In this episode, the cohosts share some job and life updates (job changes, moving) plus 4 (plus 1 bonus) tips for Childhood Apraxia of Speech Assessment.
Time Stamps
0-8:30: Personal Updates
8:30-12:35 : Apraxia Assessment Tips
12:35-16:20 : Review, Apraxia Resource
Sponsored By: Childhood Apraxia of Speech Bundle https://bit.ly/3tUFq6Q
Get Self Care Tips & Lesson Ideas: www.slphappyhour.com/newsletter
Review the Podcast: https://apple.co/3piL2VD
Detailed Show Notes & Transcript
Sarie: Hello and welcome to the SLP Happy Hour Podcast. Up today, we’re sharing some personal updates including a job change and a move, plus tips for evals for Childhood Apraxia of Speech.
(Prerecorded Intro)
Personal Updates
Sarah: Welcome back to the show. We’re going to start this episode with some personal updates. If you are just here for the speech tips and self care, we’ve got that too and you can skip ahead (see time stamps in the show notes), but we both have personal news that has changed our lives quite a bit this year and we wanted to share.
Sarie: Right so here’s a few personal updates. First my son is coming up on his first birthday. I can hardly believe how fast time has flown by. He has been our shining light each day and I still tear up with joy sometimes at the site of him. So grateful for every moment, the fun bits and the rough bits. The other big news for us is that my husband and I decided to move. We will still be in the same neighborhood we currently live in but felt that we really wanted to make a couple of changes that would better fit our growing family and we just feel overwhelmed with gratitude that we are able to do this right now.
Work-wise I started working 3 days a week this year to be at home more with my son. I still work for the same school district I’ve been in since my CF year, but my sites have changed. Actually a lot of adjustments have happened to me with work this year and I’m sure folks are constantly confused by my ever changing schedule. To make a long story short, right now I primarily do evaluations for various sites in my district, mostly early childhood evaluations but I also provide evaluation coverage for a colleague who is temporarily out and I do evaluations at a middle school that is receiving contracted teletherapy services (told you it was confusing!) Currently I only provide therapy services to one self-contained group of students at the high school who I have been working with ever since my CF year. I’m also supervising a graduate student who has been so flexible with the constant changes we’ve needed to make this year due to coronavirus and other factors that have come into play. Am I loving my current job? Honestly, since I started doing mostly evaluations I have really missed seeing students, for therapy that is. I have always said that my favorite part of being an SLP is building relationships with the students and the families and I don’t get that right now when I’m primarily only evaluations and someone else is doing the therapy. I see the child during their evaluation, write up the paperwork, go to the eligibility meeting and then do it all over again for the next child. The turn around is quick and it often feels like just when I’ve started getting to know the child and their family I’m sending them off somewhere else for therapy and moving on. The biggest perk about my current job though, is that I’m not carrying home as much emotional stress orl baggage and I’m not working as late to get things done. While that is important, the work itself doen’t necessarily bring me joy or fulfillment as an SLP. I decided to make this job change for my family and for now that is my biggest priority...I hope in the future to go back into having a school caseload and still work three days a week. Those are my changes, what are yours Sarah?
Sarah: First of all, congratulations on the new house! And I really think it’s lovely that you’ve figured out what isn’t working and how to change it to increase your feelings of job satisfaction. Especially during periods of stress, that can be so hard to do - I know for myself at least this year feeling really stressed, it’s been hard to tease out the parts that I can change. So you are getting a self care Gold Star for that. Would you like one?
Sarie: Yes I would!
Sarah: That’s wonderful. I have a couple of big work-related changes. One is as of June, I’m leaving my schools job. For years, I’ve been working full time, half of that in my own clinic and half of that in the schools. Like I think many SLPs I had a pretty rough school year this year and decided it was time to step away from the schools into full time private practice. So, I’ll start being full time in private practice this June. I’m also hiring a part-time SLP who will work afternoons and evenings in the clinic, and I’m hoping that will give me more time at home as we welcome my child into our family as soon as Coronavirus related travel bans are lifted and we are allowed to travel again for our international adoption, whenever that happens.
And, I still will be working full time even when my child comes home from China - my husband will be staying home as the full time parent. I honestly really enjoy working and owning a business. I’m grateful that my income supports our whole family. My husband doesn’t have a career he loves and has a very sweet and nurturing soul and personality and I believe will be an excellent full time parent. So that’s our family plan.
