Maintaining your ASHA certification (CCC-SLP) is one of the ways we demonstrate as speech language pathologists, our commitment to supporting our students. If you have an ASHA Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC-SLP) then you’ll know that to maintain this ASHA Certification you’ll need to accumulate 30 Professional Development Hours (PDHs) during each 3-year certification maintenance interval. You can read the requirements here on ASHA website. You might also see people talking about CEUs 1 PDH = one hour = 0.1 ASHA CEUs 10 PDH = ten hours = 1.0 ASHA CEU There are also new requirements tha ..read more

I get a couple of questions all the time: Will using AAC delay my child speaking or mean they never speak at all? What device should I get? To answer the first one, that is a definite no! I have witnessed the opposite, where having a communication board gave the student the foundation to build their speech. And kids are speaking more because we’re giving them this visual language – they hear something and connect it with a picture and a pattern. They’re able to have that multimodal communication by touching the device, hearing the device speak and having the communication partner speak. The ..read more

We can do fantastic work with our students using AAC but as I’m sure you know AAC is something that has much more impact if it is happening everyday. Which means we need to get colleagues at the school onboard with supporting students with their devices and other resources. But getting other team members onboard with AAC can be challenging.  But if your school is anything like the ones I work with this can be tough. We all know how busy teachers are and asking them to do something extra can be hard. But the rewards for our students make it so worthwhile.  It’s a slow process, so the ..read more

Our goal as an SLP should always be to prioritize communication, rather than verbal speech. For each child to “say” what he wants to say, when he wants to say it. But it isn’t always easy to tell when a student is communicating with us. When I first started working with students with significant cognitive disabilities, it was kind of scary because I didn’t know what to do when a student didn’t have a way to respond. Or at least I thought they didn’t have a way to respond. As I’ve spent more time working with these students, I’ve learnt that they do have a way to respond. I just need to work ou ..read more

Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) refers to a range of methods and tools that can be used to help people who have difficulty speaking or communicating effectively. (For more, read What is AAC?). But getting started with AAC can feel daunting. If you’re looking to help a child to get started with AAC, here are a few strategies to consider: #1 Identify the child’s communication strengths and needs: It’s important to assess the child’s communication abilities and needs before choosing an AAC system. You should, if at all possible, work with a speech-language pathologist (SLP). SLPs ..read more

What is AAC? AAC stands for Augmentative and Alternative Communication. It refers to a range of methods and tools that can be used to augment or replace spoken communication for people who have difficulty speaking or expressing themselves.  Are you a parent considering AAC for your child? Maybe your pediatrician or speech language pathologist recommended having a look at AAC.  But you feel hesitant because you don’t know much about it.  Or maybe you’re worried that it will stop your child from talking. Let’s start with some basic facts and information about AAC and exactly what ..read more

Technology and all the wonderful tech tools that are out there to help our students is amazing. But I’m not giving up my printed core boards any time soon.  ??? I love core boards because: They help make an abstract word visible by giving it a symbol and a location Visuals can focus a student’s attention and help them filter out distractions Many kids with disabilities have strong visual skills They help give language visible structure and a visual pattern It gives a visual foundation of frequently used words They work A big board is great for everyone in preschool classrooms, special ed ..read more

During the pandemic I did a lot of walking in my neighborhood. What else was there to do? Every time I walked by this one house on the corner there was such a beautiful fragrance in the air. One day the owner was outside and I asked him about it. He said his wife was magical with plants and had all sorts of jasmine growing in the back yard. ??? So I of course decided I needed some. I went to Lowe’s and bought a nice little jasmine shrub and Brad helped me plant it. I watered it and waited for the flowers and the fragrance. No flowers. No fragrance. And actually very little growth. I kept water ..read more

iPad’s Guided Access feature for an  Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC) user is an important option. Guided Access limits an iPad to a single app and lets you control which features are available. If you have a young AAC user, most likely you will want him to only use the iPad as a communication device. Especially when he’s first learning how to use AAC. I can’t tell you how many times school staff or parents have let a student use the iPad to play games or watch movies only to have the iPad become associated with only those activities. Then it no longer gets used for communicat ..read more

You know I’m always on the look-out for time-savers and tips to share with you. Because lets’ face it, we SLPs squeeze a lot into one little work day. I mean… just the paperwork alone. Data, billing and IEPS are always gonna be there. But what if I tell you I found a way to take the headache out of present levels, progress monitoring, and daily data? You can streamline it all with SLP Toolkit. This web-based app is the brain child of my two friends Sarah and Lisa. A few years ago, they were both working as school based SLPs right here in Phoenix and thought “there has to be a better way. Wha ..read more