Episode 184: Students Benefit Working with JSD Speech-Language Pathologists

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. They are experts in communication, evaluating, diagnosing, and treating speech and communication disorders. On this episode of the Supercast, we talk to Jordan School District's speech language pathologists about the important work they do, helping students of all ages who may be experiencing challenges in some aspect of speech or communication. Find out how they are making a huge difference in the lives of students in and outside the classroom.

We're here today at Joel P. Jensen talking with Ryan Sainsbury, who is a speech language pathologist at Joel P. Jensen and Kristin Norris, the speech language pathologist and audiologist coordinator for the District. Thank you very much for taking the time.

Ryan Sainsbury:
Thank you. It's exciting to be here.

Kristin Norris:
Yeah, it's great to talk with you today.

Anthony Godfrey:
So Ryan, let's just talk to you first about being an SLP. That's our first acronym of the show. There might be a lot more. Talk to me about being a speech language pathologist. What does that involve? Because I think a lot of people may not understand exactly what the job entails.

Ryan Sainsbury:
Yeah. definitely I think as far as like being an SLP, it's so like vast and vague, a lot of it that sometimes it's confusing and hard for people to grasp because we can and do do so much. So there's usually like a medical side that we won't really get into where we help people from strokes and different brain injuries recover and things like that. And then we have the school-based side, which we are in right now. And within this side there's lots of things we kind of treat and diagnose. Speech and language disorders and communication disorders that people have. So whether it's because of various diagnoses that they were born with or maybe different delays and things that they have we help them try to learn to communicate and we try to give everybody a voice.

Anthony Godfrey:
And Kristin, tell me about the difference from level to level. I know that we have SLPs working with students of all ages, so what are the different areas of focus at at different ages?

Kristin Norris:
So it's really individualized by the student, but in general we have SLPs that are working in our early intervention program. We have SLPs that are working in our preschool program. And then we have elementary, we have secondary, we even have in our post high program. A lot of times I think people really feel like what we work on is speech sounds, and that is a big part of what we do. And you particularly see that at that elementary level. You see a lot of work on either individual speech sounds, they're what we call phonological processes, which are groups of patterns of speech that students have.

But there's a whole other piece, and that's the language piece. The language piece covers everything from social language to vocabulary to understanding and comprehending tests. It’s tied into phonemic awareness and the skills that they're learning in 1st and 2nd. So there's this tie into literacy and reading. And it just is any way that a student communicates, we can help facilitate if they have a disability in that. As we get into the secondary level, we probably see a lot more of the language piece, really helping them access the classroom and what they need to be successful. And then transitioning as they move into that post high program, what's gonna help 'em be successful is they as they leave our program.

Anthony Godfrey:
So Ryan, tell me what that looks like for you day to day as you're working with a student. What are some of the sorts of things you're working on and doing to help them progress?

Ryan Sainsbury:
At the secondary level, we see a lot of like auditory comprehension. They don't seem to have the structure of language that it takes. Kinda at the structural level and then also at the like syntax level or at the sentence level and also even at the word or semantic level. So these are different levels that we work with every day. So each day we have a caseload that varies with a lot of different things, but it's often helping them trying to figure out how they can access their education better. So maybe it's helping them follow directions because they don't quite understand sequencing. Or maybe we can even break that down further to maybe they don't understand certain clauses and sentences very well, like their brains haven't quite figured out that structure for them to be successful, to follow directions or even to impact like behaviors and different things. So once you realize that language really impacts like every aspect, it's really fun. So we work with the team of gen ed teachers our special ed teachers, even our administration to our psychologists, to everybody to try to figure out how we can help them socially and academically improve and get access to the communication and different things that they need, the skillsets they need to be successful.

Anthony Godfrey:
So there are aspects of communication that we might take for granted if you don't struggle with these sorts of issues.

Ryan Sainsbury:
Yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
But you really have to break things down for students who do have difficulties in these areas.

Kristin Norris:
Yeah, absolutely. One of the easiest ways to maybe look at it as the difference between receptive and expressive language. Receptive is our understanding of language and expressive is how we output that language. We get a lot of kids, especially at the secondary level who may struggle with understanding. What they look like are kids that are maybe off task in the classroom, kids that are maybe hesitant to speak up, kids that are maybe withdrawn. Instead it is that they're not understanding that language processing and need some strategies to do that. And then they can be more successful in accessing their curriculum from that receptive language component.

Anthony Godfrey:
And the receptive language from what you're describing might be frustrating for the person who's expressing and it's not being received.

Kristin Norris:
Absolutely.

