Speak Out June 2017

Respect professional boundaries, set realistic expectations, know the school’s timetable and work with what is possible.

Suggestions you provided regarding best practice in schools were: • Engaging with school leadership is essential as is working collaboratively and respectfully with teachers. • Working within the class and with teachers as much as possible is highly recommended and minimises withdrawal of students. If this does need to occur then an agent of change needs to be present and trained. • Speech pathologists need to be part of the staff, be available to plan with teachers and to integrate the student’s speech and language needs into the curriculum. They must also train and monitor the support staff who work with the students. • Resources for therapy should come from the teachers embedding your recommendations into class programs and be linked to school topics. • It is important to build the knowledge and capacity of the teachers through education, demonstration, team teaching, etc. so that they can develop and generalise these skills not only for your student but for the whole class. • Try not to think in a medical model; look at participation and functionality. Don’t assume teachers know what you are talking about because often they know very little about communication disorders. • Respect professional boundaries, set realistic expectations, know the school’s timetable and work with what is possible. • Consider “who is my client?” Is the client the school, the parent, the student or the teacher? This helps to frame expectations and negotiations as well as workload management. Speech Pathology Australia thanks all respondents for their time, information and suggestions about working in schools. These results will be used to generate a number of recommendations to the SPA Board and we will inform you of updates in the next edition.

Student

Speech Pathologist

Family

School

Mary Gornik Senior Project Officer Speech Pathology in Schools

www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au/schools

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June 2017 www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au

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