lexical_gap

Are students in session 180 days or is the entire school year for staff 180 days? There will likely be days (if not a full week) before students arrive where you are working full time doing things like: setting up your room, reading IEPs, consulting with teachers about those students, etc. Likewise at the end of the year, many districts have staff reporting for a few days after the students' last day to clean rooms, finish report cards/progress notes, etc. There will also be hours outside of your regular work hours, such as back-to-school night, parent-teacher conferences, etc. Once you get hired, the actual contract times might be more than 7 hours. At my school, staff are required to be at work for 8 hours (students are there for just under 7 hours). In that extra hour, I am conferencing with teachers, planning therapy, billing, analyzing assessment data, etc. Depending on your principal, he/she may allow you to schedule IEP meetings before or after school based on the needs of your students' families; which would extend your work day and add more hours. There may be days where you choose to stay late to finish writing that IEP that is due the next day. I wouldn't be too worried about not meeting 1260 hours in a school. There are built-in buffers within the school calendar to make up some of those hours if you are sick. One day here, one day there won't make a big difference.

Keep in mind the age of the clients and the kind of work you'll be doing with each. When I did my student rotation with adult clients, most of my clients were over the age of 40. As a man who looks very young despite being in my 30s, I decided to wear a shirt and tie for those sessions to "dress up" and be taken more seriously. Now that I'm employed in a school working with preschoolers through 8th graders, I go for comfort and function over "looking nice". That's not to say I dress like a slob, but a t-shirt with the school logo on it is not out of the question. I have since ditched the necktie as it is a choking hazard. 3 year olds on the spectrum can have very strong grip strength and like to grab at things hanging around the neck. I also often find myself on the floor playing with toys one session, going outside chasing kids as they try to escape the playground the next, followed by leading a whole-class push-in session for middle schoolers all in the span of 90 minutes. So, I swapped out the dress slacks for durable khaki-material pants that will stand up to multiple washings. (Be careful with sidewalk chalk and kids who like to give hugs! Those white pants will become rainbow-colored in a heartbeat!) My school has 4 floors and a policy that I must escort each student to and from therapy, regardless of age, so out went the dress shoes and in came the solid black sneakers. Currently, I am working summer school in a building without air-conditioning. Last week, temperatures were in the mid-90s for three straight days. By 10 am, I looked like I had ridden Splash Mountain a dozen times in a row. After the first day in that heat, I decided to put on a pair of nice, knee-length, khaki-material shorts. It may not be the most professional look, but I can't be effective at my job if I am on the verge of passing out from heat exhaustion. As for make-up, I have a colleague who wears bold lipsticks. Not because of fashion choice, but because it makes her lips stand out when she models speech sounds. She has a few kiddos on her caseload with visual impairment who benefit from high contrast and the colors she chooses help provide that contrast. (Nothing too outrageous like lime green; but she's done a dark maroon or sometimes a brighter red.) She has the data to show that her kids make progress, so if administration ever came down on her, she can pull out her therapy notes and the kids' IEP that says, "Due to visual impairment, X needs high contrast visual input". Others, keep it natural or no make-up at all. This is my very long way of saying what's considered "professional dress" will vary depending on your facility, your clients (and their ages), the kind of work you do with them, the activities you use, and the weather. Take cues from the way others in your facilities dress (your classmates and your professors).

For one of my externship sites, my supervisor and I developed a strong bond. I gifted her with some (relatively) inexpensive but much needed therapy materials. Things like a penlight with batteries for oral mech exams and a favorite therapy game that had broken/many missing pieces. For me, I wanted to give something useful, meaningful, and SLP-related.

I would also look at your personal essays and really think about why you want to be an SLP. What is it that you are hoping to gain by joining the profession? What qualities and skills do you have to offer the profession? Why do you want to attend that specific school for grad school? Faculty members on these admission committees read 50-100+ essays. Make sure yours stands out. Additionally, review the essay prompts. Did you answer the questions asked (and all parts of the questions)? One of the schools where I applied asked specifically for experience with diverse learners from a variety of cultures, languages, socio-economic statuses, and disabilities. I made sure I devoted a paragraph to each of those demographics. Did you follow guidelines for margins, fonts, font size, word count, and number of pages? The admissions committees want to hear your story of becoming an SLP and how they fit into that story. So tell a story. Make sure your story is more than, "I want to be an SLP so I can help people." Teachers help people. Nurses and doctors help people. OTs and PTs help people. Hairdressers help people. Massage therapists help people. Firefighters and police officers help people. What is it that you can get out of being an SLP that you can get in any other profession? Why is this career path the right one for you? How will attending school X help you reach that goal (other than the fact that they'll be the one granting your degree)? Maybe you respond positively to their philosophy behind therapy. Maybe they have an amazing professor whose research interests align with yours. Maybe they have a specialty or certification that is only available at that school. If you are able to give solid answers to all of these questions, you should be able to write a fantastic essay. Finally, after you've written it, proofread it. Have others proofread it. Then proofread it again. Nothing gets you in the reject pile faster than misspelling your own name, the school's name (or using the wrong school name), and/or a ton of typos. Make sure your essays are neat in presentation and look professional. One professor I met told a story of a prospective student who had hand-written his/her essay in pencil on looseleaf paper that also had food stains on it. I am pretty sure that student was not admitted.

