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How Many Times Did I Take the Praxis?...The 4 Vital Lessons I Learned...

6/21/2014

A lot of times people see the end result of other individual’s lives and do not see the obstacles and/or the hard work that goes into how they made it to where they are today. Below are the 4 Vital Lessons I Learned from Taking the Praxis Test.

1.       Vulnerability: I was in a position where I felt like I was the only person going through this, so much of my career relied on this test in order to move forward… I shared with others “my reality” (I did not pass the Praxis test on the first time) and the steps that I experienced to get to the point where I am today. I was able to admit my weakness (not passing the Praxis) and seek help from others who did pass. I embraced the feeling of not knowing the specific outcome and enjoying the journey and the ability to gain further knowledge while studying. I learned how to be vulnerable.

2.       Resilience:   I took the Praxis test more than one time and experienced disappointment. I would open up the test scores and not want to look for fear that I would see the words “NOT PASSED.” …From each set back I developed the ability to bounce back even quicker than I did before in my life. Life is not fair and different experiences in our life teach us exactly how to develop resilience to keep going even when we may fear the worst. I learned resilience.

3.       Underlying Lessons: It is hard to see underlying lessons when you are in various situations in life, but sometimes when we step back and look at the big picture we understand the lesson that was there all along. I am thankful for my underlying lesson that I learned the value of hanging in there, because life does not always give you the necessary tools that you need in the beginning, sometimes you have to develop those skills in order to get to the next chapter of your life. I wanted to look at other careers many times, but I did not let the test define my future career that I absolutely loved. I learned to find the underlying lessons in every experience.

4.       Rejection: Last but not least the most important lesson that often times can be looked at as something negative. I felt rejected each time I got back results saying that I did not pass the test. I knew all throughout my life that standardized tests were not my strong point, but now I really felt like this was going to determine where my career would go next. I realized that I just had to find various strategies and ways of studying for the test that worked best for me. Rejection is a good thing because it makes you work harder and appreciate the end result even more. I learned rejection only pushes you to the next level and you appreciate the end result.

So how many times did I have to take the Praxis test before I passed…Well let’s just say the third time was a charm :)

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Four Ways Mobile Technology Induces Language Learning in the Classroom

4/28/2014

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Guest Blog Post by Dennis Redley

From the recent improvements we've been experiencing, there’s no question that going mobile is the trend of the modern classroom, especially in language literacy. Citing statistics from the United Nations International Telecommunications Union, Mashables’ Sarah Kessler said that in 2010, there were 5.3 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide. Kessler cited a separate report from Blackboard and Project Tomorrow saying that 98% of students in the United States have access to smartphones, opening a vast array of opportunities to speed up language proficiency.

Today, with its fast pace evolution, we are now presented with various mobile innovations for learning.

Augmented Reality

With the market version of the Google Glass, Business Insider notes that language learning is an aspect that will highly benefit from it. Writer Megan Rose Dickey said that this becomes possible with the inclusion of the real-time and the text-based translations in classes. In the middle of classroom discussions, you can encourage your students to take a photo of the reading material, and have it translated with the simple “Okay Glass” prompt.

Also, software developers are now designing applications intended to assist language learners. Multilingual dictionary company Ectaco is developing an app that allows you to learn a language on the go. Taking a photo of a chair prompts the Glass to translate the word “chair” in Spanish or German.

Mobile Applications

There are multiple third party applications available on the market, such as the Brain Quest App. A tool dedicated to students with language deficiencies. To make it easier, Verizon has outlined four easy techniques to deal with mobile apps:

· Back to basics

For beginners, the article suggests to download simple translation apps such as the Google Translate, allowing your students to decipher more than 70 languages. It also offers a dictionary to help students become attuned to the sounds of a new language.

· Experiment with your mobile devices

Whether you’re using a smartphone or a tablet, change the language settings of the device into the one your students are studying. Then, they must find a way to change the settings.

· Expand your vocabulary

The article recommends using the Babbel app, which introduces over 2,000 vocabulary words per language. “You won’t have to suffer through ads as you sift through images, vocabulary, and pronunciations of new foreign words,” the article noted.

· Start conversations

This technique serves as the ultimate test, wherein students will apply all the previously discussed ideas by engaging in a conversation. The Busuu app allows students to converse online with native-speaking individuals.

