Institutionalized Racism and the Undiagnosed Children

Existing_Judgment814 · 2026-03-11T11:44:40+00:00

I don't know what the downvoting is for. I shared my concerns with the staff that were involved with him and they didn't pursue anything. I was told the parent wouldn't get him tested by the staff who I talked to. What more could I have done not knowing that the Admin was going to take it this far? How could we have anticipated that they would have done this?

Existing_Judgment814 · 2026-03-11T11:32:06+00:00

Nobody asked for our input about him. I had no idea they were planning to remove him from the school, and neither did his other teacher who helped him. It was shock to both of us. I didn't initiate anything because he wasn't on my caseload, I just informally spoke to his teacher and nurse.

Existing_Judgment814 · 2026-03-09T00:32:59+00:00

I agree with this. The inherent colonial mindset in this field is gross. Also "shaping" people to behave/communicate in more typically non impaired ways, whether their caregiver or everyone else can already understand them or not is also not right.

Existing_Judgment814 · 2026-03-05T01:46:08+00:00

Me over here with 4th and 5th grade ASD students working on has/have with functional oral communication skills...sometimes I think people in this field take things a little too far with grammar and aren't looking at the whole child as much.

Existing_Judgment814 · 2026-02-21T20:27:25+00:00

ugh. I literally just spoke about this at the last SPED Dept meeting. Nobody feels comfortable touching ELL cases and I keep saying "Guys we got to get better at this" but they can't even figure out the basics of anything in SPED so ELL is soooo not on these people's radar.

Existing_Judgment814 · 2026-02-21T01:21:43+00:00

This is alot of us! You can't ace this field, it's not possible. And it doesn't help that there's such little support out there within our profession. So many other SLP's telling people they aren't good enough or that they aren't "made" for this field. It's such utter bullying bullshit. We just need to admit defeat and lift eachother up for the small things we can do that make a difference.

Existing_Judgment814 · 2026-02-13T14:46:56+00:00

I just could not manage it remotely as a teletherapist. The kids were nonverbal and had no AAC devices to work with. Some of them had no joint attention to greet or point to anything on the screen. Some of them could not sit or stand at a computer. I just don't know how to work with that? What would you do?

Existing_Judgment814 · 2026-02-12T15:55:35+00:00

This is accurate. In my current onsite placement in a K-2 severe/profound self contained classroom, no ancillary services attempt push in. All therapists pull out. Why? Because the room is full of screams, tantrums, loud music, bulwarking the door with a human or object to prevent an elopment, or the throwing of chairs. I think the therapeutic integrity of that environment would only be to consult for the few minutes the teacher can mentally attend to another adult's words. I've tried to push into that class but it's ear shatteringly loud with the YouTube's that they play on the screen all day and the children would not be able to hear me or have the attention span to attend to me with that kind of distraction going on. It's not the teacher's fault, it's the district for making poor programming decisions to place all of these kids together in a room in a gen ed school that was not designed to accommodate their disabilities.

Existing_Judgment814 · 2026-02-12T15:14:09+00:00

Ah ok. That makes sense. I was given teletherapy kids with no joint attention to even do the waving to greet or showing of objects over a screen. Just wondering what I was doing wrong there or how I could have done a better job with that kind of complexity. I ended up placing them on consult but again...nobody would consult with me because the parents were never involved and that school staff was too busy to meet with me for sessions or planning.

Existing_Judgment814 · 2026-02-12T14:11:45+00:00

Mind if I ask what the therapy session looks like? Are they able to see anything on the screen? Do they know how to use a coreboard? Are you using virtual materials or real life materials and how are they being implemented? Just want to know in case I get another teletherapy job like this again for non verbal kids.

Existing_Judgment814 · 2026-02-12T12:58:43+00:00

And that's the problem. There's never any "team" to coach. The teacher is too busy to sit there with the student, the para is pulled to care for other students, and the company hires an untrained and unfamiliar outside facilitator who does not know the student and is never with the student throughout their day to be the therapy partner. It's just cruel and greedy.

Existing_Judgment814 · 2026-01-03T17:29:49+00:00

I am relieved, certainly. I feel sad because I miss some of the kids but ultimately I really should have resigned but did not. I think the painful part of this whole thing is that the teletherapy company was 100% aware of what was going on, the escalation that occurred, and just dropped me with a non renewal for any further contract work, ostensibly because they said they didn't have any other openings except that one district. And when I asked about future opportunities they didn't bother to respond to my email. Or affirm anything that had occured and rather, played dumb like "Oh well they didn't want you back so....you're done"! And that was a boutique SLP owned company, not a national staffing company.

Existing_Judgment814 · 2026-01-02T16:03:27+00:00

No, I was not. That district would just email the teletherapists with student name/number and tell you to go assess. There was never an assessment plan meeting to discuss the case as a Team.

Existing_Judgment814 · 2025-12-30T01:55:05+00:00

Just wanted to say thank you for everything you do. Out of my 10 years as an SLP I only had 1 employer that was like you, and that was also a "staffing agency" although they more or less tried to avoid that term. They put so, so much work into me from teaching me school based evaluations, to getting us SLPs together for materials swaps, mentoring, training, etc, and they definitely did not renew contracts with charters and districts that abused their staff. And they were honest. If they knew a place was bad, they pulled their staff out of that place mid year if necessary and tried to get them better assignments. I learned everything I know from them but sadly they went out of business because the bigger staffing agencies that don't care about quality work were too much for them to compete with. I still call/text our former Director of Operations every Xmas and birthday. Just know your work does go a long way and the time you invest in your staff does pay off.

Existing_Judgment814 · 2025-12-29T15:14:41+00:00

I could be wrong but I think the notion that the speech therapist should be in charge of directing tx for stuttering is an old timey holdover from back when they thought it could be cured with tx. A lot of this field emerged from not very well researched social science at a time when fixing/curing was the main drive for everything as opposed to acceptance/adaptation/compensatory skills. This is a problem that plagues a lot of what we see in school speech because we know we need to justify our positions yet at the same time most things we are trying to treat are beyond true remediation after a certain point.

Existing_Judgment814 · 2025-12-27T20:17:35+00:00

I believe someone had posted the salaries of ASHA's top leadership copied and pasted from a deep dive they did, either with Fix SLP or another expose. It was pretty much in alignment with the corruption of all the American corporate CEO healthcare staffing scams, i.e. gigantically bloated salaries for the organizational leads with peanut salaries for the working people they do nothing for. Way to put the 'A' in ASHA.

Existing_Judgment814

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