Fall semester

The students are back in fine form.
This is a welcome surprise as typically after a 2-3 week break bodies are tighter and brains are out of shape!

I'd like to think that the Communican program is so successful that the students are maintaining their communication skills throughout their breaks from school. I'd also like to think that parents and families are using the system at home in whatever form works for them and so this maintains the students skill levels.

Our team of therapists, conductors and teachers came back somewhat refreshed and are excited to be back in the classroom. Our practice at integrating the therapists over the summer would appear to have been successful.
We are doing less pull out sessions for speech and OT and while PT still does require a significant amount of pull out they are working to find ways to assist within the classroom environment whenever possible.

The summer was interesting! Scheduling mandated therapy times was as tricky as it has always been, which somewhat surprised me. It was also challenging to try to explain to the therapists what we wanted them doing within the classroom as it required some 'out of the box' thinking and creativity. That combined with fast track learning for me about the necessary paperwork therapists are required by State and City, meant there was a little confusion. I knew what I wanted to see in the classroom environment, the whole team working together, PT, OT, SLT, teacher and para all focused on the students needs.

The need to fulfill mandates put the first spanner in the works, the need for paperwork was the second and the third was trying to explain this vision to the team!

I'm hoping the program continues to develop in this direction. I still feel that integrating the staff is the best way to provide a complete educational, communicative, therapeutic day for our students. I feel all the team members can learn much from each other and that the students complex needs can be met better by a whole team approach. But it is definitely a work in progress right now.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad