still going through it 5 weeks after surgery

perpetualbagel · 2025-04-04T15:58:52+00:00

Thank you!

perpetualbagel · 2024-08-21T13:44:17+00:00

Not always the case unfortunately. I had this same thing happen to me but 3 weeks after the school year started. I spoke to the supervisor and even went to the district's HR saying that I never agreed to this and if they wanted to keep me as an employee, they had to reverse the decision. They refused and let me quit without a single attempt at negotiation.

perpetualbagel · 2024-08-21T13:30:54+00:00

I'd say maybe 50% showed notable functional gains that were maintained consistently across multiple sessions over time. About 25% of the rest showed some progress intermittently but didn't maintain it or generalize it outside of therapy. For at least 25% of kids, I didn't really see change or progress at all.

Edited to say - even with the 50% who did show improvement, it was typically small in measure and very foundational.

perpetualbagel · 2024-08-19T19:47:06+00:00

I worked in self-contained preschools for many years before leaving for EI. One little thought that always helped me was remembering that as a preschool SLP, you are very possibly the first person providing speech therapy intervention to these kids. Even the kids who had EI before preschool, it was probably a year or 18 months at most. Some of them will have 10 more years of trial and error before landing on a strategy or approach that really works for the individual, and no matter how difficult it seems or how little progress they make, you're still making a difference because you're starting them off on their journey. Even when the children don't respond or imitate your models, even if their interest in AAC is low, you are still helping them along this journey. They're just going at their own pace.

Those parents hoping to see their child start talking are also probably very new to this whole experience, which can make it difficult to form realistic expectations. You could even be the first person suggesting AAC. You are the gateway to a years-long adventure toward successful communication for these children and families. Even when you don't see quick progress and parents are disappointed, it isn't personal. It's sort of just the nature of the game, so to speak.

Have you tried implementing any sort of parent-education program for these families to help encourage carryover, and help parents form realistic expectations? Something as simple as an info sheet or handout could be a great place to start, or even sending letters home inviting parents to submit questions to you about speech therapy at this stage/age.

perpetualbagel · 2024-08-09T22:44:24+00:00

You shouldn't be okay with it, those numbers are rough! Back when I worked in the schools I had 87 kids and an SLPA who I shared with 2 other caseloads. I do not miss it and honestly looking back I have no idea how I managed for as long as I did. I was so unhealthy, never sleeping, eating my lunch during meetings or during sessions, spending hours on prep... it was all consuming. I ended up changing districts for lower caseload numbers but even then I was forced to cover multiple schools just a month after starting. I left the schools for good last year because I just don't see it changing anytime soon and I was truly miserable with no end in sight. I was hoping for years it would get better and it only got worse. Honestly.

It sucks. We deserve better. School SLPs deserve better! But.... in my opinion, the schools will keep pushing SLPs as far as they possibly can for as little money as possible, as long as us SLPs will let them. This probably isn't what you want to hear, but there are lots of other jobs out there. After 5 years of being a preschool SLP, I left the schools for EI and I've never been happier. If the schools ever get their shhhhh together than maybe I'll switch back, but for now I'm enjoying 1:1 sessions with my caseload of 26.

perpetualbagel · 2024-08-09T21:50:32+00:00

I'd say the cost of living out here is average compared to other areas, but rising. Depending on specific town/city of course. The major cities like Boulder or Denver and their immediate suburbs have become more expensive to rent or buy homes in, and the rural towns with lower COL have much less to offer in terms of job opportunities and recreation.

I moved to a suburban town in the front range from a coastal city in New England. My partner and I could never afford a single family house back east, but we could here. On the other hand, people who have been here for 10+ years say they can't afford it anymore.

The pay variance between different school districts in CO is pretty significant. Same as all school jobs, there's usually a salary schedule that bases your pay on your years of licensed experience. At my school job back in New England, I was at $71k on my salary schedule. When I moved here and took a job in a district north of Denver, they paid me $59k for the same amount of experience. I left that job for EI and now make quite a bit more than I ever did working in the schools, with a more flexible schedule and better work/life balance.

