Show Notes:
In this episode of SLP Coffee Talk, Hallie sits down with Elsha Young, a Speech-Language Pathologist SLP Elevate member and Speech Retreat attendee to chat about reigniting that spark as an SLP. With 25 years of experience supporting communication across all stages of life, Elsha specializes in language, literacy, and assisting individuals with complex neuro-related communication challenges. From early intervention to private practice, schools, and hospitals, she’s now providing hybrid therapy services in Alaska, enjoying the opportunity to work with a diverse group of middle and high school students from various cultural, linguistic, neurological, and geographical backgrounds.
Here’s what we learned:
- Challenges faced by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) working with older students.
- The impact of social media on professional expectations and self-perception.
- Career transitions and adapting to new roles in therapy services.
- Finding joy and passion in therapy despite challenges.
- Building rapport and meaningful relationships with students.
- Utilizing evidence-based materials to enhance student engagement and progress.
- Overwhelming amount of information and resources in the SLP community.
RESOURCES
Learn more about Hallie Sherman and SLP Elevate:
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Where We Can Connect:
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TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 Hallie: Welcome to SLP Coffee Talk, the podcast designed exclusively for speech language pathologists who work with older students, grades 4 through 12. I am your host, Hallie Sherman, your SLP behind Speech Time Fun, the Speech Retreat Conference, and the SLP Elevate membership. And I’m thrilled to bring you conversations, strategies, and insights that will give you the jolt of inspiration that you need. Whether you’re tuning in during your morning commute, on a break in between sessions, or even during a well deserved relaxation time. I am here for you each and every week. Let’s do this SLPs.
00:00:45 Elsha: It’s kind of been interesting to, today was kind of an interesting flow of information the way that it kind of all went together. So, I dunno, I enjoyed it. It was good.
00:00:58 Elsha: We’re really good about treating others as clinicians. We are horrible clinicians for ourselves. And I spend a lot of my time with my co-workers saying, what would you do if this was your student? I need to kind of treat myself with the same.
00:01:17 Elsha: Yeah, but it’s hard because we have expectations and I think social media sometimes doesn’t help. When we see all the fun cutesy things and we’ve got a hundred and some odd kids and we’ve got the behaviors that are occurring and secondary and you’ve got kids yelling about credits and missing class and engagement and all this kind of stuff. And then you’re like, I can’t make it pretty.
00:01:43 Hallie: I don’t think it was me that posted it, but someone a while back, I remember posting like, it was a picture of a beautiful therapy. And then it was like, and then they zoomed. It was like, and here’s the mess behind it. I was like, that’s so true. This is just a highlight reel of like, let me share the one great thing of the hundred things that failed in my day.
00:02:10 Elsha: Yeah. And sometimes you can’t see the emotional mess that the day has been. But I really, yeah. Like Kelly said, it resonated that we need to be a little kind here to ourselves. Use our skills for ourselves as well. We have them.
00:02:30 Hallie: It’s true. The job isn’t easy. And that’s why I like, I love that realistic. Like this is real life. It’s not all rainbows and sunshine. Sometimes it just stinks. Sometimes it’s just hard and we want to cry. Sometimes it’s, no one gets what we do.
00:02:49 Elsha: Yeah, I was a year away from being fully vested in my state’s retirement plan and was forced out with a caseload of one hundred and twenty five. A new contract all set up. And that was canceled 30 minutes before my first meeting with the admin.
00:03:10 Hallie: Yeah.
00:03:13 Elsha: And so I was literally like, I have tuition to pay for my kid’s college in a week and I have no job. And thankfully I had a really amazing friend that said, hey, check this out. It was with a company that I had actually interviewed to come provide services in my district. And they said they’re hiring. And so I looked into it and within 24 hours was down a completely different rabbit hole than I ever thought I would be.
00:03:51 Elsha: And then two weeks later, I was doing a hybrid therapy model in Alaska where I treat middle school and secondary kids remotely for most of the year, but then travel every couple of months to Alaska. And I’m like, I am 30 years into this and I’m traveling five times a school year to provide services. So I’m the only speech pathologist in Juneau that services secondary students. I was, I have spent the last year terrified. But two things have saved everything.
