Classroom Management Interview (Module III)

Happy Monday everybody! This classroom management interview is going to be a tad different than the typical interview intended for the assignment. My interviewee is Suzan Hasan-Perez, an independent Speech Language Pathologist and co-founder of S&Y Speech Therapy. She works in a variety of settings, including schools, nursing homes, early intervention and home health. Today we sat down and had a talk about her experience working in the school setting. To avoid any confusion, I would like to mention that all of my questions are prefixed with "J:" and all of her answers are prefixed with "S:". Happy reading!

J: What are your main goals and focus, as a speech pathologist

S: My goals are to provide competent, effective, and reliable speech therapy services in order to help my client in the academic setting achieve functional academic goals and to help them utilize age appropriate speech and communication skills in the general and special education setting.

J: Do you only see children who have IEPs or are there exceptions?

Students who receive speech therapy services must have an IEP, even if they are not in a special education setting as the laws require we do so. We also see students without IEP’s through interventions such as MTSS/RTI. These students are assessed over a period of 6-8 weeks with data collected to help us determine if a speech/language assessment is warranted if progress is not made. 

J: Do you assign homework to the students you see?

S: It is standard to assign speech homework to our students or to encourage them to use their good speech sounds/skills during interactions with teachers, friends, peers and family members.

J: What is a common issue that comes up in class?

S: Our group sizes can be large with students having different goals and needs and not enough time to address their goals in such short periods of time with expectations that the student will master several goals in a short period of time.

J: Do the students’ homeroom teachers usually cooperate with you?

      S: Yes they do. Students are on a schedule and are pulled out of the classroom in order to receive their speech minutes as mandated by their IEP. 

 J: How do you deal with a student that does not want to cooperate?

 S: I normally will calmly talk to the student, offer him/her options as to how they want to participate in the session and discuss any possible issues with their teacher in order to help problem solve and encourage the student to attend their session with little to no issues. A reward system is also implemented to help encourage the student to participate. 

J: What have you learned about students’ behavior over your years of teaching? Have you noticed recurring patterns, or have you seen dynamic changes?

S: I noticed that when a student acts out, normally the behaviors are due to avoidance and finding the sessions to be either hard, easy, boring or due to not wanting to leave their homeroom class. I have noticed recurring patterns of students with learning disabilities with co-occurring behaviors due to many reasons. At times I may figure out why a student is acting out and refusing to participate, and at times I may not. I have also noticed students who love to participate in speech and normally will see me in the halls and ask me when I will come to pick them up or why I did not pick them up when I get called into meetings or other educational responsibilities. For the most part, my students are cooperative and enjoy being pulled from their classroom to receive speech and language sessions. I will get positive feedback from classroom teachers telling me how much of a difference they have seen since their student started receiving speech therapy services or any new skills the student acquired during the time frame I have addressed their speech and communication skills.

    

     If you are in need of speech therapy services, feel free to reach out to S&Y Speech Therapy at slp.suzan@gmail.com