Gamification

Kids learn best when you let them deal with facts in the manner that they usually like – being entertained through games. In India, the Human Development Lab at the Carnegie Mellon University is running a program called the Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies (MILLEE). For 10 years, MILLEE has been offering an array of exciting language learning games, adopting a human-centric approach. In measuring the effectiveness, educators from the university were able to conclude that 27 students that attended the after school program exhibited post-test gains at the end of each intervention.

Another popular game wherein you can gather ideas for classroom use is the Mentira, a Spanish language learning game developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In the game, you’ll be virtually present in Albuquerque to interact with people using the Spanish language. As you solve the mystery of the crime that took place 100 years ago, you’re able to master Spanish, especially in pronunciation and delivery.

QR Codes

Quick Response (QR) codes are two-dimensional bar codes which can be scanned by a mobile device. BBC Active notes that there’s a wealth of benefits that await teachers, especially in the faster dissemination of course syllabus, assignments, and projects.

In breaking the language barrier, Colleen Lee of Edudemic outlines simple ways of using QR codes:

· “On the door”

Lee posted a QR code on the door of the classroom, which her students can scan to know more about their facilitator. She used the Tellegami app to distribute short animated videos in various languages.

· Bulletin boards

Lee set up a bulletin board where she posted a code that links students to everything about Japan, including the language, culture, and lifestyle.

For what it’s worth, mobile technology is indeed being integrated in the educational spectrum. The brewing developments this year and in the coming years can only mean one thing – that the language barrier may become a thing of the past.

About the Author
Dennis Redley loves to hang out with the kids. He volunteers as a tutor in one of the day care centers in his neighborhood. For more groundbreaking stories, tweet Dennis.

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Ethics, Dementia, and Death: Lessons after Graduate School

3/3/2014

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Guest Blog Post by Rachel Wynn, MS CCC-SLP

It has been about three years since I completed graduate school. As a student, I learned a lot in graduate school and during my leveling courses; however, I have learned far more in the three years following graduation. There isn’t space in this blog post to explain everything I’ve learned. So today, I’m going to share the three things I learned that made the biggest impact on how I deliver care in general.

1. People should come before profits. I remember the ethics lectures in graduate school. It seemed so common sense to me. I figured these ethical dilemmas would happen occasionally. I’ve got a good head on my shoulders and a strong desire to advocate for social justice. Of course, people come before profits.

Not all companies and facilities consistently act on the belief people come before profits. It’s a frequent complaint in the community of therapists working in healthcare that productivity expectations seem to be more important than patient outcomes.

I highly recommend joining some of the Facebook forums (Adult Rehab Speech Therapy and Slpeeps) and reading some of the discussions about ethics. Just search for “ethics” or “productivity” within the forum. Having this awareness going into your interviews and first positions will be very helpful.

Learn more: ASHA’s Employer Demands in Healthcare and Good Work Conditions for Therapists

2. You have to meet people with dementia where they are. Dementia is a progressive disease. Whether or not people and their families have insight into deficits or are living in denial, we have to meet them where they are. We meet them in their confusion and delusions.

Meeting people with dementia where they are sometimes involves lying, and that’s okay. I frequently talk to family members about lying versus rationalizing. Many people want to always tell the truth and rationalize with family members. When people say they want to go home, families may try to rationalize that they are home. They live here now, etc.

This is the wrong approach. A better approach is to validate the person’s concern then distract. “Let’s eat dinner before you go home.” Validation can be calming. We all want to heard. Then distraction can set in. The key is to communicate in a way that resolves the problems and concerns that people with dementia feel they are experiencing.

I had a patient that told me she had no time for my therapy tasks. She had too many things to do. She felt she needed to be productive. She was agitated by continued attempts, so I set up a calendar system with her and her personal caregiver and put speech therapy on her calendar.

The next day I arrived at my scheduled appointment and had specific tasks for us to do that weren’t standard therapy. She followed directions and completed problem solving in making holiday cards. Then we worked on walking safely with her walker when we delivered the cards. It worked wonderfully. I heard her, validated her concerns, and met her where she was.