00:04:35 Elsha: One is Elevate, simply because I can trust that the materials are evidence-based practice and I can pull something up and I have enough belief in myself as an SLP that I can take whatever it is and modify it to the kid.
00:04:54 Elsha: And two, finally giving up the idea that I may not always be the one in charge and sometimes I just need to let life happen and let the change, feel all the change, feel all the stuff and figure out how I can be happy and enjoy what I’m doing. And it has brought back a lot of the joy that I find in my craft.
00:05:26 Elsha: And It’s been amazing. The therapy progress has been fabulous. Once I kind of let all that stuff go, I’ve got kids reading that have never picked up a book, kids that are homeless and don’t have a lot of food and have parents that are not even involved in their lives. You name it, it’s a huge issue, but I can pull up one of the Elevate strategies, we can go through it. They’re engaged. And then I can say, hey, what are you doing after school? And they’re like, well, we’re going to the library and we’re checking out books and we’re reading. And then we’re talking about what we did in speech today. I’m like, you’re doing what?
00:06:12 Elsha: But I never would have done that if I had not just had the year that I did and had to be forced to accept the change and then felt all the crap that dealt with. And luckily just fell into this realm here with Elevate and the community that that is to just have a go. And so, yeah. It really, all this stuff kind of resonated today to kind of go, I’m happy where my career is going and I’m excited about it. And I’m mentoring the newbies that are coming to Alaska with me. And it’s fun. Well, again.
00:06:56 Hallie: What would you say to yourself a year ago? If you looked yourself in the mirror, what would you say to yourself? You had a time machine.
00:07:02 Elsha: I’m looking, I was looking at some pictures of my, because a year ago today, I was doing my second trip and training, trying to teach a new life skills teacher how to set up a classroom and do day to day collection and all that kind of stuff. I would have said, stop and breathe because you’re in charge of how you feel about this and to sit with it. It’s gonna be okay. Trust yourself.
00:07:32 Elsha: And I think that’s where we, it’s hard because we don’t wanna change. I gave up it, how much retirement? I mean, I’m a year away, nine months away of full retirement. I won’t get it. It’s okay. So sit with it. It’s okay. But trust yourself. It’ll be better. I think a lot of us sit in places where we aren’t happy. That’s hard to let go of. But I don’t think we’re really going to change as a profession until we kind of have that conversation.
00:08:04 Elsha: But what if you can take your kids out gold panning and watch them interact with each other and have them have a conversation that you could not have scripted in your therapy room cause who wants to talk to the old lady through the screen? Not me, you know? Telling a kid not to touch boiling hot metals in a copper mine, six feet under the ground on the back of a mining cart.
00:08:36 Elsha: Who would have thought? Who would have thought that you could use those strategies and say, don’t touch that and here’s why. And 16,000 gestalt processing moments later of touch that, touch that, touch that. No, don’t touch that. Oh, danger. Yeah, danger. We don’t touch that. It’s like, you don’t know what it’s out, I just like, trust it. It can be really, really good.
00:09:07 Elsha: But giving that up was the hardest thing. And that’s why it was a year ago. It’s like, I don’t know if I can do this. It’s hard. It’s really, really hard. But I just dug in and, bless Hallie’s heart, had all these materials. I didn’t even have to think about it because I can’t even imagine trying to plan therapy. I’m like, okay, what are we doing today?
00:09:30 Hallie: And more virtual stuff is coming. Just letting you know.
00:09:33 Elsha: Yeah. Well, it’s gotten to the point now where I can just show them. I show them the entire menu of actual themes and say, pick one. Because once you use them enough, you can go through and say, oh, there’s a pattern to things. And if I know my skills well enough and I trust myself as a therapist, well, it doesn’t matter what I pull up. I can let them pick whatever. And I can pull a therapy session out.
00:10:07 Elsha: And sometimes data doesn’t happen. It’s okay. Doesn’t have to, doesn’t need to most of the time. I have life skills, kids. They’re that. I listen. I just listen. 9 times out of 10, they have something more important that they need to talk about that day. And so I listen. How are you doing today? How are your classes going? What’s going on in your life? Oh, grandma’s in the hospital again? Okay, let’s talk about that.