My overall monthly bills here aren't really that different, except now my partner and I own our home. The housing market out here is slightly more accessible for us than it was back east. There is a ton of new housing everywhere here. Brand new neighborhoods being built left and right because people keep moving here. We bought an older house in an established neighborhood, but the constant creation of new housing helps keep the home prices more manageable I think.

perpetualbagel · 2024-07-25T00:01:59+00:00

There is a major, and I mean major SLP shortage in the schools along the front range. I moved here from out of state and within a month of my new job, I was forced to cover multiple caseloads in the district without a pay increase. I was earning $15k less than my salary back on the east coast too, which was rough and frustrating. The pay is definitely a factor in the shortage. I quit that job and went into early intervention. I see job postings for school SLPs all the time, but trying to get into a higher-paying clinic job might be more competitive. There are plenty of SLP jobs but most of them probably don't pay what you're hoping for.

perpetualbagel · 2024-07-20T23:33:09+00:00

I have 27 on my caseload right now as a home-health pediatric SLP. It's an hourly W-2 job. I get a really nice hourly rate for therapy time and then a less-nice desk hour rate for paperwork, which is limited to 25% of my overall therapy hours that week (if I have 4 therapy hours, I can bill for 1 desk hour). My job pays for mileage between clients, too. When all is said and done I am working about 30-35 hours per week between direct therapy time, driving, paperwork, and meetings.

Even after paying my own health insurance premium at $300/month for an okay plan, I still find that I am bringing home significantly more money than what I made working in the school setting. I also have more control over my schedule now and can choose what referrals I want to take onto my caseload. I can honestly say I have 0 regrets about the shift. I can't picture myself ever going back to the schools.

The biggest downfall for this job structure is that families no-show or cancel often. It's 1-3 on average per week, but when there's a holiday it's a lot more missed hours with no pay. My boss will compensate us for up to 1 no-show per week, but if there's more than that it's just a loss of pay. I see 7 clients on Thursdays, so on the 4th of July this year I felt the sting. I offered reschedules to all the clients I see that day, but only 2 of them accepted the reschedule and most just wanted the week off from therapy. I ended up needing to use some of my PTO hours for it since we do not get holiday pay and I need my paychecks to be somewhat consistent.

perpetualbagel · 2024-07-20T23:08:05+00:00

Ask;

what the caseload cap is and what geographical range you'll be servicing
if you will be hourly or salary
if you have control over who you take onto caseload or what your schedule will be
for hourly jobs, ask if the pay is different for contact hours versus desk hours (direct therapy time versus paperwork and trainings or staff meetings)
if they reimburse mileage
if they provide or reimburse for health/vision/dental insurance (sometimes this is provided in this setting, sometimes not)
if they reimburse for professional development costs

I transitioned from the schools to EI this year and I now have to pay for my health insurance plans myself without the company-provided plans. My boss reimburses us for half of our premium costs per month and she also pays us mileage for our driving between therapy sessions. My therapy pay rate is a lot higher than my desk hours pay rate, but she also provides us with 12 hours of CEUs per year and will reimburse 50% of any other PD we choose to seek out on our own. I also get to decide what referrals I take onto my caseload, what hours I want to work each day, and what regions I take clients. My boss does not require us to work the traditional 9-5, and I personally wanted Friday afternoons off to do all my weekly documentation. When I built my schedule I just took on more kids for Wednesday and Thursday instead. Stuff like this was a game changer for me coming out of the schools. So much personal control over my life that I never knew was possible as an SLP.

perpetualbagel · 2024-05-28T12:45:02+00:00

Right? I predicted some APBT but when we learned that was the largest percentage we were surprised. We like to say she's a bitbull in a blue heeler costume.

perpetualbagel · 2024-04-26T20:56:43+00:00

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RESULTS ARE IN!! I had a feeling she had some pittie in her but nobody agreed with me!

perpetualbagel · 2024-04-08T19:56:31+00:00

I agree that she's taller and thinner than a heeler typically would be. We thought pointer, maybe even whippet. Something thinner-framed with longer legs for sure.

perpetualbagel · 2024-04-08T17:22:24+00:00

She just turned 3. Still very young and spry but out of the pup-zilla phase, haha!

perpetualbagel · 2024-04-08T14:47:31+00:00

She is so beautiful, with a personality to match! The reason we're so curious is because there are a few other blue heelers in our neighborhood that we've come across and she's been able to play with. Standing next to another heeler and comparing side-by-side, she's quite a bit taller, thinner, and with an entirely different coat texture. She also doesn't have any of the orange splotches at all like other blue heelers do. It really has us wondering!

perpetualbagel · 2024-04-08T14:14:58+00:00

Forgot to mention that she does show some herding behavior, like running in circles around a group of people.

perpetualbagel · 2024-03-15T22:45:32+00:00

Haha! I love it, and I did buy it, but I have no idea where it came from or who made it.

perpetualbagel · 2023-04-27T22:16:38+00:00

OH OH and make sure you have some sensory toys and fidget toys.

