In this episode, the cohosts share lots of session ideas for sessions you can use right now, plus six lessons in self compassion that can help you…right now.
Mentioned in the Episode
Earthseed Series by Octavia Butler, for more of Sarah’s reads see this Pinterest Board.
The Durrels in Corfu - a TV series you can watch on Amazon Prime Video or elsewhere.
Sarie shared how finding a synopsis of The Mandelorian online has been motivating for her /R/ students practicing /R/ at the reading and conversational level.
Sarie shared how to use Google Sheets to make a progress line for your articulation students, as follows:
Start with a Google Sheet or Excel Spreadsheet. Use a column for each articulation sound, enter the percentage data in the rows below and insert a line graph for a visual of students progress. Using this tool students can see articulation progress, which can be helpful especially for our older articulation students. We want them to graduate! They want to graduate! Seeing their progress line can help a lot.
Here’s a video tutorial Sarie made on how to do this.
Consider a free trial (not sponsored) to Ultimate SLP, Sarie has been loving their activities and games
Sarah shared 3 therapy tips for teaching categorization and compare/contrast, plus this Categorization and Compare and Contrast Unit.
Sarah shared six self compassion tips for SLPs right now.
Start your day with saying, good morning. I love you. Put your hand on your heart. Feel it. Remember so much of self care is re-parenting ourselves and particularly if you didn’t have a nurturing parent child relationship growing up, you may need to take more time building this self care and self compassion.
Keep in mind this Buddhist saying - you are perfect as you are AND there is room for improvement. You are doing great, and you’ll make mistakes. You’ll do kind things and you’ll put your foot in your mouth. This is a part of common humanity and the human experience.
Defensiveness, frustration, and stress will come. This is not an excuse to not work on managing these emotions but - they will come, and they will need to be felt. Allow, and forgive yourself.
Shapiro talks about three pillars of mindfulness - intention (What is the most important thing? What is this all for?), Attention (focusing on the present moment) and attitude (paying attention with kindness and curiosity). So for me I may start my day with intention - what is the most important thing today? If there is going to be stress - what kind of a person do I want to BE during the stress? Attention - letting myself be doing that eval or in that meeting, limiting knee jerk reactions and being present. Attitude - if that is frustrating me - is there anything I can do about it? Also what’s the the good part that comes with that. For example - I have too many evals to do - that’s a thought. But what does doing those evals allow for? I have the chance to connect with a brand new student and learn from them and have them learn from me. Digging one step deeper into what the annoying or frustrating thing allows us to do can be helpful.
Sarah adds this - in addition to the good morning I love you, when your work day ends, put your hand on your heart and say “Good evening, that was enough.” And take ten deep, slow breaths. We are already doing enough. Are we doing all of it? Absolutely not. But we are doing enough.
Leaving things undone is a skill we need to practice. It doesn’t feel good. But it’s a necessity right now. Keep going, keep practicing. A mantra “I’m practicing leaving things undone” or “I’m letting go of what I cannot do.”
Sarie shares a story about speech therapy in a tractor.
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