I am licensed in Mass and you have to hold a degree in the field in order to receive licensure. There is no other way around it. If you’d like to gain experience as an SLPA, you should try to work in a special ed. classroom as a paraprofessional. You will not be able to practice as an SLPA, but you will gain tons of experience with a variety of different levels of communication and can most likely observe speech therapy sessions.