Motivational Poster Generator

You can create your own motivational posters/images at Auto Motivator.

via Mr. Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers

Featured Website – Speech Techie

One of my coworkers mentioned this great blog: Speech Techie

It’s totally cool. I’ve used the Bad-Luck-O-Meter with a few groups and am doing quite a bit with Visible Thinking right now. My social language group in the autism classroom loved Reading Feet.

Sean Sweeney, CCC-SLP is doing some sweet work with his Language Lens. Kudos to Mr. Sweeney!

Have you read…

Egan, G. (2002). The Skilled helper (7^th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Luterman, D. (2001). Counseling persons with communication disorders and their families (4^th ed.). Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.

Nicholas, M. P. (1995). The lost art of listening: How learning to listen can improve relationships. New York: Guilford Press.

Shames, G. H. (2006). Counseling the communicatively disabled and their families: A manual for clinicians. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Shipley, K. (1997). Interviewing and counseling in communication disorders: Principles and procedures (2^nd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

I’ve started reading Luterman’s book. Once I’m finished, I’ll be tracking down Egan’s book, although probably the 2007 version.

The risk we face as SLPs

The ultimate risk is to care too much about our life’s work and the persons who receive our services. But with these risks comes the greatest reward – the sense that working with clients with communication disorders and their families is an integrated part of our lives and part of our human growth and development, rather than simply a vocation that pays the bills.

-Prizant’s comments in the Preface of David Luterman’s (2001) text

It’s okay to feel incompetent

From Walter H. Manning’s Clinical Decision Making in Fluency Disorders, Third Edition (page 349):

Luterman (2001) stresses the importance of accepting our limitations and recognizing that particularly difficult cases will cause the icy finger of possible failure to threaten and test our confidence. Nonetheless, if the clinician is learning, if he or she is a truly responsible professional, he or she should be operating on the fringes of incompetence (Luterman, 2001). Effective counselors, clinicians, and people in general should take risks and occasionally make mistakes, or they will not grow.

Ah, it’s great to have permission to feel incompetent: it means that I’m pushing the edge of my learning and experimenting with my knowledge and therapy base. If I’m not feeling stretched, I need to reevaluate and push myself further.

Is it the new school year yet?

I’m already thinking about getting ready for a new set of students. Eek!

I think this may be a fun way to start the year with my groups by having my students make Wordle’s about themselves.