Anthony Godfrey:
And the unkind, I don't know, ‘what part of sitting in your chair don't you understand?’ Well, they may not actually understand because they're not processing those instructions in the way that many people would. I can imagine that creates a lot of frustration for everybody. So it's really important to have SLPs in place to help overcome those challenges. Do students sometimes get to secondary not realizing that they've had this problem all along?

Ryan Sainsbury:
Yeah. especially at our school. Usually like mid-year we've had a bunch of initial evals and different things come in because teachers are are beginning to really recognize like, hey, maybe this student has something that's not quite right with their understanding or how they're expressing things. So yeah, throughout the years and throughout the year we get tons of referrals all the time for us to kind of evaluate and to see how we can help support these students. And often it really is like, because they're not understanding, they're confused or some of those behaviors start to manifest themselves.

Anthony Godfrey:
It must be very rewarding to see students make progress and be able to overcome frustrations that allow them to not only engage with teachers in the classroom, but with classmates. To probably make friends more easily once those communicative issues are are overcome.

Kristin Norris:
Yeah, absolutely. Expressive languages is obviously a lot more noticeable. We notice from the very beginning when kids are having a hard time saying something, when they don't have vocabulary. And so those are the kids that we pick up often early in the beginning. Then we find out that there's a receptive language component to that as well. The other piece to that is that social pragmatic language. That is the ability to understand how you're supposed to interact with someone. Sometimes it's called the hidden curriculum. That we know instinctively that when someone says hello to us, we're supposed to say hello back and to carry on a conversation. This would be the next step, we'll ask a question. Well, our kids that struggle with that, they don't know those things instinctively and we have to teach them how to do those skills. Otherwise they get excluded. They get those are the kids that end up getting bullied. Those are the kids that teachers get frustrated with because they just seem like they're not doing what they're supposed to, but it's really a fact that they don't understand.

Ryan Sainsbury:
And I think like a real beautiful piece is when we're able to kind of see inside the mind and these language skills that they do have and we're able to convey that to a parent. And you see their eyes light up because they're like, ‘oh that makes so much sense, like what you're telling me,’ right. Like at home or at different functions and things like that. Also when you tell their teachers and their teachers go, ‘oh that makes so much sense. Like, I'm glad you told me that because I thought I was just being impatient.’ And I was like, ‘well yeah’. So we advocate for them to be a little bit more patient but we also give them skills and strategies to use with these students in the classroom. So it's almost like, I dunno, it's like a win-win. Our job is the best because I don't think we can really lose cause we can like help so much. We get to help kids and we need to help others help kids and it helps them in return. So, I don't know. It's really cool.

Anthony Godfrey:
And I like the way you described that. You're not just giving kids skills, you're giving parents skills. And you're giving teachers skills so that we can more effectively connect with students who may struggle with these issues. So is there an occupational hazard a little bit that when you're out in the public listening to people speak, maybe even as you're listening to me interview you, that you're thinking, ‘oh wait a second. I could touch that up a little bit and I could help 'em with with this speech issue.’ I mean I assume you hear that everywhere you go.

Ryan Sainsbury:
Yes. It's a blessing and a curse sometimes. We literally have to turn that side of our brain off so that we can function in our world without going crazy with all the speech and language things that we hear. Kristin Norris:
I have definitely been places and there are times that I don't wanna overstep my bounds, but I want to be like, ‘Ooh, I hope that they've talked to their SLP at the school. I hope that that child is is is being seen.’ I've gotten better at it over the years. Trying to disassociate. But I do have a sign above my desk that says, ‘Keep talking. I'm diagnosing you.’

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, well that's good. Always diagnosing, always looking for a way to help.

Stay with us. When we come back, how do you know if your child may need the services of a speech language pathologist? We'll tell you after the break.

Break:
Hello, I'm Sandy Riesgraf, Director of Communications for Jordan School District, and we want to invite you to connect with us. So many exciting things are happening in your child's school, your neighbor's school, in every school here, every day. Don't miss out on following the fun or simply staying informed when there's important information we need to share. Join us at jordandistrict.org, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram@jordandistrict. We can't wait to connect.

Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about some of the expressive issues that you might experience, that parents might watch for. Some of the more obvious things that parents might notice that would signal that involving an SLP is going to be helpful.

Kristin Norris:
Well, primarily one of the easiest things is gonna be like a speech sound disorder. If a child is struggling with certain sounds that they should have. Particularly if there's frustration involved in that. They're not able to communicate what they want to, and because of that frustration, we're seeing behaviors. They're throwing a temper tantrum when those little kids. Hopefully our middle school kids aren't throwing temper tantrums, but sometimes still there. Yeah, sometimes they are right? They're expressing their frustration because they can't communicate. They can't get out what they wanna say. So from the very beginning, that's something that parents can recognize. If you find that you're having to have them repeat things over and over and over before they can understand things. You know, that's a good, that's a good thing and a sign to look at for for parents. If they seem to be struggling with some of those literacy concepts, that would be another thing. You know, if they're really struggling, like they've gone over phonemic awareness over and over and again and they just can't seem to get it, then maybe we need to do something a little more in depth and look at some of those components as well.

