Textbook Reflection

The textbook I am reading is Language Intervention with School-Aged Children by Rita C Naremore with Ann E. Densmore and Deborah R Harman.  So far I am enjoying it.  I like the format of having the author’s perspective followed by some examples or scenarios.  The chapter related to classroom intervention had a lot to do with organization.  It discussed the value of spending more time working on curriculum based skills as well as spending more time in the classroom.    What I   liked is  that it showed how one speech language pathologist gradually spent more time in the classroom and more time collaborating with teachers over a 3 year period.  It acknowledges that it takes time and gave a variety of ideas.  I loved some of the ideas like having a day for collaboration or scheduling by week rather than by day.  Many of these ideas are difficult to implement the first year at a new school.

Scheduling is one of the hardest part of the jobs.  I look at the students and there needs and amount of service required.  Then I look at the students availability and teacher preference.  I try to get everyone scheduled so that they can work on the goals they need, are in a reasonably sized group, and at a time that works for them.  Needless to say it is difficult to make all of those factors work for every student.  Luckily it only needs to be done once a year, although it feels like the schedule is always in pencil.

I’d love to hear how people organize the scheduling process for either speech therapy scheduling or similar tasks.  I usually send out  a letter/email to teachers saying who I work with in their class and ask for several available times.  As the surveys trickle in, I keep track of the order I receive them so I can weigh that in my decision-making process.  Then I stare at the list and look at possible times to put each student and who might work well together.  This part usually involves writing several lists and chart trying to figure out how to make the most sense of all the data.  Eventually it gets done.