I was a substitute teacher as well. When I wrote my statement, I high lighted specific students with complex communication needs and what I did as a substitute teacher to help them.

I'm a speech-language pathologist working in the schools. Out in the field, a base knowledge of statistics (bell curve, percentile ranks, standard scores, standard deviations) has helped me interpret and understand test results. Being able to interpret and explain the test findings in parent- and teacher-friendly language is something I do every week. It has also made me critical of other assessments in other fields and the scores they report. For example, one of the academic tests my district uses reports that students testing in the 70th percentile are "below target" for certain academic skills.

In my state, your initial teacher license is valid only for 5 years. After that five years, you have to have met certain requirements for a professional teacher license or, in some cases, apply for an extension of an additional 5 years. Other cases, if you haven't met the requirements for a professional teacher license within your first five years, that's it. This might be what this co-worker meant by "revoked" after 5 years.

Keep in mind, that a lot of the local students would likely be doing their externships at those same facilities. Here in southeastern Wisconsin, we have two SLP grad programs in the city itself. There is another university about about an hour from the city that also has an SLP grad program. So, effectively, we have three universities looking to place students 50+ students each year for medical externships. True, we have several large hospital facilities in the area, but not all of them take students for externships. In the greater Chicago area, with just a quick internet search, I counted at least 4 SLP grad programs with over 150 students needing placements.

I took 13 credits my first semester. Other than research methods, most follow this schedule for their first semester. Each credit corresponds roughly to 1-1.5 hours: Voice (2 cr) Adult Neurogenic DIsorders (3 cr) Clinical Processes (1 cr) Research Methods (3 cr) [Some students choose to take this over the summer. I wrote a thesis and opted to take it my 1st semester for that reason.] School Age Language (2 cr) [some of my classmates took a class in Birth-3 instead.] On-Campus Clinic (2 cr) You can expect 2-3 hours per week of therapy time (actual time with the client). The rest of the time is spent reviewing videos, reviewing past reports, therapy planning, analyzing data, writing reports, working on assignments, doing observations, etc. Your actual timeslots for clinic varies based on your supervisor's schedule, your schedule, your client's schedule, availability of therapy rooms, etc. I had some clients that had sessions at 8:00 am. I also had clients that couldn't make it until 3 pm. Some of my classmates also took classes for DPI certification in conjunction with these courses. Others also had courses that weren't offered in their undergrad that they needed to patch into their graduate coursework. In the 2nd year, some students also choose an independent study or an extra clinical experience in an area of interest that they couldn't fit in earlier. The department does their best to try and customize your schedule to your interests and future career goals as much as possible.

Jabba, the out of state tuition numbers that you have are the same ones posted on the Bursar's office page from UWM's website tuition. In-state tuition is significantly less than the out-of-state cost. If I remember correctly, I averaged about $7,500-$8,000 (fees included) per semester in the fall/spring, and about $4,000-$5,000 for summer.

I graduated from UWM. The program starts in the fall and runs for two full calendar years. If you start in Fall 2017, you would expect to graduate August 2019, assuming you complete the program in 6 semesters.

I considered the following factors (in roughly this order): 1) Location and clinical opportunities (both on campus and off): Most of us go into this profession to become clinicians. Will you have the clinical opportunities that you are looking to have by going to that school? 2) Cost: Let's be honest, it's a factor for most of us. Even if accepted to Dream School A that is out of state, will you be able to afford the cost of attending? Will you get a comparable education for a fraction of the cost at school B? 3) Feel of the city: If I was going to live there for 2 years, I wanted to feel safe and "at home". I was accepted to a school that has a good reputation, but I couldn't picture myself living there for any length of time. I just didn't have a good feeling about the city. 3) Faculty Research / Reputation: I was interested in research, but had no idea what I wanted to research.

dcslp: I am in Wisconsin and did my post-bacc at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

My post-bacc took 4 semesters of part-time school based on the way the local university sequenced their courses.

In my program, there were 3-4 grad students in their 40s who were career changers. There were another 3-4 of us in our 30s who were career changers and another 7 who were in their mid-late 20s as career changers. I did a post-bacc to improve my overall GPA and familiarize with myself with the field before applying. I could've applied right away because I had elementary education and linguistics, but I would've had to make up all the pre-requisites anyway. Why pay graduate tuition to make up undergraduate level courses? Without a strong showing in the leveling coursework, the relationships I built with the professors there, and the knowledge I gained about the field, I highly doubt I would've gotten into graduate school. Even if I had, I would've been so overwhelmed and felt even more out of my league. As for math, if you take leveling courses (including statistics), could you fit in a math course into your schedule to help you? Or at the very least, audit a math course?