Teletherapy: Support for Speech Therapy Home Practice

Providing home practice or home support for students with speech and language challenges is often considered part of providing high quality speech therapy services. My personal view of home practice or “speech homework” has varied over the course of my almost 30 years in the profession. I will admit that providing meaningful home practice has not been my strength. When I worked in the schools, some parents wanted daily homework and summer packets. Of those parents, there were always a few that completed the activities. Sometimes I worried that parents would end up reinforcing poor speech productions or that not completing the homework would result in a privilege being taken away. Towards the end of my time in brick-and-mortar schools, I stressed reading, sketchbooks, gardening, card and board games, cooking, crafts, play, photo albums, scrap booking, 4-H, participation in camps and group sports—activities that encouraged the need for oral communication and interaction. I encouraged parents to “name and notice” what their child was doing and tried to stress that parents can model correct productions rather than focusing on correcting their own child’s speech. That said, not one method of home practice is appropriate for all families. Some families are comfortable with activity suggestions and others want printable worksheets or specific word lists. My most recent hybrid approach to providing parents access to home practice activities is to use a shared folder in Google Drive as well as creating a website using Google Sites with an embedded Google Calendar.

Teletherapy: Feeling Comfortable is a Process

To my newbie teletherapy co-professionals--try to take a breath. Allow yourself to step back and synthesize what has been placed at your feet. What are you asking of yourself? What is your school district asking of you? Are these expectations reasonable? Could these expectations potentially violate your license?  I disclose that I worked as an SLP in brick-and-mortar schools for over 26 years and have been a telepractioner for 3 years. When I started in teletherapy, the learning curve was steep and fraught. That hasn’t changed. In the beginning, one big frustration was that I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t know what questions to ask or even how to put some of my questions into words. I also struggled with wanting to know it all RIGHT NOW and being so frustrated when my brain couldn’t seem to grasp, store, and use everything I was learning, RIGHT NOW. The best teletherapists I know are perpetual learners. Many are self-taught. Many started out with very few, if any, mentors. Teletherapists tend to be a generous group but there are limits. Learning is doing. In other words, as you have your first few sessions, you may have new questions and the space in your brain that holds the unknown stuff about teletherapy will get smaller. It takes time. I swear I kept a big waste basket by my computer during my first of couple telepractice sessions because I was sure I would throw up. Scared. To. Death. Now my waste basket is filled with energy bar wrappers and popcorn kernels. I promise it will get better and better and you will grow your identify as a teletherapist. Seek out smart mentors. Read. Keep a journal and reflect on what you are learning. Make lists of questions and seek your own answers. Listen to pod casts. Join SIG 18. Document your concerns. Document everything. Keep learning. Most importantly, push yourself to provide a high-quality service, know HIPAA laws, and do all you can to protect the private health information of your students.

Speech Therapy Pensieve: Part 2

After talking with a few speech colleagues in my district, I am liking the idea of using Google forms to track student contacts even more. I decided to create two additional forms. One for screenings and consultation services and another to document meetings. I'm not sure that tracking these therapeutic activities will be any faster using an iPad but I like the idea of having all the data in one place. And maybe, once I start using the forms, I will be able to glean some trends or big ideas. I was afraid that my co-professionals would think it was a dorky idea and it would be too difficult. But as it turns out, some of my speech buddies are also interested in experimenting with ways to collect and interpret student data using their iPad. My thinking is that any data collection method needs to be quick. As school speech therapists, our time with students is often brief and we need to be able to use every instructional minute wisely. Data collection cannot be so cumbersome that it steals away lots of these minutes. I anticipate that I will want to make revisions to the forms as I begin using them. Below is a screenshot of the live form for tracking screening and consultation services. Under the live form is a view of what the columns in the Google spreadsheet will look like. Any suggestions, questions, or comments are very much appreciated.

Screenshot of the live form as it will appear on my iPad.

This shot shows what the buttons will look like on my iPad.

 

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Speech Therapy Pensieve: Part 1

A few days ago I came across two excellent blog posts from Ruth Morgan at Chapel Hill Snippets explaining how she uses Google forms to track student therapy contacts. As a literacy coach, I used Google forms to create my own digital conferring notebook and was itching to use the same approach with my speech therapy students. Ruth created an individual Google doc for each of her students which allowed her to display all therapy notes on a comprehensive spreadsheet. I liked this idea and may end up following Ruth's model but I also wanted to experiment with a single form that could capture all of my therapy notes for all of my students. Below is a screenshot of the live form I'm playing with as well as what the spreadsheet looks like. I will probably enter some dummy data to get a feel for how it will work or not work.

This is what the form will look like on my iPad.

This shot shows the headings for the data I want to collect.

Whenever I create a form in Google docs, I start with what information I will need and how I want it to look in the spreadsheet. In other words, I don't start by creating a form. I begin with sketching out a spreadsheet on paper, then go from there. I want my form to be simple, quick, and flexible. And I want the columns to fit across one sheet of paper in a landscape view. I usually do a test print of what the spreadsheet will look like before I finalize the questions on the form. In the future, when I need to print the information I have collected, I want it to be in a useful format. Please follow the links for the live form and the spreadsheet to take a look, ask any questions, and provide any suggestions or comments.

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