As far as the adoption, I talked about this a bit last episode but we are adopting a child from China and it has been years. It’s been a year of grief and loss which has been hard but I will say this - it’s clarified what setting I want to work in and how much I want to work, because I don’t want to miss any more time than I have to with my little one.
4 Tips for Apraxia Assessment
Sarie: Yeah we’ve both had a lot of life changes and wanted to take a moment to share them with you all because we haven’t had a heart to heart about personal life updates in a while. A lot has been going on with work and outside of work but we’ve been moving forward one step at a time through it all. Bringing us back into the work SLP world now, Sarah is our resident apraxia expert and has some tips to share today regarding doing assessments for CAS and how to avoid common pitfalls.
Sarah: Childhood Apraxia of Speech is one of my favorite topics to talk about, and so today I wanted to talk a bit about assessment for CAS. Apraxia is one of those things where it’s not super common and if you don’t see a student with apraxia for a while, you start to feel out of practice particularly with the assessment process - what was I supposed to do again? It happens to me even though I do these evals pretty regularly because there are a lot of components.
So first, what do I do for apraxia assessment? Of course there’s the usual like a speech and language sample, hearing screening and oral mechanism eval; but in addition I usually do a play based interaction and observation if they are the preschool age, a standardized articulation test if the student can imitate and name pictures, and I’ve just started adding in the DEMSS Dynamic Evaluation of Motor Speech Skill which is a criterion referenced measure from Edyth Strand. If you are interested in the DEMSS the manual is about 100 bucks, and once you buy it you can access the response forms. It’s great for a differential diagnosis, even for young kids who aren’t talking much yet. So, that’s what I do, and I wanted to share four components I’ve forgotten to do in the past so you don’t make the same mistakes. Here’s what to know and what to include:
One: Recognize you are a communication expert and you CAN diagnose apraxia.
Two: Do a standardized articulation test when you can AND an apraxia assessment, I’m currently doing the DEMSS. And yes - not all kids can sit through a traditional standardized articulation test, and that’s understandable, but do it when you can.
Three: Do a dynamic assessment with repeated trials and review the results. Of course in standardized testing chances are you need to do the first trial only, but make sure you do something in the testing session to look at repeated trials because one this is a sign of Apraxia and two you can hear what a student is doing if they have to repeat words or longer words and what that sounds like - that’ll give you a more accurate picture.
Four: Do a vowel inventory, I actually had an apraxia eval this week and I didn’t get to it. I think there actually wasn’t enough time to do it, so I’ll do it in the first several treatment sessions with this student, but doing a vowel inventory in words and phrases at some point gives really helpful information.
(Bonus) Tip 5: Consider there may be both phonological disorder AND apraxia present in your student or one or the other. But they aren’t mutually exclusive, you don’t have to choose, some kids have both.
I hope this was helpful, and if you have a question about apraxia use the contact form on our website slphappyhour.com/contact and ask away! I’ll answer some of those questions on upcoming episodes.
Sarie: And that’s it for today’s show - today we shared our personal updates for what’s been going on at home and work this year. I shared that my son is coming up on his first birthday and we’re looking forward to moving into a new home soon. I also gave an update on the job changes I’ve had this year which are too confusing to re-explain again, but basically right now I am working part-time and mostly do evaluations across my district, and I provide therapy to one group of students at the high school level. Sarah shared she is leaving her job in the schools to transition to working full time in her private practice this June! She has also hired a part-time SLP to join her private practice and is looking forward to the extra time these changes will create so that she can be home more with her family, especially once she and her husband are able to bring their child home from China. They were at the end of their adoption application last March when everything closed down due to the COVID-19 pandemic and are waiting for travel to open up again between the U.S. and China so they can finally bring their child home. Sarah also reviewed tips for evaluating CAS:
Recognize you are an expert and you CAN do it!
Do a dynamic assessment with repeated trials and review the results
Do a vowel inventory
Consider there may be both phonological disorder AND apraxia present in your student or one or the other.
As always if you want links to anything we discussed today find the show notes on our website at www.slphappyhour.com and click on the show notes tab.
Sarah: Sponsored by
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Core words for
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Word Shapes: CV, VC, CVCV,
CVC flashcards
Multisyllabic Words
Apraxia Homework Packet
Practice with vowels in words (ah, ee, oh, ai, ay)
Bonus: One page of goal suggestions for CAS
This product contains more than 100 pages total.
This bundle is perfect for the preschool or elementary SLP looking for functional materials to get started building skills for your students with CAS.
Link: https://bit.ly/3tUFq6Q
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