular little boy was skipped for today. That was the end of it. He began crying and when crying didn't work, he was downright mad! Now, he's not one of my *speech kids* but the sub-aide had left by now (she had to leave early) and I was the only help. I removed him from the area, sat him down, and looked away, thus ignoring the bad behavior as I have been taught to do. Well, let's just say that over the next 45-60 minutes I was hit and kicked (not hard, he knew better), and screamed at, "Talk to me!" "Don't tell me no!" "Put my shoe back on!" "I want to write an A on the board!" "I want a sticker!" "I want to be good!" and other variations of that theme. This little guy is has a psychiatric diagnosis, of what I do not know. However, it was unreal as well as very sad. He could not regulate his screaming/crying/yelling to calm himself down. Needless to say, I went home with a headache and questioning my actions with him and how the situation was handled. Rough afternoon. :(

In an earlier post I mentioned that Dr. MacDonald had said some quotes during the conference that were good enough to write down for remembering later. Here are some of the best ones:
"Common sense is not common behavior." (I think referring to parents playing with their children.)
"If you're not waiting, you're taking up the space that he needs to learn." (again referring to parents playing/talking with their children.)
"Don't expect impossible things. They (children) can't talk adult because they're NOT adults."
"Children are supposed to be learning relationships, not just school skills."
"Children think, 'Love me or hate me, but don't ignore me.' They don't care what kind of attention it is." (talking about not giving attention or talking to bad behavior.)
"My job is to help YOU help your child, my job is not to fix your child."

Moving!

It's official!! Scott has been offered and has accepted a faculty job at the University of Southern Mississippi! We will be moving to Hattiesburg, MS in early August! Bring on the new adventures!

Bringing Conferences Home

I went to a two day training conference this past Thursday-Friday with my wonderful Early Intervention (EI) team (we provide services for children, ages birth-3) as well as four parents of children whom we serve. Let me first say that I've never been to a professional anything with parents of my children. It was very interesting to say the least. Luckily, three of the four parents were nice, normal-type people who were easy to talk to. The fourth was a dad, need I say more?

The conference was called Play To Talk and was presented by Dr. James D. MacDonald. He, among other things, is very old. I realize that to have all of the knowledge and insight that he has with respect to young children, one has to have a lot of experience which is only gained by years and years of practice. However, this guy was OLD! When he slowly ambled in, I thought, "Oh crap, I hope that isn't the guy," but indeed he was *the guy.* His Thursday morning information piqued my interest from the beginning, however, when listening to him the listener has to filter out some words/phrases/sentences at times because his train of thought has a tendency to easily derail. Also, as a speech-path, I am easily distracted by (interested in) other peoples' speech patterns and language. Dr. MacDonald had some infrequent moments of disfluency which weren't all that distracting to me, probably not very noticeable to the lay-ear, and I just chalked them up to his old age...but kept an ear on them. THEN, just before lunch he pulls out his S-card! That's right, he tells the audience that he is a person who stutters! I knew it!

For those who don't know, my boyfriend is also a person who stutters. Actually, he is currently finishing up his Ph.D. in speech-language pathology with a specialty in fluency (stuttering). Needless to say, I consider myself to be more in *the know* about stuttering issues than your average speech-path. But that discussion is for another day.

Anyway, I gained a lot of knowledge at the conference. Some of his information/suggestions were actually things I was already doing naturally in a way and I just never had a name for them. That's always nice to hear though. While no one wants to pay lots of money to hear someone tell them what they already know, it's nice to hear that what I am doing is the *right thing,* at least in someone's eyes. I also wrote down a lot of great quotes from Dr. MacDonald which were sometimes amusing and at other times insightful. I also learned about myself as a professional. I kind of came to terms, perhaps again, with the fact that I am now a professional. I think having the parents there helped me to realize that.

While I am younger than some of the parents whom I serve (but certainly not all of them), I don't have children of my own yet (heck, I'm not even married), and I've only been practicing without supervision for two years, I am the professional. I am the speech-language pathologist for EI and no one else. When parents bring their child in for an evaluation, I would venture to guess that 90% of them have speech concerns. That's a lot of pressure if I really think about it. And the thing of it is that I don't have a magic pill/word/gesture/therapy to *fix* their child. Sometimes the child really is just a typical two-year-old and they do not qualify. But most of the time they do qualify with a delay in some area and the parent initially expects me to sit down 1:1 with their child once or twice per week and *fix* them. That's not how this works. Have you ever tried to sit a two-year-old down for more than five minutes to do any one particular thing? Yeah, not going to happen.

I take an observe, play, teach approach to therapy (at least in my mind). First, I watch what the child is doing/playing with, how they're playing, and if they're making communication attempts of any kind to anyone. Next, I play with the child. I follow their lead, get down on their level and play. If it involves following them to five different toys in five minutes, I go too (sometimes I wait to see if they'll return to me first). Then I teach - while playing! But it's not always a *repeat after me* teach, sometimes it's modeling gestures, sometimes it's withholding something for a communication attempt, sometimes it's forced turn taking, and sometimes it's simply finishing an activity and putting it away.

But like I said, this is the approach I take in my mind. I need to remember that parents are coming to me to learn (even though they don't know it). They need to understand that I cannot *fix* their child's speech difficulties by seeing them once/week or every other week. The things I do/show them are what they need to practice at home. And this is where I need to keep telling myself that I am the professional. They came to me for help, so I need to tell them what I think they need to do, and possibly give them a handout, which I'm already good at :) If they don't want to heed my suggestions, that's their prerogative.

I am the professional.