 I would like to welcome everyone to the webinar A Day in the Life of a School-Based SLP. I am Sheila Cropp, the Speech Language Coordinator for ESU-8. And I would like to welcome you all to speech. Being a speech language pathologist can be challenging, but also very rewarding. You're able to work with children who have a variety of communicative needs. The job of an SLP is never boring. You never know what you may encounter from day to day. Let's take a look at what it takes to become an SLP. As an undergraduate, a speech language pathologist will receive their bachelor's degree from an accredited university in either speech pathology or communication disorders. There are currently three universities in the state of Nebraska that provide training for those interested in communication disorders. During the senior year of undergraduate work, you will apply to graduate school so you can work on earning your master's degree. During graduate school, you will receive experience working with students in both the clinical and school settings. Following graduation, you will spend the next year completing your clinical fellowship year under the supervision of an experienced SLP. With the successful completion of your clinical fellowship year, your next step is to press the practice exam. That in turn will let you earn your certificate of clinical competence. That brings us to starting out on the job. Being a school-based SLP means you can work in a variety of settings, in the home, preschool, public schools, or parochial schools. During a typical day, a speech pathologist may assess a student to determine if he or she needs speech therapy, work with her students on a variety of goals, either individually or in groups, or provide services in the classroom. There are many reasons to become an SLP. These can include the fact that you get to work with a diverse group of students, all with different needs. This part of the job can be challenging, but it's never boring. We work on many areas in speech therapy. One of these is language. Here we are working with children to help them be able to communicate their wants and needs, be able to talk and sentences, help them with their grammar and vocabulary. In articulation, we are helping students work on producing sound, their sounds, which will help them with their intelligibility. With voice therapy, we're helping to reduce hoarseness and improve vocal quality. Influencies therapy, we're there to help them reduce their disfluencies and teach them strategies that they can use to help control their disfluencies. We also work on social language. This time they are working on greetings, making appropriate conversation and comments and turn taking. With augmentative communication, we're helping a student learn how to communicate using a communication device or picture communication symbols. And last but not least, sign language. Another reason to be an SLP is that your learning never ends. Speech pathology is always changing and new interventions and strategies are being developed. We try to keep current by reading journals, books, attending conferences, webinars, workshops and end services. Another good reason to be an SLP is you get to use your creativity. No two students are exactly the same. So you use your creativity to keep the therapy interesting and motivating for your students. We're responsible for putting together our own lessons that will meet the needs and interests of our students. You also get the best feeling when a child says his first word or produces a correct sound. Each accomplishment is special and should be celebrated. Some SLPs are lucky enough to stay in their school district for a long period of time so they are able to watch their students grow and make progress over time. They can develop from having no words at all to speaking in complete sentences or go from being unintelligible to being understood by everyone. Another good reason to be an SLP is that you get to work closely with teachers and parents to help our students generalize the skills that they learn with us out into the real world. A really cool part about being an SLP is that we have our own secret writing that only other SLPs can decipher. We use what's called the International Phonetic Alphabet to transcribe sounds that our students either are making or not making. If you're not an SLP, you're probably wondering what this says on the screen. I'm going to give you a hint. It says, you wish you could read this shirt, but you're not a speech language pathologist. And finally, the best reason to be an SLP is that you know that you have impacted a child's life forever. Whether you help that student learn how to make the R sound for the first time, use a communication device so he's able to communicate with his classmates and his family, be able to follow directions at home and in the classroom, write a complete sentence that will impact them in every class that they're in, help them understand social cues and language, or speak with fewer disfluencies. You are helping a child communicate, and those skills will help them throughout their whole lives. Please remember, communication is key.