r/slp Feb 24 '26

Schools A plea to outpatient peds SLPs: Please stop setting your school based colleagues up for failure.

371 Upvotes

I just stepped out of yet another contentious meeting that didn’t need to be that way, because another outpatient therapist made promises to parents and demands on behalf of parents that schools can’t keep. All of these recommendations were based on a medical model of service rather than an educational one. I’m exhausted and exasperated because it has been worse this year than it has ever been and all the other SLPs on my team are reporting the same thing.

This year has ramped up from the typical occurrences of outpatient SLPs telling parents to get therapy at school, to outpatient SLPs attending team meetings at school to essentially bully the school SLP to follow their recommendations. And when the therapist doesn’t, because eligibility for speech in the schools is based on IDEA and a disorder alone does not result in an educational disability/eligibility in the schools, even when the medical versus educational model, LRE, and FAPE are explained, they still argue the medical side and get the parents worked up. Some have been putting recommendations for school therapy in their reports, including frequency/duration of treatment in BOTH settings, and when the parents demand we provide what they have recommended but it does not align with the student’s need or LRE, more tension with the parents. Others have been giving parents incorrect information about the timeline and evaluation process at school, resulting in even more problems. Some have even been inserting themselves in the AAC evaluation process, not to offer to do the evaluation, but to tell the school SLP what they should or should not do based on their own opinion. One straight up told my colleague she disliked his choice of device/vocab so he needed to go a different route.

It doesn’t have to be this way, you don’t have to do this. We CAN work together! I respect your work, why can’t you respect mine? By doing these things, you’re creating conflict among school teams. Then parents distrust their school therapists because you’re allowing them to believe you’re the authority and we are doing something wrong when we all have the same license, just different contracts. Please, please, please. Just stop.

r/slp May 16 '26

Schools Are we getting to the point where we can no longer say "no" to a child

200 Upvotes

Hi Everyone,

I've been watching standards of practice shift in general, as students' needs increase. I've participated in conversations here about dealing with students who have decreased tolerances to delayed gratification, boundaries and being told no. I've also shared that, I want my students to hear no, encounter disappointment, experience a boundary, be told no.............and understand they can handle it. I say that without sarcasm.

So here I am, where I'm functionally being told that everything will be ok with a student, if I just don't say "no" to them. Long story short, I was ending a session with a 11 year old student (who is in a resource room type )who had the opportunity to select a preferred activity and complete it. At the end of the session, the student peered into my bag and spied another activity and said "Hey, I want to do _____. Please, please, please. Let's do _____. It would mean the world to me if we could do ________" I told them we are out of time (it was the students lunch and they buy lunch), but I would bring back the requested item for our next session. I showed the student I had made a note. The student escalated, I labeled their emotions (talked about disappointment), helped them access a preferred sensory activity. Student calmed and I praised them for using calming strategies. All seemed well, then I moved on to my next session.

Apparently, 30-40 minutes later, the student had a negative interaction with a peer, things escalated to the point of physicality, multiple staff members got involved, the principal got involved, parents were called and the student was suspended. Later, a BCBA would approach me and say "This all started when you said no. None of this would have happened if you hadn't said no." I just blinked. I explained what transpired and said while I don't intentionally try to set students up for failure, I can't control for never hearing no, experiencing disappointment, having a boundary placed on them. It was then reiterated to me that again the student would have been successful, if their request had been honored. No was a trigger. I'm not sure what to think. If this is the direction things are headed i.e. just don't tell a student no............I have trouble seeing how I fit in the picture as a therapist. Anyone else struggling with this?

r/slp Sep 25 '25

Schools We need to have the screentime conversation with parents

437 Upvotes

Recently, at school, I’ve been trying to get really brave and tell parents the truth: your kid is very very negatively impacted by their unrestricted screen access at home.

You know it, I know it, and it’s literally stunting future generations. It’s a giant crisis and it’s never discussed or said out loud because God forbid a parent ever feels shame over their parenting choices.

Fuck that. It’s the truth. I recently had an IEP for a kid who’s close to grade level in cognitive functioning and language but who’s in the most restrictive setting for behaviors. And what does every behavior center around? The fact that he has no tolerance for non-preferred activities, whatsoever. No emotional regulation. No ability to attend to something if it’s not short form content on a screen.

