After my therapy session today, I was suddenly inspired to start a blog about my journey as a Speech Therapist. Well, this far as a speech therapy student. (this first post is going to be a long one....... :) )
I'm new to the whole blogging thing, so this is going to be a new experience for me.
I am currently a final year student in Speech-Language Therapy, at the University of Pretoria. I had a Therapy session this afternoon with a little boy who was diagnosed with higher functioning Autism at the age of 4 (last year). He was unable to speak even 30 words when he was diagnosed, and since he started speech therapy to present, his vocabulary has increased to more than 300 words.
As you can expect from a higher functioning Autistic child, his mind is constantly racing, and he is very busy. He has difficulty concentrating, and refuses to listen to you if he is not interested. So my first therapy session with him three weeks ago, I learned this very big lesson. I had planned to do specific activities with him, which turned out to be catastrophic. I couldn't get anything into, or out of him. So I went home and did some very deep thinking. I now have a theme for each week, based on an Activity I can use as an educational experience. Today we made a butterfly by painting our hands, and using the hand prints on paper to create the butterfly. My session was a success, and I got this sudden inspiration to write about how I have grown as a speech therapist.
During my first year at varsity, I was a mess, and my studies were a mess. I had 23 modules for the year, all of them theoretical modules. Coming into this from having only practical subjects at school was a major change for me. I walked around on campus scared to look anyone in the eye, because they would know I was a first year student (I wanted to look big). I would sit in class, and try my best not to look stressed about work, and studies, etc. My lecturers would reference books and authors left, right and center throughout each lesson, which would astonish me profusely. How is it even possible to remember each author of every book you used??? Needless to say, I didn't think I was going to make it through my first year. I had moved away from home, so I had no support system here with me, and I was in tears every day. But, I made it through the year, with not even a supplementary exam.
Second year came, and I was excited not to be a newling anymore. I had some background, and could start calling myself a therapist, or "teacher", as the children called us. This year was my year of Articulation and Developmental Phonological Processes (DPD) therapy. I was excited at first, because I am actually applying what I have studied, even though I can still not name any books or authors off the top of my head. Things were still new, and I knew hardly anything. My very first client was a 6 year old girl, with DPD and Articulation errors. We managed to help her within 8 months of therapy, and she was our first success. (When I talk about "us", I'm referring to my co-therapist student friend, Nicole.) So second year went by, and still I felt overwhelmed and scared. I wasn't even sure I was studying the right thing.
Once third year came, I started gaining more confidence in myself, and my therapeutic abilities. Third year was language and language learning Therapy. No, not the best type of therapy that you can give, but a very important type of therapy to be able to administer. 90% of CHILDREN that you will see for therapy have some sort of language component, hence you will have to incorporate it into your sessions. I must say though, I'm quite disgusted with how we were supervisod during this year. Language therapy includes in-depth language training, such as use of all parts of speech, sentence construction, vocabulary expansion, explanation and understanding of concepts, etc. Where we were only taught that we had to do receptive and expressive vocabulary expansion and understanding. Not once were we told that we had to incorporate things like prepositions, pronouns, participles, sentence structure, deminutives, etc. Nothing!! So I spent a year teaching children new words. BORING!!!
This year, my fourth year, has brought a new light and perspective to my way of thinking. I have learnt more during these first 3 months of the year, than in the last 3 years of my studying career. We are now supposed to give 6 different types of therapy, most of which I have heard, or written about in my first and second years. We are now giving Early Communication Intervention (ECI), Aural Rehab, Voice, Complex Language, Neuro and Dysfluency therapy. I am able to reference authors and books off the top of my head, and I actually speak in the Speech-Therapy lingo (which I never thought I would be able to do). Things come naturally to me now, ideas come naturally, therapy techniques come without much thought. I will walk into a session, and have it go completely opposite to what I planned for, and still have success, because I am able to improvise.
So this first post doesn't really have any stories, or experiences in, but from now on I will blog about my experiences, ideas and my journey as a speech therapist. Make it my own little hobby and reflection about how I am experiencing my career and journey as an up and coming speech therapist. :)
Xxx
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