Ryan Sainsbury:
And so a lot of my background was actually in like narrative structure or stories. And so when you have a student or a child who's developing and you have that look on your face as a parent as they're explaining something to you like uhhuh, uhhuh, uhhuh, and it never quite gets to a point. Or the sequence or the events don't quite make sense. Basically when you're learning and you're developing, we learn from stories. So if you look at grade level elementary, preschool, like we learn from stories, that's how we learn. And then we get into like informational texts and different things that are a little bit more difficult once we hit the secondary level. So that change, that shift of structure is really hard for a lot of people. But those early markers, like Kristin had said about like the who, where, why, what questions when they're telling a story or just them being able to express a story, you'll be able to tell pretty quickly whether it makes sense or they're getting in the right direction or if it's just a total jumble and you're trying to figure it out.

Kristin Norris:
Parents really rely on their kids coming home and being able to tell them what they do in a day. Or if something happened on the playground, them being able to come in and tell the teacher this is what happened. For our kids that have communication disorders, they don't have the skill and the structure to do that. And so they're the ones who then sometimes get left out. They don't know what's going on, they can't explain what happened at recess. Maybe they get blamed for what happened at recess because they weren't able to explain it.

Anthony Godfrey:
They can't really advocate for themselves sometimes.

Kristin Norris:
Yeah. Because they lack that narrative structure to just retell a simple event and what happened in there. And to understand the components why this happened. You know, I was able to react this way and therefore somebody reacted back to me this way. That perspective taking is, is really difficult as well.

Anthony Godfrey:
So what are some of the things that parents ought to watch for that might be an indication that there are expressive concerns? You've talked about that a little bit. Are there other things that you tell parents to watch for?

Ryan Sainsbury:
You're always gonna have, part of it will be like some of the grammatical markers and morphines that we use. So even things like past tense verbs or their sentence structure. But it varies really through age. And so that's why it's really important to, I dunno, like know SLPs. I think it's the same for Kristen, like as soon as you find out that someone in your family or your neighbor is an SLP you just get questions all day from parents who have kids who are developing.

Anthony Godfrey:
Not quite like being a mechanic, but kind of similar to that.

Ryan Sainsbury:
Similar, yeah, exactly. Very, very similar. And so you get questions all day and so there is like grade levels or kind of like age level markers that help. And so once you kind of realize like, oh, your students should be here or expressing themselves in this way and they're kind of missing these skills, then that's when we can come in and kind of fill those gaps.

Anthony Godfrey:
So the receptive issues, let's talk about that. Like you said, those are gonna be more difficult to detect unless you're looking at a pattern over time. So what would parents look for to so that they could identify that perhaps there there's an issue with their child?

Ryan Sainsbury:
Yeah, so I'm speaking more for like the secondary level because that's kind of my more my expertise. But in particular we look at just following simple directions and whether they're able to sequence things, put events in order or understand the order of events. Even just are they able to retain information that you've given them? Are they able to summarize things that you've given them and then say, ‘okay, can you tell that back to me? Like the key points that you need to do.’ Or even little things like if you're watching a TV show you say, ‘Hey, can you summarize like the main events or what's been going on?’ So a lot of those types of things are really critical for our brain to kind of store information. And so if you ask those types of tasks and they're unable to do it, then you can kind of tell they might not have the pattern for those things to kind of file into their correct order to be easily accessed as well. So it kind of goes both ways as far as at the secondary level. But I'd say mostly you definitely get it with the kids who are not paying attention and are often the problems. It's because are they not paying attention or they literally not quite get the language component. So that's where it gets trickier, I guess.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, sure.

Kristin Norris:
One of the things that we sometimes have to do as we're teasing out information with kids is figure out that can't do versus won't do. You know, is this because they don't know how to do it or is this because they've chosen not to do it? And some of those kids can really look like the won't do and then we have to tease out that information and figure out the can't do.

Ryan Sainsbury:
And in particular at a school like Joel P. Jensen, that I love cause I'm actually a bilingual speech therapist or speech language pathologist, and so I get to kind of hone in on is it a like a disorder of language or is it a language difference? And they don't quite have the language because we have many of our students who speak Spanish at home. But they have to now speak English totally different at school, right? So kind of in that, we have to find out whether it's an actual disorder or is it just a difference and they just need to be taught that again.

Anthony Godfrey:
So you're a bit of a speech dual language pathologist.

