True Life: I'm an SLP-CF

I've officially started my second blog. My first was to document my recent Europe trip, and at the end of it I reported I was off to find my next big adventure. Well, I've found it. And along the way, I've caved and started another blog. I've decided there are too many good stories to remember, so this is my attempt to help recall my first year in the life as a speech pathologist. Here we go, round 2. Back on the blog.

I started working at a charter school in the middle of August. If you had asked me back in January if I would be working in a school, I would have said no, absolutely not...7 months later here I am. I signed up knowing the caseload was a mess and the school was tough. And somehow I feel like I ended up right where I’m supposed to be.

I'm just starting Week 3 of therapy with the kiddos. Getting to know each and every kid on my 80-kid caseload has been and still is a bit of a challenge, but we're getting along quite nicely. I spent the first few days getting to know them, their interests, and what's cool at school. Sillybandz and Justin Bieber - so hot right now. I've got all ages - kindergarten to 10th grade - with enough personality to keep me entertained.

Here's a small glimpse into my world:

As my creative attempt at an attendance tracker, the kids have speech passports that I stamp when they come to speech. Project Part II is to put their pictures on the inside. In today's photo shoot, one of the kindergarten boys flipped up his hands in the shapes of L’s. Okay, that's cool, creative, like that. As he walks back to his chair, he says, “I put up my guns.” And that’s when I realized, froze him in his tracks and sent him back to the wall, “Uh-uh. I don’t think so.” Photo shoot round 2. So he took another picture sans guns but this time shot a squinted B.A. (bad-ass) look at the camera. That’ll do.

I have a 5^th grader who loves coming to speech. It’s 3:30 p.m. on a Friday – 30 minutes left 'til the weekend – and I see the eager beaver in the hallway and she blurts out, “I’m so excited for Monday!!” Because of speech? “Yes! I can’t wait!” Yessss....someone who loves speech even more than I do. So Monday rolled around and she got her speech fix and before she walks out the door, she gives me a big hug saying “I just want to squeeze you! We’re both so little!” Another speech room departure I got a hug from her saying, "I already feel like we're family." Ha.

Another of my special 4^th graders asked me if I’d seen Jackie Chan Superhuman. Nope, not recently. He proceeded to tell me he’s part-human/part-animal because he scratches his ear like a dog. All the way down the hallway he did just that - completely serious - and claimed to have supernatural scent capabilities. We're working on social pragmatics.

We've played a few good games - Uno, Phase 10, Catch Phrase, and 20 questions in between our speech work. Turns out 20 questions is tougher than I had thought. Playing 20 questions with some of my 1st graders, I gave the clues: It's bright, it comes out at night, and you see it in the sky. A few answers: Jesus and the ground. We might start working on categories.

That's a very small snapshot into the kiddos. The adventure is just beginning, and I'm excited for the challenge. My last blog was entitled "Appreciate the Moment" and that will be carried throughout my charter school experience. Enjoy the here and the now and try to make a difference in some lives along the way. So here's to the start of my next big adventure!

Julianne