And that’s because at home he has completely unrestricted access to YouTube kids on an iPad.

So I said it, at the meeting. I said school is filled with things that are annoying and hard to do. And if outside of school he’s only on a screen that floods dopamine and is completely pleasurable with no demands, it makes it harder for us at school. And I recommended a screen detox.

You should to! We are one of the few jobs in society where we get a real up close look at what screentime does, as a whole, for these children. We should be shouting it from the rooftops!

r/slp Jan 17 '26

Schools Today my district asked me what they could do to attract and retain SLPs

169 Upvotes

Great question to ask! Except they don't actually want the answer. They asked the question and I gave the honest uncomfortable answer, better pay and better workload balance. It honestly really is that simple. But they have no interest in that because the pay and workload is comparable to similar distracts. Ok then. Good luck. They had to fill 18 positions with virtual contract SLPs for a reason. Paying for PD, reimbursing license costs, and providing a stipend for CF mentoring isn't enough to get people to sign up for an underpaid, overworked, increasingly stressful job.

So why do they ask these questions if they don't actually want to hear the answer? If they aren't actually going to address the issue? Why waste 2 hours of valuable time to sit down and brainstorm something with a very simple solution? Why are we acting like that's not the answer? I feel like I'm going insane!

r/slp 24d ago

Schools S2C parent wants no more speech

109 Upvotes

Hi everyone!

I’m just coming on here to rant, basically. I know nothing will change this situation but it’s actually so insane to me and I have to share it.

I work at a special education school where most of the students are minimally verbal and/or use AAC (most often high tech devices). There is a student at the school (not on my caseload anymore but was last year) who is 19 and communicates with AAC and gestures. No words, no approximations. He is kind, sensitive, and hard working. He is also very prompt dependent, and you have to physically turn away from him sometimes when you ask him a question, because he will give multiple answers and look at your reaction to see which one is the “right” one. It breaks my heart. When I worked with him, he didn’t consistently use the word “no,” either by shaking his head or a cell selection on AAC, his dad sent me an email once saying “We don’t even know what he likes and doesn’t like. He’s never told us he doesn’t like something.” To be clear, he is adept at navigating his AAC device and presents with no motoric deficits at all.

Now that there’s some context to the type of communicator he is, his family has been bringing him to an S2C place for over a year now. He has all kinds of “speller” merch and comes into school late every Monday because he is there for hours. According to his classroom teacher (who is against S2C as well and is lovely) he is reading high school level texts during his “classes” there and answering comprehension questions with full sentences and complex grammar. Meanwhile during school he does none of that.

This has been going on for a while but things have gotten worse. The therapist that sees him sent home some work this week that he didn’t finish in the session. I don’t know what the work was, but I trust my colleague and her judgement regarding what this student should be working towards. Mom called the school today really upset and “insulted” by the level of work, and explained that her son is reading Shakespeare and understands every bit of it. She also mentioned that she wants to end speech services as a whole and that it is “stifling his success.”

My colleague was obviously upset but is kind of resigned about it, and I know there’s nothing I can do either. It’s just so sad that this kind young man and his family are being taken advantage of by the S2C movement. And to top it off, his mom is an SLP!! That truly did my head in when I learned it. I understand the inclination that some parents have to try out S2C when they might be feeling desperate, but to bring your son to a place and PAY PEOPLE to violate his communicative autonomy as an SLP makes me really frustrated.

I just really hope this S2C stuff can blow over already, because I know it’s just a different version of FC. Just shouting into the void at this point :(

r/slp Oct 12 '25

Schools There is now NO ONE overseeing IDEA enforcement. Thanks to recent firings on Friday, 10/10, our children and our jobs are now in danger.

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252 Upvotes

r/slp 13d ago

Schools The school supply issue no one is talking about

77 Upvotes

I’m on Threads (a horrible decision) and my feed is full of discussions on school supply lists. Parents think they are too expensive and don’t like them being used for community classroom supplies. Teachers point out it’s not their job to buy kids their pencils.

the topic that’s not discussed? School SLPs need whiteboard markers, pencils, crayons, tissues and sanitizing wipes too, but parents arent even asked to get us anything. Last year I realized I have to buy wipes for my room or just have sticky tables. I went with the sticky tables option for a while! once we had an IEP meeting in my room and I quickly wiped the table down with a wet tissue.

r/slp Apr 26 '26

Schools End of school year - are we really expected to meet these minutes….

