What's your volunteer experience?

[hopefulspeechie16]

Just want to get some ideas for speech/audiology related activities. I currently volunteer at my local hospital's centre for deaf infants. 

[DeafAudi]

That's awesome! I volunteer at a total communication preschool program for Deaf and hard of hearing children and children otherwise affected by hearing loss (CODA, etc).

Edited February 22, 2014 by DeafAudi

[SLPamy]

Wow, that's so awesome! I volunteered at a special recreation center for people of all ages with disabilities, and now I currently work there. I also volunteered a lot in bilingual kindergarten classrooms. Now that I have more time I'd like to volunteer a bit more so I'll be watching this thread for ideas!

[ballerina18]

I don't have as much volunteer experience as I would like. However, I spent 10 hours a week for a semester volunteering with a therapy department in my local hospital. During that time I volunteered with a speech therapist who specialized in voice therapy. I was fortunate to observe therapy sessions including patients of all ages. My time there really helped me to recognize the importance of this field. This experience was particularly beneficial to me because I always thought I would only want to work with children, but after seeing patients who suffered from strokes I realized that adults need speech therapy just as much as the little ones do!

 

After that I volunteered with a different speech therapist. Together we started a feeding group for children who had various aversions to food and difficulty swallowing. I spent a semester working one on one with children who struggled with textures and dealing with feeding tubes. I cherish that time SO MUCH! It's what REALLY started my desire to pursue a grad program that focuses on dysphagia.

 

My only other volunteer experience was in a daycare, an elementary school, and a montessori school. Right now I am not volunteering at all. I hope to start volunteering with a school therapist soon, but for now I am just working as a bartender. Bleh! lol

 

Good luck to everyone this application cycle!

[combustiblecake]

Hi everyone!

 

I have research experience from two separate labs, and I'm getting ready for writing up and presenting my own research next year. I also volunteered as an English tutor for international students and a Spanish facilitator for college students at my school. With children, I have done Spanish/Portuguese/English reading time at local libraries and I'm volunteering as a teaching assistant at a primary school for Spanish (it's part of an applied-research program for early second language acquisition). Four other future projects I'm hoping to do is volunteering at Sioux YMCA, at an auditory school, an afterschool program to tutor Spanish-speaking immigrants, and after college - TAPIF (finally putting my French to some use!). 

 

I'm too excited for my volunteering - I hope they actually mean something for my application :/ I'm very interested in working with a culturally diverse population. 

[JNP92]

Hi everyone,

This past summer I shadowed a speech pathologist in a private clinic practice working with kids ages 2-11.  It was awesome and I got to work about 8 hours a week for 10 weeks.  I was taught how to program apps on the ipad as well as techniques how to work with children with different delays/disorders of speech.  I also got to shadow an SLP at a rehabilitation hospital and saw swallowing evaluations, as well as see how trachs work and how they are implanted.  It was very interesting!  I also recently started working with autistic children doing ABA therapy.  I'm hoping all of my background knowledge and skills I have learned will help my get into graduate school! 

[autismadvocate]

I do a LOT of volunteering. As the username suggests, it's pretty much straight autism-related. My autism website, while not traditional volunteering, is run solely on my time and I get no compensation, so I'd call that volunteering. Plus my sister and I go around educating parents about autism and I'm making a penpal program for kids on the spectrum and their siblings to bond through.

 

Recently my volunteering has been making me kind of depressed. Like, either I need to come up with a new worldview or pull back a little and redefine myself a bit more outside of the advocacy circles, because wow. Let's just say autismland can be a pretty depressing and lonely place to be, not because of the autistic people, who are generally awesome, but because of depressing and seriously hard to counter myths and societal narratives about them. It's like a never ending fire - every time I manage to put one out, another one springs up. For a while you feel great - you're fighting fires, after all, and that's very rewarding - but after a while of doing that, it gets exhausting and saddening, because while I'm a 'fire fighter' by choice, I know that the autistic people these narratives/myths are about are stuck in that firey room no matter what, and the only way they can escape it is if the fire is put out. Well, and also help teaching them how to fight fires themselves, too, which I do, but it's still not enough... Anyways, I just extended that metaphor way too far, but know that it's tough sometimes and that was my point, and sorry for complaining...

[combustiblecake]

Yesterday, in my Speech & Hearing Science course there was a guest lecturer talking about autism, and I thought of you, autismadvocate She broke down several myths people tend to have about autistic people and recommended readings I'm actually looking into. I'm looking into this one: http://www.amazon.com/The-Reason-Jump-Thirteen-Year-Old-Autism/dp/0812994868 which is about a Japanese autistic boy.

 

Sticking to the forum topic, I actually never thought I could go back to my home country for vacation and volunteer at El Hospital del Niño and work with children with all kinds of disabilities. 

[wait_a_moment]

I volunteered for about a year helping teach English to refugees. I am an SLPA, so I did 150 hours of SLPA practicum (bilingual Spanish/English) last spring in a special needs preschool, in addition to having done multiple observations of various SLPs. I also volunteered every Saturday for a summer with a local pediatric clinic assisting with a language group. I've been thinking about looking for more volunteer opportunities. In fact, one thing I'm interested in getting some volunteer experience in is something having to do with autism.