Speech Language Pathologist Reflection

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I would like to begin this reflection paper with my past experiences. First, I am an older student – obtaining my first bachelors from Hofstra University. As a sophomore in broadcast journalism, I was assigned the task of interviewing a graduate student in speech-language pathology as part of a career exploration video for incoming freshman. Filming her and her fellow classmates as they helped children overcome their stutter and gain both confidence and a voice, I was fascinated by the amazing work they were doing. But I had already begun searching for a career path in public relations, soon taking a job at a public relations firm on Long Island focusing on business clients. Within three months, I started dreaming about a career more than a …show more content…

It’s interesting to know that clinics like the one I volunteer for are approved by the Department of Education and can provide additional services to children who need them. I have been told by quite a few people that in the past, speech-language pathologists had to know a little bit of everything, and while that still holds true today, specialized speech-language pathologists are becoming more of the norm. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association offers SLPs the opportunity to receive their Clinical Specialty Certification, which is a step beyond the Certificate of Clinical Competence. These areas include Child Language and Language Disorders, Fluency and Fluency Disorders, Swallowing and Swallowing Disorders, and Intraoperative Monitoring; Auditory Verbal Therapy (AVT), what the SLP that worked with Student A was certified in, is governed by the Alexander Graham Bell Academy for Listening and Spoken Language. As a future speech-language pathologist, I will be able to refer a child whose speech and language issues go beyond hearing loss to the appropriate SLP and work collaboratively with him/her; educators will be able to advocate for their …show more content…

For example, pg. 136 of our book, Speech, Language & Hearing Disorders: Guide for the Teacher by Barbara Hall, Herbert Oyer and William Haas, states that “hard of hearing children consistently show a 2-to3 year lag in vocabulary development, while deaf children show a significantly wider gap.” As the project taught us, in addition to helping improve any phonological, articulation and social language issues, as well as helping the patient learn to hear with their hearing device in noise, the speech-language pathologist is responsible for expanding a deaf child’s mental lexicon; an educator should do the same, and offer additional instruction after school. The book does say that “many mainstreamed hearing-impaired students cannot achieve the same goals as their hearing peers” (Hall, Oyer and Haas, 2001, pg. 136) and by the teacher talking to the parents and offering this assistance after school – or in the case of an older student, study hall – this will help to close the gap. While another point of the project was that some deaf children are more successful in speech/language learning than others, again, I do believe this additional assistance can help the child in getting to the same level as their normal hearing

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