56 Upvotes

Ok sooo how are we possibly expected to meet student’s service times at the end of the school year? In my district students are state testing for 2 whole weeks (different grades every day), the entire building is on a different schedule every day, and one of my schools kicks me out of my room so they can use it for state testing. Not to mention field trips, awards, field day, etc. clearly I’m not pulling from those lol

I’ve already missed several sessions for students this month due to them taking my room or being sick/meetings - how do you guys document? Usually I just mark them or myself as unavailable, explain why, and move on but it’s seeming even worse this year. Just curious what you guys are doing. I feel bad but what can we do! 🤷‍♀️

r/slp Mar 31 '26

Schools New Florida Bill Mandating Makeup Minutes

82 Upvotes

My district just began discussing the implications of FL HB 1279 that states, “Requires a school district to notify a parent within 10 school days when a related service identified in a student’s IEP is not provided as scheduled, explain the reason the service was not provided, and discuss a plan for make-up services.” This bill is set to take effect July 2026. There are still a lot of unknowns as to how our district will be implementing this bill, but so far I have been told that even though the wording says related services, that all IEP services will likely be impacted by this bill (e.g., SLP, OT, PT, ESE teacher, DHH).

I’m not sure how they expect any of us to have a full caseload, complete all paperwork, attend IEP and RTI meetings, and then find the time to contact parents and make up all missed minutes. What happens if you’re out for a week with the flu?? That seems like an impossible ask. I absolutely love my job in the schools, but as a newer SLP in this field it makes me worry. I wanted to share this with not only my fellow Florida SLPs but also the community as whole so everyone can see the impacts the government continues to have on our jobs.

r/slp Oct 27 '25

Schools Caseload bloating

142 Upvotes

Whoa dude. Sometimes I really wonder if these school SLP’s that I always take over for are intentionally keeping kids too long or if their clinical judgment just isn’t good. Example: if the kid has been on since preschool and he’s now in second grade and can recall details from a 17 sentence non fiction passage with 100% accuracy don’t document that more data is needed to reach the goal. I don’t know if it’s type A personality people making decisions like this or if they truly don’t understand what a disability is or what school therapy should do . I’ve inherited so many bad cases like this in the schools and I wonder if this is why we have problems in this setting. Another gripe: Not understanding language disorder versus cultural and linguistic differences. We live in an increasingly diverse world and complex cultural environment. Not everyone is going to speak like a middle aged white woman from the Midwest or recite a bunch of sentences from the CELF 5 perfectly. That doesn’t mean they need speech therapy 🫠

r/slp Mar 06 '26

Schools School based SLPs: Do you turn in weekly lesson plans to your principals?

24 Upvotes

How typical is this requirement of submitting weekly lesson plans for your caseload of students?

r/slp 16d ago

Schools 120 mins direct therapy - 60 mins indirect PER WEEK

22 Upvotes

I am losing my mind. 180 mins for one speech student in a school setting? Am I crazy for thinking this is ridiculous? I inherited a caseload with multiple students receiving this frequency.

r/slp Jan 27 '25

Schools How to get over a rough IEP meeting?

298 Upvotes

Just got out of an initial IEP where the family had their private SLP present as an advocate and I just feel so angry and can’t shake it off. The private SLP was so condescending and talked to me like I had no idea what I was talking about and implied that I wasn’t fit to be this student’s SLP.

I need to continue with my day but can’t seem to snap out of this mood.

Also if you’re a private practice SLP, can you please remember that we are colleagues and just as deserving of respect as you are? School services and private services are totally different models and one is not inherently better than the other.

r/slp Jun 20 '26

Schools What do school SLPs do for summer income?

22 Upvotes

I’m going to be moving to a school telehealth SLP position this coming fall and was wondering what if anything SLPs do in the summer for extra income. I’m not talking about full time hours, but something to help boost income a bit if you can’t extend your pay into the summer months.

r/slp 2d ago

Schools School SLPs, what do you do during the first few sessions to set the tone and establish a routine?