Learn more: Eden Alternative Equals Better Care for Elders and An Amazing Village Designed Just for People With Dementia

3. People die. Death is the ultimate rite of passage. Many people fear death. People and their families need someone to tell them they have choices. SLPs have an expertise in dysphagia that can help families make choices. Death isn’t a prescribed process. Respecting patient and family wishes at end of life is the best thing we can go to help them experience a good death.

I’ve worked with people who are at end of life and their bodies and mind are beginning to shut down. Some families want to fight until the very last moment. Terminal cancer in a 90-year-old beginning to experience multi-organ failure is just a reason to fight harder. After seeing families go through this, I have clearly communicated to my family members that this is not what I want.

I had an end of life and quality of life talk with a family recently. Sometimes, I feel a bit like the Grimm Reaper, because I enjoy these conversations. (They used to make me uncomfortable.) Death is certain, but I feel like I can do my part to empower the family and patient to experience a good death.

If they don't want thickened liquids, I can provide recommendations to make them as comfortable as possible with thin liquids. My job isn't always to prevent illness and death, sometimes the only focus is improving quality of life. What an incredible honor!

Learn more: Check out ASHA’s Patient Rights and Patient Choices.

Special Thanks to Rachel Wynn for writing a great blog post with her perspective pertaining to the geriatric population!

Rachel Wynn, MS CCC-SLP is speech-language pathologist specializing in geriatric care. She blogs at Gray Matter Therapy, which strives to provide information about geriatric care including functional treatment ideas, recent research, and ethical care. Rachel’s projects include: Gray Matter Therapy Newsletter, Research Tuesday, and Patient and Family Education Handouts. Find her coaching new SLPs, on Facebook, on Twitter, or hiking with her dog in Boulder, CO.

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The Resources for Nailing your Resume

6/20/2013

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This post was a collaboration with Katie Millican from SLP Echo. Special Thanks to Katie for providing a lot of great tips that are pertinent to our favorite topic, Resume Writing.

Katie Millican, B.S. Ed., is a second year SLP graduate student at the University of West Georgia. She is moving to Alaska to complete her Clinical Fellowship experience in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District for the 2013-2014 school year. She is the author behind http://slpecho.wordpress.com/ where she writes on topics to help inform future and current SLP graduate students, as well as iPad apps for use in therapy.

I remember asking other students in my cohort what their resume looked like. Asking, “Did you put XYZ on there? How did you describe it? Is it considered work experience if you didn't get paid?” When writing a resume, don’t try to re-invent the wheel. There are resources at your disposal to lessen the confusion of resume design, organization, and content.

Organization and Structure

Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) offers outstanding advice for designing the overall look of a resume. First, scroll through the Resume Workshop Presentation for every section of a basic resume and how to compose a unique-to-you resume. Then, check out their Resume Design post to learn about the Quadrant test, using columns, font selections, and the 20 second test.

Tailoring an SLP Resume

Tailoring a resume means highlighting strengths and weaknesses which make you uniquely qualified for the position. Consider the employer – Are you applying to a school district or health care employer? Each place of employment might have a different need for posting the position. While many people keep one resume for every job they apply to, tailoring can make you stand out. Now, here are some basic guidelines for tailoring a resume:

1.      Review the Purdue OWL structure and organization of a resume

2.      Include the basic factual information from previous clinical experience and/or internships (i.e. name of employer, dates worked, location, supervisor, etc)

3.      Now, as you search for a a desired SLP position posting online (when available), save and refer back to the description. For instance, below is an example pulled from an online posting for a school-based SLP.

1.      Once you decide to apply, pin-point the main skills and requirements the employer is looking for based on the description provided. For example, in the above listing, “research” seems to be a large emphasis in this school district, as many bullet-points highlight evidence, journals, statistical analysis, and data collection.

a.       Often, job postings are vague or limited to “Seeking full-time SLP for in-patient rehabilitation” or something to that effect. In that case, I would use the ASHA Scope of Practice for pin-pointing notable skills for mention relevant to previous experience.

2.      On your resume, under each experience, include verbatium verbage from their own description as it relates to your clinical experience. To expand on the example above, for instance, you might put something to the extent of:

Obviously, you don’t want to make things up if your job never included the duties, but then again, almost every SLP job includes evidence-based approaches, working with culturally and linguistically diverse clientele creating short and long term goals, and working under educational or government regulations like IDEA and HIPAA. It’s all in the wording!

