 Hi, welcome to Voices of New England. I'm Cyn, and this is the first episode entitled The Power of Speech. And with me today are speech pathologists Caroline Crosby and Lauren Patter- Peterson. Nice. So, how are you doing today? Good. Great. Happy to be here? Yes, very happy to be here. Okay, well the first question is what is a speech pathologist? Do you want to take this one? You take it, Lauren. I would say a speech pathologist accompanies a lot of things. The name itself I think doesn't even really do justice to what we do. Communication specialists I would say, but also we can deal with swallowing and cognition. I personally do a lot of social communication work, so I work with high schoolers in social groups. So I would say that deals with communication in a lot of different ways and different settings and contexts, whereas you I feel like work with a much broader range of students and ages. Okay, through age. Yeah, so more dealing with like articulation, language development and reading and writing. Right. So then Caroline I'll let you answer this. So why is speech pathology important? Well I think that speech pathology being therapy for speech which is articulation or language which is understanding or listening skills and speaking skills really is a foundational skill for getting along in life or getting through life and it's very much tied to academic progress because most of what we do academically has a foundation in language. Even for example you could say IQ tests are usually language based so if a student has a disability in an area of language that could impact their IQ score, it could impact their school success. I always say a class even like science even though it obviously deals with scientific you know subject matter is always a reading class first. Absolutely. So much of what kids do is reading and that has to, reading is a higher order form of listening because it's taking in information and so writing would be a higher form of speaking and so much of what everybody does in our daily lives have to do with speaking or social interaction, social language, yeah. So what got you interested in the field in the first place? For me I was in college I had no idea what I wanted to do I'm still not even sure but I took a few deaf studies classes and there I met a bunch of speech pathologists and I guess just kind of got interested in it. I was always interested in the medical field, psychology and linguistics but I didn't really want to go to medical school I felt like that was kind of a big commitment and I was at that point very commitment phobic. So speech pathology really worked for me and then specifically working at a high school I feel like connecting with teenagers at a time right before they're making a big transition to whatever they're doing next is really important and you mentioned the social piece as being something that is really valued I think in pretty much any workplace that they'll go to. Even being almost by yourself working in IT in an isolated setting is still social you're still being social in one way or another so I feel like having some foundational skills in that way is so important at least that they can fall back on that's why I like it. I totally agree I think social language is a very important part of language and communication and the reason how I got interested in speech pathology is I was in theater and the voice coach at the American Repertory Theater had a job listening to us and giving us vocal notes you know you need to articulate this better or be careful that your S's don't get muddy on when you're singing that song and I've always done accents and loved doing character pieces you know I was never cast as the Anshino I was always cast as the funny Scottish landlady. So I think speech and articulation really was what drew me to speech pathology and then I learned about the brain and information processing and it's a passion that I have to this day is how different people process information. Well speaking of S's as somebody who is interested in doing voiceover work I do voiceover and I sing as well the whole saying the word S but and same goes with like plosives and not puffing into the microphone so are there any like hints of how you would correct that with but still maintain saying the letters because I know you still have to say the letters. So I guess you would just be careful not to over articulate sometimes with students who have difficulty producing sounds we might train them to over articulate but if a performer's having difficulty popping peas and bees and things like that you might you might speak to them about not over articulating. But how much of us actually think that we're over articulating and just speaking normally and outcomes a that is the basis of articulation therapy. Oh okay so that was one aspect of sort of the challenges that people face so what are some of the easy and the hard things about speech pathology and I think for me the easiest thing is just appreciating the students I think every student is different and unique and valuable and you know working with teenagers I was saying earlier it can be I can feel like very out of touch working with them you know even though I feel like I'm not too far away from them in age but I can always learn something from them and they kind of keep me on my toes and I like to use a lot of puns and I go on the speech path you know so I think I think that's the easiest thing it's just kind of appreciating them I think working in the public school is something that's just always going to be hard working in public service is getting you know the resources that we need and making sure that we have enough time to do everything because I think first for my case load at least I feel like I'm always have something I always have at least ten other things that I need to be doing at any given time which I know is true for a lot of us so I think it's it's harder to manage all of the things that we need to do but it's easy to love the kids. What about you Caroline? I completely agree with you and I think the easiest thing for me is appreciating the students and getting a kick out of them and having fun with them and the harder things are the more bureaucratic tasks that I have and learning how to do like 80 hours a week in 40 hours a week and I completely agree with at any given time there are ten things I could be doing and should be doing but I can't do all of them at once. I don't teach you about the bureaucracy in grad school so you both work in public schools yes and there are people who do this like on a private basis have you considered yeah I actually do work at a private clinic just one on one day a week part-time and so I do some social groups there and I like it and I think I just I believe in the public school system so I want to continue working in there as long as I can but I mean one of the great things about speech pathology is there's a lot of flexibility in the setting that we could potentially work in so you know private clinic work has always been something that's sort of on my radar and I'll probably keep it in the back burner for a while but I do want to keep public schools in the forefront regardless of the bureaucracy and the menial things we have to do in half the time but I completely agree I believe in public education and I like the public education setting and I do think speech pathology as a profession is a profession where you can keep your self entertained for many years because you can work with pediatrics you can work with geriatrics you can work in high schools junior highs elementary schools you can specialize in voice or fluency which most people would think of as stuttering or language or deaf and hard of hearing there's so many different areas in speech pathology that it's sort of like one degree that will get you very far in life so when you started on your path is there anybody who either inspired you or that you want to thank for sort of pushing you in this direction yeah I was thinking a lot about this question because I think the people that keep me motivated every day are my students and my great team of colleagues that I have I did have one really awesome deaf professor in college who really encouraged me because at the beginning of my deaf education I was a hearing person and I didn't sign and she was a deaf person and didn't speak so we had to figure out how to communicate with each other and she would always encourage me to keep trying figure out a way to get me to understand of what you're saying and I kind of always carry that with me just because I know that there's going to be challenging students or problems that I won't know the answer to but I know that you know with my team and with my students if I just keep going you know I will be able to eventually figure out at least a way to satisfy my search you know so I completely agree. She agrees with me. Was that the third or the fourth time you said that. I'll let you go first and then I'll agree with you. I think my students inspire me and even if there's a difficulty that difficulty inspires me to figure out how to work through it and how to help a student and the colleagues that I work with are hands down the best in the world. I learn from them every day and I rely on them and I'm very appreciative when they rely on me and that kind of makes up my world on a day to day basis. Cool so now supposing I wanted to become a speech pathologist. You can, you should. What sort of training would I need? How would I go about becoming? Well you need a master's degree in communication disorders and I happen to have gotten my undergraduate in communication disorders and then my graduate degree in communication disorders but you can have an undergraduate in almost anything and then get a master's in speech pathology which is communication disorders. Cool do you agree? I completely agree. Well is there anything else that you want to make sure people know about speech pathology? I think it's a great profession. Yeah I think it's a wonderful profession I think being an occupational therapist and a physical therapist are equally noble and great professions and those professions also lend themselves to working pediatrics or geriatrics or in an outpatient therapy setting and I think I think any student today should be mindful and interested in any one of those areas. I guess we should throw social work in there. For sure I mean it's all a team like we need each other I think it's just really important for each piece and each lens to have a voice in the conversation for the student or the patient that we're working with because everybody has their unique skill set and if a social worker recommends something that I didn't even think of I'm so grateful that they were at the table with me or in that conversation with me. So I think a lot I think people I would hope that young people would consider you know OTPT or speech or social work as you know an area to consider because of the opportunities you have in that career. And I completely agree. We completely agree. Well thank you for joining me on Voices of New England. I'm Sin. We'll see you next time.