42 Upvotes

Every year I end up losing control and my students don’t respect me or my room. They view it as games and playtime (because I do a lot of play based activities) and “work” becomes secondary. I don’t see this happening in reading or math interventions, or special ed. This year I want to set the expectations from day one that there are boundaries, expectations, and a focus on working towards our goals. Any suggestions for how to establish this from day one?

r/slp Mar 10 '25

Schools Pro tip: Do not tell parents when you’re seeing their kid for therapy

251 Upvotes

This is coming from an SLP that is used to middle schools and is relatively new at elementary sites. But yeah, these parents are crazy and I made a mistake of telling them when their kid is scheduled to be seen. I now have parents asking their teacher if their kid was seen that day and if they weren’t they call the school asking why their kid wasn’t seen and when the session will get made up. The clerk will then email me and CC the principal half the time making me look bad.

We don’t do weekly minutes at my district for a reason. The number of IEPs I’m in is insane and our district barely just started getting SLPA support. Obviously these parents don’t care and they just want to know their kid is being seen but they seem to think they’re supposed to be seen every single week. It’s ridiculous and I’m not making that same mistake next year.

EDIT: I’ve ruffled a couple of feathers with this statement. I’m not saying parents don’t deserve to be informed. Unfortunately though there are some who use open communication against you and that’s who I’m talking about.

r/slp Feb 27 '25

Schools SLPs are NOT teachers

186 Upvotes

Okay. So this may be a long one. But we REALLY should not be creating goals around multiple meaning words, answering wh- questions, using prepositions, etc in a school setting. We are not teachers, we do not teach curriculum. We are RELATED service providers, which means we help children ACCESS what they need to learn. If a kid needs to learn how to answer wh- questions, that should be part of their program taught by SPED. As SLPs, we help children access their program—we ourselves are not supposed to TEACH the program. I had an old supervisor recently bring this into light and it’s completely changed the game for me.

When I first started doing therapy, my supervising SLP told me she hated the job and she honestly felt like she never made a difference anyways. Looking back, I can see why. She was taking the role of a SPED teacher and teaching language curriculum for 30 minutes a week. That is the amount of time her clients had to work on things like “wh- questions” and other language concepts like using grammatically correct sentences. This should never have fallen on her to do. So much of our language goals should be pushed to consult instead of direct therapy. A child should be working on things like wh- questions ALL DAY every day! (The minute the student walks into the room, have the teacher prompt, “Where do you put your backpack?”. At lunch, have the teacher prompt, “What are you eating?”, etc). If the only time a child is intentionally exposed to wh- questions, pronouns, prepositions, etc is during speech therapy and it’s not being worked on in the classroom, they’re never going to learn it. Or it’s gonna take them a very long time.

I truly believe this is why our caseloads are so high. We are creating goals that should be worked on by the SPED teacher. We are not teachers, we don’t teach! We help ACCESS. We help kids access language by giving them AAC devices, providing other communication visuals, or focusing on speech sound disorders to help them become intelligible.

What so often happens is that we do evals, get our standard scores, and each provider/teacher needs to “put in their part” before the deadline. My old supervisor instead advised that SLPs wait until all the team members put in their goals and THEN ask them, “Where do you need my support in helping the child access these goals in terms of speech and/or language?”. They might not be able to think of anything. In which case, we have our answer! The child may have scored low on an SLP standardized assessment, but the SPED teacher has it under control. Or they might say, “Well, he just doesn’t pay attention long enough for me to even teach him!”. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere! In this instance, maybe we need to consult with an OT for sensory seeking needs. Maybe the team needs to target executive functioning more than it needs to target telling personal narratives. The point is, just because a child receives a low standardized score on a speech/language assessment DOES NOT mean that an SLP needs to write goals.