00:10:34 Elsha: A lot of times I will pull up a video and it’s one of the YouTube cheat sheets. I’ll pull that up and say, hey, which one of these do you want to watch today? Let’s watch a video together. And that’s how I’ve gotten a lot of engagement is I let them choose. I give them, I’ve built rapport. They trust that I will listen.
00:10:58 Elsha: I have gotten really good at reading facial expressions to say, Ooh, this kid’s needing me to pull back. This kid needs to talk today, or this kid has lots of questions. This kid needs me to provide a little bit more. This one doesn’t want to turn on their camera today, I’m okay with chat. You want to type in the chat? I can decipher consonant, consonant, consonant, consonant, consonant. There may be a vowel in that word, I’m not sure. Spelling. It’s okay. My kiddo, that’s-
00:11:31 Hallie: They showed up.
00:11:32 Elsha: Yeah, they showed up. Or I’ve got one kid that’s completely ghosted me except for like twice this year. I email. I got a Google VPN phone number. So I’ll text my kids and say, hey, what’s up today? Oh, you’ve got an AP bio exam today. Okay. We’ll debrief about it later and tell me, he’s a fluency kiddo. It’s okay. You go study.
00:11:59 Elsha: I’ll meet my data and some people look at my data collection and they look at my minutes or they look at my notes and my billing. They’re like, what has Mrs. Young been doing? And I’m like, but what are they doing in class and what’s the progress that they’ve made? Because when I do my progress monitoring, I’m not getting little jumps. I’m getting big jumps. Because they know that when they are there, they’re working and I can tweak whatever it needs to be to stretch them so they’re better communicators in their environment, not just what rote task I’m drilling them on.
00:12:35 Elsha: So rapport has been absolutely immense. And meeting them where they’re at with what they’re actually doing, letting them choose their hobbies as therapy themes. When kids like, nobody will talk to me about my anime. Tell me. He read six books last year, had never picked up a book. I’ve got one that’s on book 24. He’s a super senior. And he goes, Mrs. Young, what’s this word? He holds his book up to the camera. He doesn’t read anything over two syllables. It disappeared. You know what disappeared means? I think it means like to go away. Yep. To hide.
00:13:21 Elsha: It’s stuff that we all know how to do. If we just give ourselves permission to put down the sticky note, put down the pen and just practice the art of communication at a super basic level. And then you take a progress monitoring, and it’s like, boom, we’ve got it. I’ve got a couple of kiddos that are a bunch of AAC users. I’ve got one that’s a seventh grader with eye gaze. She gets on there and she just giggles and giggles and giggles and giggles. It doesn’t matter what I do. And all she does, all we’re doing right now is trying to find her like her spot of where she can actually like gaze to activate her device.
00:14:08 Elsha: So I pull up a video and if she will activate her device, I play a couple seconds of a video. I pick one that she liked. And I have to be okay that that’s not clinically significant therapy, according to some. But she has an adult that’s willing to meet her at her level and I’m getting more and more trials. I’m getting more engagement. She’s accessing her device more. She’s starting to say hello to people in the hallway. She’s looking at people now instead of fighting and that kind of thing. I gotta start somewhere.
00:14:50 Hallie: I find that billing for like Medicaid is definitely caused people to feel like I need more trials, I need data. But like, so what? The district can get money? So the agency can get some money? Like the students in front of you that even if you’re not collecting data, you’re making progress other ways that you might not be able to measure.
00:15:12 Elsha: I’ve switched to rubrics and that has helped immensely because I can track a chunk of trials in one rubric measure and then, so I have bigger jumps, but the trial capacity, like the big, huge, chunky groups of trials are within a point value in the same rubric piece. So if I have 50 to 100 trials, that may be in the middle of the rubric. And if I get 0 to 25, that may be at one end. And if I get over 100 trials of something, then that’s going to be at this end of the rubric.
00:15:55 Elsha: It makes it so that I can really flex what the kid needs better. And Medicaid seems to be a little happier with that. So, because then I can give them a number. I can always give them a number from a rubric.
00:16:14 Hallie: Four to five, three to five, sure. Right.
