Speech Language Pathology Assistant

While I am learning an abundance of valuable information at Clarke, my background knowledge derived from my undergraduate studies. I double majored in Speech Pathology and Psychology at Brooklyn College because I believe they compliment each other well when it comes to the studies of speech. Different aspects of Psychology including cognitive science, neuroscience, and biology are essential in understanding speech disorders, language processing, production, acquisition, and comprehension. In my second year at Brooklyn College, I observed children at a nearby elementary school for 50 hours. During this time I observed how children at the kindergarten level interacted with each other. I shadowed the teacher in order to learn different teaching strategies that will be beneficial and applicable as a Speech Therapist.

Keaunna Knox has been a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) since 2007, and has worked ever since 2000 with children with special needs who had speech and language disorders. She began as an “Instructional/Speech Aide” at Pasadena Unified School District working with children with moderate and severe intellectual disabilities. All the students she worked with had speech and language disorders, and, since the Districts therapy was overloaded Keaunna implemented the communication goals she wrote. Based on that experience and many others, Keaunna decided to enroll at Cal State Los Angeles to pursue her professional career in teaching. She received her Master’s in Mild-Moderate Disabilities in Special Education from Cal State Los Angeles and a second

My intensive Speech Language Pathology coursework at California State University- Fresno has provided me with the skills to implement treatment plans, assist during speech and language assessments, and keep formal documentation of client’s progress in speech therapy. These are the necessary skills required to be an effective Speech Language Pathology Assistant and will make me as asset to have in the school speech setting.

The qualities I possess to make me a successful speech language pathologist include compassion, open-mindedness, knowing how to be a team player and how to live out the FISH philosophy which is an approach dealing with workplace issues. Compassion is important to have in order to be patient with my future clients. Throughout my college years, I served on the executive council for my sorority for two years as Vice President of Member Development. While sitting in those meetings, I learned how to be open-minded to others’ opinions on certain topics being discussed. I also had to meet with people who were having a hard time maintaining good membership status. Sitting down and talking to those individuals taught me to be objective about the individual’s circumstance and to be as fair as possible. Not only does a speech language pathologist need to be skilled in speech treatment but also with counseling the parents and loved ones of the client who feel hopeless and helpless. Being empathetic helps create a trusting relationship between the clinician, client and family. Another quality of a great speech pathologist is being able to be a team player. Most cases require the collaboration of the speech pathologist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, schoolteacher, paraprofessional, orthodontist, audiologists, and social services to

Through speech pathology, people are reached and shown compassion who are typically considered outcasts in society. SLPs work with individuals who are struggling with various sets of problems and help to solve those problems through undivided attention and spirits of patience and willingness to aid people with speech, language, and mental impairments. I believe this would be a good career fit for me due to my heart for people and my teaching spirit. My mom’s perspective of me pursuing a career as an SLP is that it would be a good fit due to my kind and gentle spirit and conduciveness with working with struggling individuals. I also have an immediate family legacy of multiple speech pathologists that work in both the medical and educational fields which increases my knowledge and familiarity with the career. While I believe that speech pathology would ultimately be a good fit for me, I tend to struggle with patience, a key component of working as an SLP, which is a challenge that I would have to work to overcome in order fulfill my role as a speech pathologist.

From being diagnosed at a young age with dyslexia and apraxia of the speech, I am not sure where I would be without the help and encouragement of my speech pathologists. ‘Speech-language pathologists assess, diagnose, treat, and help to prevent communication and swallowing disorders in patients’ (Summary, www.bls.org, 2015). Along with helping their patients overcome or learn how to understand their disorders, speech pathologists must keep records.

