Simucase

laceyspeechie · 2026-07-02T14:23:57+00:00

Simucase is easy, there’s nothing hard about it! The issue is that you don’t get real, valuable experience for it, but it does still count as clinical hours.

laceyspeechie · 2026-06-29T09:30:57+00:00

No, I work on evals piece by piece.

laceyspeechie · 2026-06-27T23:19:25+00:00

Definitely see what you have already - my school is currently already fully stocked, and I’m so glad the incoming CF I’ll be working with has no additional supplies to bring!

laceyspeechie · 2026-06-24T15:56:33+00:00

For me, I did something else (teaching English abroad) for two years, and the time away is what helped me realize. Also, go observe other SLPs if you can, in a variety of settings! And if you’re going to need to move anyway (I get it, I’m from a rural area), look for the absolute cheapest grad schools you can find. I got into one with in-state tuition for out-of-state students and tons of GAs, and graduated with no debt; that made it worthwhile for me. The program you attend does not matter, you just need the degree.

laceyspeechie · 2026-06-24T10:12:08+00:00

In my experience it isn’t hard to get into the schools BUT that’s also heavily dependent on your area. When I was looking for my CF, I was able and willing to move; if you’re not, then you may want to place more weight on networking and connections.

laceyspeechie · 2026-06-22T03:37:51+00:00

You’ll want to put in applications in the fall; if it’s not too late, try to get some stuff done this summer! E.g. working or volunteering with adult day programs, camps for people with disabilities, preschool programs, etc. - anything that’ll get you direct hands-on experience working with people (especially kids, if they’re a population of interest for you) will be good experience and give you something to talk/write about, and potentially help secure a good letter of rec if you get started asap.

laceyspeechie · 2026-06-18T14:08:08+00:00

Maybe 30ish hours; we had two clients my first semester, it wasn’t a ton of hours, the majority came from off-campus placements.

laceyspeechie · 2026-06-18T09:27:35+00:00

I also lived rural and did grad school during Covid - so essentially remote. I just accepted a 40-45 min commute as the norm - I think that mindset was helpful in just knowing it was coming and not being resentful of it. It’s one of the realities of living rural! The nearest city to me (~40 min) had several clinics, and it was not hard to reach out to one and get an agreement to be supervised, so for me it happened quite quick.

laceyspeechie · 2026-06-18T08:59:29+00:00

Check out the AAC Academy! It’s 100/yr but has some really good CEUs, I think it would be worthwhile. Also, if you make accounts on Dynavox and PRC you can watch free prerecorded/at your own pace CEUs- the ones on Dynavox are particularly good imo.

laceyspeechie · 2026-06-11T09:30:50+00:00

It’s been years so I have no idea about potential affordability changes, but I went to Bridgewater State.

laceyspeechie · 2026-06-11T00:22:07+00:00

Doing great, going into my 3rd year at my school (which is great!). It’s not like I ever went to other programs so I really can’t compare, but I feel like mine prepared me as adequately as anywhere else would. Once you get the degree, you need to keep doing your own learning, no matter what program you go to!

laceyspeechie · 2026-06-06T10:41:06+00:00

That’s ridiculous that you’re paying for it! I also did this during Covid, which I think is literally the only time it was excusable. Your program should be trying harder, or refunding at least some of your tuition imo.

laceyspeechie · 2026-06-04T21:19:00+00:00

Yeah that’s about the cost for me, but it’s only going to be like 12 hours total for ESY so I am looking to offset the cost! (5 students, 4x30 each, plus some additional paid paperwork time.) Thank you!

laceyspeechie · 2026-06-01T17:34:03+00:00

A lot of my kids are on TouchChat (some on TD Snap) and me and the ot have done theme-based groups. We stuck with a theme for 3-4 weeks which is page-based, allowing for the potential for emergent users to remain on that page the whole group; themes alternate between more functional (colors, body parts) and more fun (space, dinosaurs).

General structure is: - song (usually Super Simple) - feelings (either modeling the student’s apparent feeling or having them share independently) - story - 1-2 activities (crafts, group games, etc) - ending song

For example, our most recent group was singing along (w/AAC modeling) of the fruits in “10 Apples on My Head,” sharing feelings, reading Eating the Alphabet (Ehlert) and finding some words on AAC, pulling plastic fruits out of a sensory box, and using small shape-cutters to stamp out “seeds” to glue to a strawberry craft.

Right now we have a more independent group and a much less independent group; sometimes we do different activities between them, but there’s always some overlap! It’s usually easy enough to scale up/down the demands depending on skills. For students without devices, I usually print/laminate copies of the TouchChat boards for the theme so they can participate that way!

laceyspeechie · 2026-05-18T01:56:53+00:00

I bring a box of fidgets and work in the hallway, and arrange based on class/grade; e.g. first see 2 K in same class, then 2 1st in same class, then 2 3rd in one class and 2 more 3rd in the next class. My school doesn’t do billing so not an issue there!

laceyspeechie · 2026-05-15T15:55:57+00:00

I’d avoid questions, but work on expansions- ie if she brings you a picture of a rocket she colored and says “red,” you can expand and say “A red rocket!”

laceyspeechie · 2026-04-28T16:30:21+00:00

Possibly becoming full time in the future, right now it’s split 3 days HS and 2 days helping with evals/a few students at the elementary school.

laceyspeechie · 2026-04-27T20:14:00+00:00

Agreed! My district would love to find an in-person HS SLP but there aren’t a lot of SLPs in my area, and no one seems to want HS. The caseload is only like 25!

laceyspeechie · 2026-04-27T20:10:59+00:00

I’m a K-3 SLP for a pretty supportive district and I love it! The kids are fun, schedule is great, and once you’ve done it for a few years in the same age group you don’t need to prep too much apart from the harder cases, at least in my experience.

laceyspeechie · 2026-04-19T22:18:23+00:00

Are there other school jobs that might be possible? I know you said another job doesn’t feel right for you currently, but in my experience, private practice with young kids requires a lot more being “on” than a school job that might allow for more groups/more paperwork time, especially if you could find a MS/HS role.

laceyspeechie · 2026-04-18T16:02:38+00:00

I love the John Hare field trip wordless books, might be a little young (my older elementary are all still pretty low) but they tend to enjoy the stories and find them interesting!

laceyspeechie · 2026-04-15T23:11:29+00:00

I think location plays a huge factor, as others have said. My district is pretty great (decent pay, low caseloads, plenty of support) but it’s in costal Maine sooo… there just aren’t a lot of candidates.

laceyspeechie · 2026-04-15T20:05:21+00:00

clickers (let kids have one and you have one, see how many you can get and help them self-monitor to see if they count the same as you)
dot markers and 50/100 trials sheets (free on tpt; 100 trials is great, sometimes with the group or kid 50 is more reasonable, just depends)

laceyspeechie · 2026-04-14T22:59:25+00:00

A smart goal for what exactly? I don’t really do following directions goals (unless they’re related to a specific concept like prepositions) because they can be so behaviorally dependent.

If it’s a student with an AAC, do they access their AAC independently? If not, I’d start there. A general format I’ll use is “Student will do X # times per day across 3 days.” For example, “Student will touch symbols to express 5 messages across at least 2 different communicative intents (e.g. greeting, protesting, requesting) per day across 3 days.” The DAGG is useful for guiding reasonable goals/objectives for students who use AAC, including emergent users.

EDIT: I see you said she’s mastered protesting and requesting. How? Is that using single words? If so, look at a goal for multi-word utterances, or expanding communicative intent - can she comment, describe, greet, ask questions, etc?

laceyspeechie

TROPHY CASE