workingfortheman.com

What is your job title, and where do you work?

I am a speech pathologist (also known as a speech therapist, speech teacher) for a school district in Northern California.

What is a typical work day like?

I get to work at 8:00 (ish) and 2 to 3 mornings a week I have meetings immediately. After that I start therapy. I pull students from their classes and bring them to my office and work on their areas of delay. The kids are usually in a group of 2-3 students, but I have some groups with only one student and others with 4-5 students. There are some students in special day classes that I do not pull out of their class, but rather go into their classroom and work with them. To describe what I do with each group would probably take up 8 pages. Generally speaking though, each child has his or her own specific goal(s) that we work on in therapy. I group the children based on their needs. I basically do that for the entire school day. The kids leave school at 3:00 and then more meetings or paperwork or lesson planning. I leave anywhere from 4:00-5:30 except on Wednesdays, when I go to a Spanish class at 3:30. (I had to throw that in).

Describe a recent event that ruined your day.

Usually the type of thing that will ruin my day is a meeting with an unhappy parent. Special education covers such a wide range of delays and often times we are dealing with children with many needs. Parents will sometimes blame the school for a lot of the problems. They will talk about suing us (and do), and it just makes for hostile meetings. It's not that the school district is never at fault, but it is usually district policy problems (or state regulations) which the individual school does not have direct control over, but we take the brunt.

How do you get past days like that?

I love working with the children. I also ask myself - what if this were my child?

Tell us about handicapped children...

We don't typically call the kids "handicapped" anymore. At least in California, we use terms like delayed, impaired, and challenged. (Although we do still label children learning handicapped and severely handicapped, but use the abbreviations LH and SH). I would think that is the case everywhere, but I am not sure. Anyway, there are many types of delays. A child can be learning disabled, speech delayed, cognitively impaired, language delayed, brain injured, emotionally disturbed, autism spectrum disordered, and a bunch more. There can be children with mild delays and others with severe delays. One reason I like speech therapy is because I get to work with all types of delays. Some of my students may only have problems saying their "r" sounds, and then others may have major language and cognitive delays.

What about the burn out factor?

This year, my seventh, is probably the first year I have felt "burnt out." I think it is due to a combination of things. I do not believe I have ever felt burn out in actually working with the children. I cannot explain how much I enjoy that aspect of my job. The paperwork and constant meetings account for some of the burn out. The amount of students I have on my caseload is another part. (The maximum for the State of California is 55 and I have 65). However, the biggest burn out part for me is dealing with some of the parents. Most of the parents I deal with are absolutely wonderful, but a few are not. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to have a child with significant delays. However, there is only so much I can do for a child and it gets hard to hear that it is my fault major gains are not being made. A lot of it is the parents are frustrated with their child's progress and district policies, but the anger comes down to the people who are actually trying to work with and help the child. I feel some of it is also denial. It really is better for the child to be accepted where they are, so appropriate gains can be made. I would most likely shut down if I were asked to do a quantum physics problem. It is too much for me.

What are some common misconceptions about children with delays?

I really don't know. I guess people may think if a child is in special education, the child is retarded or dumb. That is absolutely not the case. There is a wide range of delays a child can have without being totally congnitively impaired. An IQ test given in the schools only measures how well a student will do in school. I have a student that has a deficient IQ, yet at age 8, he can take apart and fix a computer. A learning disability just means a child has a weakness in a specific type of learning.

I think overall we have come far in accepting others that are "different" or "delayed." I also believe we have a way to go.

What drives you to do the work that you do?

If you can't guess, it's working with my students. They are wonderful.

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