The clients that received the DAT training, 11 of them met their goal. One client did drop out of the DAT training because she felt it was not helping her. All of the clients in the MSI, ATC, and psychoeducational trainings all met their goals. The final percentage was that 83% of the clients met their goals. It was shown that each case should be reviewed and individualized for the client. Collaboration with the school, administrators and teachers would be very helpful in deciding which treatment would benefit each of the client's. Clinicians did collaborate with school staff making recommendations for the student’s accommodations if needed. Overall, this study showed positive outcomes as a speech-language pathologist delivers individualized treatments to the

In this position he or she is adherent to assessment, endowment, reestablishment, advocate and prevention services for individuals with a nature of language impairment, intonation, dialect, cognitive-communicative or a swallowing disarray. Communications may be expressed verbal or nonverbal and combines with listening, vocalizing, use sign language, reading, and writing in all domains of communication (Glover, McCormack & Smith, 2015). The qualified person who administers the particular services is called a speech therapist, speech-pathologist, speech-language therapists or speech clinician. However, he or she comply with advocacy, fact-finding, program codification and directing, oversighting, product advancement and valuation, including dialogue with families, caretaker, instructors, other rehabilitation specialist, administrators, health professionals and others like other careers in the Human Service or Case management field.

Through each session I target each students needs through daily lesson plans created from the goals assigned by the licensed speech pathologist. I feel it is important to build a strong relationship that has a powerful effect on the students therapy progress, so I attempt to put myself in my students' shoes. It is important that I am compassionate, empathetic, and supportive to their needs. There is a quote by BJ Gallagher that states: “The land of opportunity is an attitude. It is an openness to new ideas, a willingness to listen, an eagerness to learn, a desire to grow, and the flexibility to change.” This quote reminds me why I love this career.

The knowledge and skills that are described within this current document builds on the information from the ASHA Scope of Practice to fulfill the need for more specific procedures and protocols for serving individuals for whom speech and/or writing is precluded as a primary means of communication. SLPs who practice in this area are required to hold the

A speech language pathologist, otherwise known as an SLP, deals with many people throughout their career, which includes patients who do and do not want to receive assistance for their disorders. Sometimes a patient might refuse because they are too young to understand why they need therapy, and adults might refuse the aid of an SLP because they do not find it necessary to receive treatment for the speech, language, or hearing disorder. To address these problems SLP’s will have to give the proper help to the patient as needed. For a child, the SLP might use toys or activities to get the child involved in a talking atmosphere. In a adult’s case, it would be ideal to give the patient as much information as possible in order to let them fully

2B. In the field of speech-language pathology, a therapist needs to be prepared to work with individuals from diverse backgrounds with respect to language, dialect, culture, socioeconomic status, religion and sexual orientation. Describe some potential benefits and challenges to a speech-language pathologist in working with diverse populations? How would you address the challenges and benefits you described. We are all one.

Often, I am asked why I want to become a Speech-Language-Pathologist. My answer is always the same. In my opinion, having the opportunity and privilege to help someone with the way they communicate with the world, the way they express themselves, and make sense of the world around them will be my greatest achievement in life. What my educational goal is? Well, I want to become the best SLP I can possibly be. I plan to graduate with a 4.0 GPA, top of my class. In addition, it is important to me to expand my horizons during my academic career through research, community involvement, and giving back. Everything I will do in my remaining academic career will lead me to people who need my help and relay on it. It may sound naive, but I plan to make

Advances in critical care, have enabled us to prolong survival, even if it results in a quality of life that is considered poor. Because medical knowledge and technology can only forestall death, difficult moral and ethical questions remain. Many speech-language pathologists (SLPs) working in the health care field will, at some point, be faced with a patient's end of life issues. SLPs provide a great deal of care to patients approaching this stage of their lives, and they are an essential part of the patient’s health care team (ASHA, 2015). SLPs have to learn new roles and acquire new communication skills to integrate their services with others in addressing the patients and their families (Shadden, 2012). Patients may have different religions

As a future Speech Language Pathologist, I have dedicated the last 3 years of my studies to researching speech and language. Thus, it is natural for the speech and language of different cultures to grab my attention while traveling. However, among all of my encounters with language through traveling, the context surrounding Ghanaian speech and language stood out to me tremendously. Elements such as spirituality and philosophy were strongly present in both the English and local dialects of Ghanaian speakers. Noticing such a major difference in the Ghanaian language compared to the language spoken by Mainstream America caused me to look further into the root of the thread between spirituality, philosophy, and language in Africa.