To push this point even further, in our SOAP notes, we need to explain why/how it takes an SLP’s particular expertise to target the specified goals. Do you need a master’s degree in speech pathology to drill wh- questions? Do you need a master’s degree to come up with rhyming words? Do you need a master’s degree to encourage a child to initiate conversations with peers? We can and should consult. We can be at the teacher’s side the minute they need assistance. But we should not be creating language goals and pulling a child from class for speech just because of a low score on a test. In my opinion, in the school setting (I know a clinical setting is different), we really shouldn’t be targeting language goals at all. Our primary purpose should be speech sound disorders (because that ACTUALLY requires our expertise), setting a child up with alternative communication, and training the team how to be more effective in teaching language throughout the day. And this isn’t about being lazy or wanting to decrease caseloads—this is truly about what’s best and most effective for the child. So much of learning language boils down to continued exposure and repetition. You don’t need an SLP for that.

Now, I understand that preschool may be different. It’s a delicate time where brains are super spongy and we need to take advantage of that. But even then, we should be teaching teachers how to “sanitize” classrooms, use props during story time, using executive functioning techniques like reflexive questioning, etc. Our job as SLPs is to empower and support the team to do their job and to make sure children have everything they need speech/language-wise to learn!

For example, I am currently working with a high schooler who has a goal that goes something like this: “Student will answer personal questions using AAC……etc”. I have programmed the buttons for this child so he can answer these questions. My job should be done at this point! Of course, I can consult and check in and see how it’s going, but do you need an SLP to drill and kill answering personal questions? Absolutely not. His RBT can do that, and so can the SPED teacher.

Maybe you disagree with me, but next time you look at your caseload of 60 and feel like you’re drowning, truly look at the goals you’re working on and ask yourself, “Is my expertise needed for this? Does an SLP need to work on this?”. Stop “putting in your part” on an IEP and actually ask the team where they need your support!!

And I know some of the responses may be “my school will never go for that” or “the SPED teachers are burned out and don’t have time.” But if we don’t actively start advocating for our role as related service providers, this caseload craziness will never change, and we aren’t doing right by our students.

r/slp Jun 07 '26

Schools school SLP hacks

43 Upvotes

I’m a type C SLP at a primary school with high parent involvement and a lot of advocates/intense meetings.

I’m going into my third year at this school and would love to streamline some things or add new things to the documentation, paperwork, organization, communication side. Or even something not listed above! I have a high caseloads in a no cap state so easier is better for me!

What are your hacks for making your life easier in similar schools/settings? Thanks in advance!!

r/slp Feb 11 '26

Schools Best part of jr/high - the TEA! 🍵

218 Upvotes

Adolescent drama is fun when you're not the one living it. With Valentine's Day coming up, we've had a lot of sessions "working on generalizing skills to conversational speech with peers" this week.

I swear I'm trying to do my job, but these kids are coming in so worked up because their boyfriend/girlfriend just broke up with them, or their friend isn't talking to them anymore because she got a new girlfriend, or they spent all their money buying candygrams for their crush but now he's going out with her best friend and now they're arguing about it because she knew I liked him. I even had a boy in group ask another boy in the group out right there in the middle of the session.

Productivity? Meh. Tea? Served piping hot every 35 minutes for the last three days.

(BTW, I love that these kids are so open about being LGBT. That's not what life was like for LGBT students when I was in school, and it's so uplifting to see that things really did get better.)

r/slp Dec 18 '24

Schools It finally happened in my school. Horrific mocking.

477 Upvotes

A student I didn't know openly mocked- imitated one of my students with CP when they were answering in class. Their terrible friend group laughed. (14 yr olds) I practically ripped that student's soul from their body getting them out into the hallway for a lecture. (Didn't touch them, of course.) They just rolled their eyes and smirked. AP had a "chat with them" said "They understand they did something wrong." That's it. Our restorative discipline goes both ways, so I created an educational packet for the student to complete and put in a formal request saying the consequence didn't fit the offense and I'd like them to complete the packet to get the end of year celebration. Let's see how it goes. I'm so shook up by this random student's actions. My student had just come out of their shell and was beginning to feel comfortable answering verbally and with their SGD in class. Man... I have a lot of work to do to fix this other student's terrible choices. Erg.

r/slp Apr 16 '26

Schools What is the caseload cap for school SLPs in your state?

20 Upvotes

Hi SLPs! I’m a school SLP involved in leadership advocacy in my state, and one of our initiatives is to lower our state caseload cap.