Ryan Sainsbury:
That's exactly right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I was working on a title, so that's right.

Kristin Norris:
At a really young age some of those things I think you would look for in kids starts with really basic information. You know, kids develop one word to start with and then they start to put words together and then that grows into longer sentences and more complex structures. If you're asking them to point to something and we can't build the vocabulary through pointing, you know, that would be something that would be a concern. You know, if you ask them to point to the dog and they point to something else, even though you've gone over it and over and over again, that would be a red flag at the beginning. If you're asking them to go pick up their shoe and the shoe is right in front of him and they don't know what you're asking him. So this just starts kind of with that basic kind of understanding of when I give them very basic tasks to do, are they understanding what I'm saying? So that would be kind of a starting point for maybe concerns with parents.

Anthony Godfrey:
I can think of all kinds of situations where it would be nice for a teacher or a parent or even a friend to understand that, hey, there may just be a communication issue at play here. What would you say to parents who listening to this who are maybe worried about their child and would like to get some help for them? What's the first step that they take to do that?

Kristin Norris:
So if they have specific reasons, they can talk and get a referral going and get some specific testing. But if they just wanna have a conversation they can reach out to the Child Development Center if their kids are five years or younger. Or they can reach out to the SLP at their school and just say, ‘Hey, these are some of the things that I'm having a concern with. I'm seeing this. What do you think? Do you think this is something I could be concerned? Are there things I can try?’ And have a conversation with their teachers as well. Their teachers spend a lot of time with them and start to open up and start to really kind of identify what they're struggling with. And then we can decide whether we wanna go down the road and do some more in-depth testing and figure out what those concerns really might be and how we can help them.

Anthony Godfrey:
Now we have how many SLPs in the district?

Kristin Norris:
We have over 120 SLPs in the district in our early intervention preschool and elementary and secondary schools.

Anthony Godfrey:
That is a lot of experts. And we also have some audiologists.

Kristin Norris:
We do.

Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about the audiologists.

Kristin Norris:
So we have three full-time and one part-time audiologist in Jordan School District, which we're really lucky to have. Not everybody has that much staff. We actually have an audiology booth that's housed at Kari Sue Hamilton. So they can do hearing screenings throughout the district, but they can also do more in-depth evaluations as well. So they are responsible for kind of helping track our kids and do those hearing screenings. But then they are then a resource to us when we're looking at kids who have ongoing hearing loss. They can help track them, they can help talk to and educate teachers. They can help facilitate things like hearing aids and other devices that may be needed for those students. And then we collaborate with them as SLPs on some of those students as well with what they might need because of those hearing losses.

Anthony Godfrey:
And the way you've described it, it's almost as if you can literally see a light going on inside of their head that they are getting it. That there's a connection and suddenly they're able to do something they couldn't do before and it connects them to the broader world and it makes them a part of it.

Kristin Norris:
Absolutely.

Anthony Godfrey:
And that's wonderful that you're able to do that for our students.

Ryan Sainsbury:
Yeah. and then if I may add, I think a lot of times, like for example just at this school I see kids with speech fluency disorders or what we call like a stutter. I see students on the autism spectrum who need help with social skills. I see other students who need auditory comprehension. They need to figure out how to understand directions better. I see students with severe behavior problems who we need to really help and use language to help them understand and do things better. And that's just like a little bit. I also still see students who have articulation errors and just need to overcome some of these things that have been hard for them their whole lives. And maybe now their confidence has been kind of shaken a little bit because they're older now and they talk different than everybody else.

So to help all these different things, like it's so vague and vast that it can be intimidating at times, but there's nothing more rewarding or I guess more fun than staying current so that you can have the best evidence-based practice so that you can always be helping each student that you come across because the variety is huge, which I like crave. I can't go to work and have like the same thing every day, no way I would go. I would go nuts. So to have the variety, but also to say like the science part is really important. Cause we want our practices to be evidence-based so that we're giving these students the best of what's available.

Anthony Godfrey:
So you get to work with students one-on-one or mostly in small groups and you get to make those connections. And like you said earlier, you get to do something for them that no one else has been able to do. So that's got to be very rewarding.

Kristin Norris:
Yeah, It's often, you've heard it said that the voice is a window to the soul. We have a chance to help kids to actually have that voice. To make a connection with their peers, with their parents, with their friends, with their teachers in a way that maybe they wouldn't be able to do otherwise. And we use communication for everything. Everything. Non-Verbal, verbal communication, whatever we do, written communication. It's part of everything we do.

Anthony Godfrey:
What a great program. Thank you very much for taking the time and for everything you do to help our students.

Ryan Sainsbury:
Thank you.

Anthony Godfrey:
Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you'll do today. We'll see you out there.