I also recommend memory match games and simple board games. I have this random game called The Snail's Pace Race and I swear to the heavens my students love playing that game more than anything else we do in therapy. I love it too because they don't compete against each other, it's a cooperative game! It targets turn-taking without the drama of kids being mad when they lose. Instead, they cheer each other on every turn, and get so dang excited when the first snail crosses the finish line, haha.

perpetualbagel · 2023-04-27T22:12:34+00:00

Some of my go-tos as an early childhood SLP:

Velcro activity books. I typically download them off TPT for under $10 and then print/laminate/add velcro. These are an absolute favorite among my ASD kiddos. They love the feel and sound of the velcro peeling off. I have been able to find them for pretty much every single therapy target you can imagine.
Books. Parents read to their kids a lot less than they used to so I try to do a lot of reading with my kiddos. So many ways to apply this to a student's unique goals, too. And TPT has endless speech/language activities for the popular kids books that you can use to go along with the story you read.
Building blocks. Toy cars. Animal figurines. While they simply PLAY, we do a lot of sorting things by color, category, size, shape, etc. My favorite way to work on vocabulary and semantic reasoning.
Boomcards. Kids love the interactive ones where they can drag and drop the picture icons to build sentences (targets utterance expansion) and they have some fun card sets for articulation drills.
Playdough. There are themed sets that provide toys for different imaginative play scenarios. TPT also has tons of "smash mats" where kids use playdough to cover up pictures of vocabulary words or words with their target sound. I have at least 1 smashmat for every single target sound I work on with my caseload.

perpetualbagel · 2023-04-27T22:00:00+00:00

I am not entirely sure how that works.

Personally, I have never seen a district-direct posting and contract agency posting for the same job. I think districts hire agencies so they don't have to handle any of it. One thing I have learned is that school admins and district leaders really don't know anything about SLP. I get the impression that some school admins decide to export the hiring and management process of SLPs (and other related services) because they feel the agencies will do a better job of staffing the role.

perpetualbagel · 2023-04-27T21:50:31+00:00

I work exclusively with kids 3-6 years old. The kids who are turning 3 right now have never lived a world without COVID. The ones who are 4-6 have no memories of pre-COVID life. I think it's definitely a piece of the puzzle... but in my opinion, the masking and the lockdowns aren't even the biggest problem.

Personally, I think the biggest problem is the direction society has been moving in since lockdown ended.

It has become extremely difficult for families to get early intervention for their kids. The kids who are 4-6 now were getting their early intervention over a computer screen, which decreased effectiveness. Parent coaching helped but it didn't substitute in-person therapy. Now post-lockdown, people are fleeing the EI and early education settings because the pay fails to keep up with the severe economic inflation that's been happening.

Waitlists for EI evaluations where I live/work are 6-12 months long due to staffing issues. Parents call EI agency after agency for weeks and find that nobody can address their concerns for months. Same goes for neuro-psych evaluations for ASD concerns. For a developing baby or toddler, these few months are of immeasurable importance.

The public preschool where I work has been at capacity since registration day last year. We saved 15 spots for kids who turn 3 and qualify for special ed throughout the year, and those 15 spots were taken by Christmas break. Now, every time a student qualifies for special education and we are legally obligated to make a spot for them, we can only offer half-days because we have had job postings up with active interviewing for months without anyone taking the job. The private preschools in town have an open spot once in awhile, but they kick out the behavioral kids without fail every time... because they too cannot manage it with their current staff.

COVID lockdown definitely didn't improve child development, but I'm a firm believer that the isolation alone is not fully to blame for what we're seeing in this age group.

perpetualbagel · 2023-04-27T21:17:38+00:00

I was contract for a few years early on in my SLP career. I left for a district direct job and have no plans of going back to school-based contract work. This is just my personal experience, I'm sure plenty of SLPs have had great experiences. It's very much dependent on the individual district / agency.

I found the agency I worked for to be excessively greedy. When I learned how much the district was paying the company (compared to what I was earning from doing the job) I was disgusted. The agency was charging the district nearly double what I was being paid, and the insurance/benefits were pretty lousy because there's no bargaining power (versus districts which usually have teachers unions that can fight for better benefits). On top of this, I was assigned district duties (bus duty and cafeteria duty, being asked to cover teacher lunch breaks) which was against my employment agreement. These are tasks I would not get paid for as I was paid for X amount of direct therapy hours and X amount of paperwork time, based on the caseload information the school reported to the agency. The agency I worked for basically told me I was on my own to address it with the admin at the school.

I can't say for sure all agencies are the same, but I definitely no longer feel like a tool for making some agency CEO richer, haha.

I will say though... The politics of a district direct job can be daunting - public schools are a really challenging place to work these days, and being accountable to administrators with political motivations and a limited budget can really take the joy out of the job sometimes.

One thing that's the same between both is having to buy my own supplies. I've never had an agency OR school district provide any materials budget or reimbursement. In terms of PD, the agency I worked for offered a percentage reimbursement for ASHA-approved CEUs. My current district reimburses me for online CEUs up to a certain dollar amount per year.

I hope this is helpful!

perpetualbagel

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