Keywords and Action Words are KEY
It is important to develop a list of keywords and action words to incorporate into your resume. There are many websites that provide a list of keywords and action words under various categories. The importance of these words is they highlight the skills that you possess and draw the employer to your resume.

Examples of how to incorporate keywords and action verbs into your resume:

1. Keywords: Intervention, strategies, family
Action Verbs: Educated, facilitate
· Educated family members of individuals with Aphasia on specific intervention strategies to facilitate active involvement

2. Key Words: Graduate students, speech pathology, clinical
Action Verb: Supervised
· Supervised graduate students in speech pathology program during their clinical rotations

3. Key Words: confidential documents, filing, accurately
Action Verbs: Organized, maintained
· Organized and accurately maintained filing system of confidential documents

Boston College and Wake Forest University organized a list of action verbs that could be incorporated into your resume .

Boston College’s Resume Action Verbs
Wake Forest University’s List of Action Verbs for Resumes and Professional Profiles

In addition to descriptions under jobs, Linkedin is a great resource to use to develop keywords to incorporate into your resume. To get to the Skills and Expertise Section on Linkedin, follow the steps below:

Log in to your Linkedin Account and click on More (located in the top toolbar)

1. In the Drop down menu under More, click on Skills & Expertise

2. When you get to the Skills & Expertise screen you can type in a keyword and other similar skills will populate based on what you typed into the search box.

How Long Should My Resume Be?

At some point, a transition from one to two page resumes lends itself to three and four page resumes. The more experience, professional development, and skills acquired automatically increases the length of a resume. However, I think the Purdue OWL’s 20 second rule still applies, no matter how many pages. Employers or Human Resource people want to see relevant experience and how recent/dates, education level, professional development, and other components correspond to the job.

The above job description and duties example appeared on the Disctrict of Columbia Public Schools website for a position as a school-based Speech-Language Pathologist, posted May 2, 2013.

Additional Resources:
The Chronicle of Higher Education: First Time on the Market
Resume Builder

Sample Resumes:

sample_slp_grad_student.potential_cf_resume.docx
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File Type:	docx

Download File

sample_slp_resume.docx
File Size:	30 kb
File Type:	docx

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The Secret for Writing a Resume that Gets you Hired

4/28/2013

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A couple weeks ago, I had the distinct honor of helping one of my Language-Impaired students with her resume. It took us about two weeks’ worth of extended therapy sessions to create a resume that met her needs despite her lack of professional experiences, but we did it.

Besides the feeling of satisfaction that I got from putting a vibrant young woman on track for her
first job, I learned that the key to drafting a winning resume is to write from the viewpoint of a
hiring manager. If you were the person who had to spend thousands of dollars in advertising in
hope of recruiting a top candidate for your company, what skills and personality traits would you
be looking for?

According to Ramit Sethi, author of “I will Teach You to Be Rich,” a hiring manager will spend
roughly 10 seconds scanning your resume. What do you want your resume to say about you? Do
not fall into the mental trap that you will land a job because speech-language pathologists are in

high demand and carelessly put your resume together. Turn your resume into a magnet for the
best companies by doing the following:

Avoid content indigestion (Ramit Sethi recommends that you make each word earn its place on
your resume and if the information is irrelevant for the position you are applying for, leave it off
your resume)

Keep your resume neat (stick with Times New Roman or Arial fonts; no fancy graphics)

Target it for your specific audience (recruiters from various public/private organizations or
speech therapy business owners)

Have an objective (what type of position would you like and in what clinical setting; know what
you want)

Avoid overused phrases (we are all hard workers, team players and highly qualified; focus on
how your clinical skills will benefit your future employer)

In sum, the secret to writing a resume that gets you noticed is to take on the perspective of your
future employer. Remember, you would not want to read endless lists of people’s descriptions
of how they traded their time for money. Briefly state your objective, highlight your value and
attract the job of your dreams.

Special Thanks to Espinoza for writing this article about resume writing!

About Author:
Espinoza Pierschke is a savvy Speech Therapist, Certified SEO Copywriter and author of “Windows Can Become Doors: A Blueprint for Beginning Speech Therapists.” She is passionate about making a difference and teaching fellow therapists how to survive life after graduate school.

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