[ Post a Response | Articulation, Language, and Fluency ]
Posted by slpgrl
on 2/5/2009, 11:46 pm, in reply to "Re: Just need to vent"
69.200.226.70
To be honest, I did not trash anyone on a personal level as I clearly made referents to my district. If anyone took offense to my post then that says a lot about their character and that they are closed minded to the other side of an issue being discussed.
With regards to articulation therapy in the schools, we all are going to have different viewpoints as we come from different backgrounds, graduate programs, work in affluent/lower income districts, etc. I guess we all agree to disagree. Although speech-language pathologists and school-based programs are influenced by ASHA, they are bound by federal mandates, state regulations and guidelines, and local school district policies and procedures. Especially now with school politics, budget issues and lay-offs, students with IEPs come first. NYC teachers are in a crisis right now, if we do not receive federal funding, 1,500 teachers will be let go by next year.
I am aware that when children do not produce speech sounds correctly at school, they have difficulty succeeding academically. Teachers and peers will have difficulty understanding what the child says. The errored speaking pattern can also result in difficulties with decoding words during reading activities and misspellings in written work. For speech sound production, a disability must be proven in order to qualify a student for services in the public school system. Of course we would all love to work with and cure every student that exhibits articulation difficulties; however the harsh reality is that speech therapy in the schools is only provided for problems that interfere with learning. Eligibility is based on (1) the presence of a speech-language impairment, (2) that has an adverse educational impact, and (3) that results in the need for special education (specialized instruction) and related services (services required for the student to benefit from special education).
Unfortunately children with speech sound errors are often the object of teasing and ridicule. It’s upsetting to hear that your family members are teased at school because of their speech, however teasing/bullying are not only specific to articulation. Hypothetically speaking, if your niece/nephew had some other identifiable difference (i.e., lazy eye, peculiar shaped birthmark on their face, walked with a limp, etc) chances are they would be teased for that as well. Kids pick on other kids that are different for any reason. Even if they left the classroom for speech therapy at school, they may be viewed as different and that may add another stigma to the already existing teasing. Does their school implement a school wide character education program that teaches character, value, and citizenship? If they are experiencing teasing, then other professionals in the school need to be involved. The classroom teacher should be fostering an environment in which teasing is not tolerated. The psychologist and/or social worker can desensitize other students to be sympathetic towards students with differences. In my school character education is woven into the classroom curriculum and schoolwide activities. We have students with autism walking around with pecs books, students in wheelchairs and other physical impairments. The character education program has enhanced and desensitized the general population to differences and it is amazing to watch them engage with the children with special needs. General education students are even peer mentors, helping them to socialize during recess. My point is that getting speech-therapy in school is not the answer to all of the problems. Sometimes it takes an entire village to raise a child, not just one person.
I just feel that once children reach 3rd grade, they should not be leaving the academic environment to address non-academic difficulties. NY State assessments begin in grade 3 and I know that parents and teachers in my school are not amenable to having students miss critical learning that takes place in the classroom. That’s not to say that school based SLPs cant think outside the box and create savvy ways to provide articulation services to those that need it. In my school, my colleague and I are trying to keep our heads above water. We each have extremely large caseloads that are comprised of students with IEPs, evaluations for private schools within the area and initial evaluations. Since students with IEPs are our first priority we scheduled them first. This year we decided that we would utilize our lunch period 2x/weekly and create a program which is open to general education students from all grades and requires parent consent. tudents that exhibit difficulties with sounds come during their lunch/recess for support. We also screened the entire Kindergarten for articulation and now have small groups that come for targeted practice. This is a 12 week building level program that requires parent consent. After the 12 weeks is up, the students are dismissed in order to make room for the next grouping. We gave up our diagnostic periods to implement this program. Identification is critical in the early years. Kindergarten teachers are amenable to us pulling their students and pushing in at times to assess generalization of skills. Parents are also held accountable for their child’s progress. Parents are urged to model correct production of problem sounds. For example, if a student says “Look at the tate.” A modeled response would be “Yes, I see the cake.” By emphasizing the error sound he will have several opportunities to hear it produced correctly in different environments. In a way it is about modifying a behavior. Parents are also asked to rate their child’s speech for a specific length of time (during dinner count “no errors” “a few errors” “or many errors”).
Kids can receive articulation assistance until they are blue in the face; however that doesn’t mean that generalization and carry over of these skills is applied in other environments. Students often feel that they are “on” when speaking in the speech room, however once they return to their natural environment, it is often out of sight out of mind because the speech teacher is not present to monitor. My colleague and I provided workshops for the teachers of our building level articulation students. We gave strategies for how to help generalize target sounds in the classroom. For ex, they can develop a “secret signal” that is known only to the teacher and student (When the teacher tugs on her earring, accompanied by a verbal cue of just the student’s name, this is a signal to the student the he/she needs to restate the utterance appropriately.) The teacher can also place emphasis and underlinehighlight words that contain the target sound for oral reading tasks. This way when the child reads aloud, he/she will be non-verbally prompted by this cue. Teaching the student ways to restate or rephrase a misunderstood message rather than continuing to repeat the original message with the same error pattern was also emphasized. Any school based SLP can take 10 minutes out of his/her day to collaborate with the classroom teacher and provide strategies for prompting and correction of articulation errors in the classroom environment.
I hear your frustration with teachers and parents that expect miracles. I just strongly feel that students with average intelligence that exhibit articulation errors should not be leaving the classroom for non-academic support. I am a firm believer that we as SLPs should brainstorm with parents and teachers on how to provide direct/indirect support in a savvy way. They say you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink, and that is exactly how I view articulation therapy in the schools with students that exhibit average intelligence and are approaching the upper elementary grades. It's not that some SLPs are narrow-minded thinkers regarding articulation and its impact on education; it’s that due to the influx of students with disabilities in the schools, staffing, scheduling, budgets, servicing multiple sites, etc. students who receive services which are legally driven by IEPs take precedence.
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