00:16:18 Elsha: And somebody’s like, oh, you want, you want a percentage? Awesome. Three out of five is 60%. Oh, they all of a sudden jump to 80%. Mm-hmm. Magic, huh? After two months of intense work, but the intense work doesn’t happen day to day, but it doesn’t happen day to day naturally either. If you look at developmental milestones, they happen over years. And we’re expecting, you know what, in nine months with 30 minutes a week? That’s not much time. And I have to be okay with that. I’ve got kids that are reading, kids that are communicating with other people.
00:17:04 Hallie: You’re making a huge impact. So who cares? It doesn’t have to be pretty to be elaborate. Just making the difference each and every day.
00:17:12 Elsha: Yeah, but it’s this kind of stuff though that makes it actually so I can do that and then still kind of need to scratch that evidence-based practice, the ethics, and all of that kind of stuff that I need to still check as a practicing at the top of my license. You have to be able to have that, but at the same time, be able to practice those skills in a little freer environment. You have to let go of some of the structure that you’re kind of happy with and go, we’re just going with it today.
00:17:51 Elsha: Yeah, I’m happy. My husband said the other day, he’s like, you’re happy at work. And I’m like, yeah, I am. That’s huge. Little strange.
00:18:03 Hallie: What are you going to do with all this happiness now?
00:18:05 Elsha: I don’t know.
00:18:08 Hallie: You have nothing to complain about. What are you going to do with that free time?
00:18:14 Elsha: But it’s really stuff like this, though, that helps because it’s you don’t have that, we don’t have permission from a lot of the input that we’re getting to let this happen. And I think that’s what’s so stressful and why we have such burnouts because we see so much, and it’s like that media stream that’s constantly telling us we need to do this, we need to do this, and the expectations of the district and our administration and da-da-da-da-da-da-da and ourselves and, oh, we’re getting bombarded with five, six thousand things a day.
00:18:51 Hallie: Mm-hmm.
00:18:52 Elsha: It’s okay.
00:18:53 Hallie: I think early in my career, there was no social media, none of this and that, but I had no guidance. No one to turn to, no ideas, nothing. It was literally like just crickets. Felt very lonely. And then you have the opposite of like, okay, being bombarded with all these ideas, all this influence and finding that happy medium of like, okay, I have to just look at the impact I’m making with the students in front of me. Hey, am I happy? That’s all you can do.
00:19:23 Elsha: Yeah.
00:19:25 Hallie: It’s huge.
00:19:26 Elsha: Yeah, but that’s really hard. So today was really good just to kind of go information overload. Yeah, there’s a lot of oomph with it. But here’s how you can kind of wrap it up and actually deal with it, both emotionally, cognitively, professionally. So I like [inaudible 00:19:46].
00:19:47 Elsha: I kind of brought up a whole lot of stuff today. Thanks, Hallie.
00:19:51 Hallie: It’s jam packed.
00:19:53 Elsha: It was jam packed.
00:19:55 Hallie: It’s so hard to take, like a narrow down, like, you know?
00:19:58 Elsha: Honestly, I don’t know how you do all that you do, like how you come up with these ideas and the topics. And I look at all of your emails and I think, okay, I’m so overwhelmed, but I use your stuff all the time, but I don’t really go on and I don’t make a, I don’t do the, I don’t know, what do you call it, the podcast thing. I do that every once in a while, but on Sundays to hear your voice, it’s like, I just want you to know that I’m amazed at all of your stuff. And it’s just, it’s been a game changer. So thank you.
00:20:40 Hallie: Sure. First of all, it takes a village. I have people behind the scenes as they’re messaging me, like helping out with things. Hopefully my husband is watching the kids upstairs. They might be running amok. I have no idea. You don’t see the mess of a house I have upstairs or even in this room, hence a virtual background. So let’s just be real. It’s not always all sunshine and roses, but it’s what lights me up. That’s why I ended up leaving the school because I was like, you know what? I wasn’t getting appreciated there. And I was like, I feel like I can have so much more impact leaving and being able to help others.
00:21:17 Hallie: Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of SLP Coffee Talk. It means the world to me that you’re tuning in each and every week and getting the jolt of inspiration you need. You can find all of the links and information mentioned in this episode at my website, speechtimefun.com. Don’t forget to follow the show so you don’t miss any future episodes. And while you’re there, it would mean the world to me if you would take a few seconds and leave me an honest review. See you next week with another episode full of fun and inspiration from one SLP to another. Have fun guys!
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