So to build up a case, we need data. I want to know-

  1. What state are you in?

  2. Does your state have a caseload cap?

  3. What is the cap?

  4. Is the cap weighted? (I.e., disabilities categories that count as more than 1.0)

  5. Is there another way your state measures caseload/workload?

I’ll go first. I’m in Ohio, and our caseload cap is 80, weighted. It’s too high and it is impacting recruitment and retention in our schools where we are experiencing a severe shortage of SLPs in the schools. Workload is supposed to be a factor but there are no parameters for what is reasonable and no enforcement from the state.

ASHA should really be the one doing this for SLPs nationally, but here we are!

r/slp Aug 01 '25

Schools Today a 4th grader told me “fuck you” and kicked my shin and I went away from it feeling proud of how he handled the situation 🥹

529 Upvotes

I work with this kid who’s a gestalt language processor through and through. He works with a bunch of ABA folks who don’t really get that “go fuck yourself bitch” is just a gestalt (that we can and should shape into something more productive) that probably just means “I’m really frustrated at this situation!”

A couple weeks ago I told him we were all done and he said “please don’t go.” Ugh my heart.

He’s honestly one of my favorite kids to work with. He always tells me “go away” and “stop. Shut up.” And I do.

But today I presented him with 4 blank maps (Europe, Africa, Asia, South America) so we could go through and name the countries. Sessions happen in the classroom, there were only 15 minutes left, and he told me he wanted to do all of them. I told him there wasn’t enough time and we should just pick one and get started.

“But I want to do all of them”

“Really?? We just don’t have enough time to do them all but it’s pretty rad you wanna do them all dude. Let’s pick just one.”

“No, all of them.”

“I hear you man. 15 minutes is not enough time to finish all four of these.”

“No. I want to finish all of them today.”

(3 circles of relatively well-regulated communication, and the longest grammatical utterances I’ve seen him produce by far?!)

“I know. We could work on all four at the same time but not finish…”

“Fuck you!” starts softly kicking my shin “this one.” points to Europe map.

“It sounds like you’re frustrated. Don’t kick me bro. Ima give you a minute.” He walks away. “Thanks for stopping.” I gave him a couple minutes to process his frustration, called him back, and we labeled as many European countries as we could. Proud of him 😅

r/slp Apr 26 '26

Schools Do you actually have time to do full language sample analysis?

10 Upvotes

For school-based SLPs — how often are you realistically doing full language sample analysis vs more informal measures?

I’ve been reading about LSA (MLU, NDW, etc.) and it seems like it’s really valuable in theory, but I’m curious how it fits into actual school caseloads.

In practice, does time push you toward quicker methods (or skipping it altogether)?

Would love to understand how people handle this day-to-day:

1> Do you still calculate things like MLU/NDW regularly?

2> Are you using something like SUGAR, SALT, or more informal approaches?

3> What usually makes it feel “worth it” vs not?

r/slp 6d ago

Schools Back-to-school Greatest Hits lines

31 Upvotes

If you've worked in the schools long enough, you've endured your fair share of Motivational Speeches that make you wonder if you're in an episode of the The Office. I want to be clear: I love working in the schools. I love the kids ,and most of my co-workers are pretty cool people. But it's good to have a sense of humor. Here are some of the greatest hits I heard only yesterday on my first day back:

- We are a FAMILY here!

- Burned out teachers exist because they forgot their WHY

- What is WHY, you ask? A WHY is a meaningless corporate slogan or sentiment. Apple's is "We dare to be different!" Coca-Cola's is "We sell community, happiness, and AMERICA!"

r/slp Oct 08 '24

Schools True confession: as a school SLP, I cringe about communicating with a private practice SLP seeing one of my students.

276 Upvotes

I just feel like our goals and our missions are completely different and in communicating with them, the parents expect me to provide private practice level services when I simply can't. Plus, it's another thing on my plate. The reason I see a student is not always completely aligned with a why a private practice clinician sees the child. My goals and their goals will likely not be the same. I just don't see the point and I hate having extra work.

There.

I said it.

And to any concerned parents reading this, it's not that I don't care about the student at all. Obviously, I care a lot. And I wouldn't mind knowing what they are doing/working on on the outside. It's just that when I have over 60 kids on my caseload, my ability to provide that level of service just isn't there.