Speech Schedule Zen - How to turn 'scheduling' into your super power!

Through the years I have spent anywhere from several hours to several weeks completing my speech service schedule. I have used post-its, graphic organizers, charts, Word-documents, fancy SLP programs, etc. The one thing that is always true about scheduling is that the schedule will always change… I stopped laminating my schedule years ago.

I don’t have quick-fix tips or organization apps to recommend to you today, that is such a personal choice. This blog post is about how to create the perfect environment within your school to make scheduling a LOT easier.

· Advocate for uniformity among grade-levels.

o Have you ever had to change your entire schedule because Ms. Smith has science at a different time than the rest of 1st grade team? I have! It is absolutely demoralizing. Our students don’t want to come to speech and miss science… they should not have to.

o My first year as an SLP at an elementary school I was able to bring this up to our SLP group, SPED group, and building administrators. I was spending precious time negotiating individual schedules with teachers… time that could have been spent providing speech services.

o Working through those issues I learned that coordination and communication with your building administrators is key! If they understand your needs and if you are able to provide solutions it is very likely that they will support you.

o I think the shift toward grade-level uniformity has been happening more and more lately as we work within Professional Learning Communities and consistent Unit Plans but when I first got started that was not the norm and it made such a huge difference!

· Make sure you know the “off limits” blocks

o When I started at my current placement my co-workers were shocked that I didn’t want to pull my students from state and federally mandated programs. To navigate the “wild-west” (the times of every teacher makes their own schedule) the previous SLPs had resorted to scheduling sessions during bilingual classes, special education intervention times, and even core math times. That was not what I was used to and it was not what I wanted for my students. I began advocating for those blocks to be considered “off-limits”. While it’s counter-intuitive that less choices would make scheduling easier, that is exactly what happened: Simplicity lead to ease.

· Ask to be included in the scheduling/planning meetings

o As SLPs we have a unique perspective. We work with students who receive minimum special education services, students who receive moderate services and ELL services, students in self-contained settings, students in the gifted program, etc. We can be great sounding boards for school leaders who are building the master schedule for the entire school.

· If a building schedule has worked fabulously for a year… don’t change a thing! The credit for this lies completely with my building administrator! Do you know how easy it is to create a speech schedule when the master Building schedule has not changed from year to year? Pre-Covid I could schedule my kiddos in 15 minutes or less! I roll my groups up (e.g., 3rd grade group is now 4th grade group) and focus on getting to know my new kindergartners and completing pending screenings. Those first weeks of school - that were usually chaos, became simple and organized. This year was a little more complicated because of virtual/in-person learning but guess what made it easier? Our Master building schedule remained the same as last year!

I realize that I am incredibly lucky to have had the support of my Sped group and my building administrators - as well as the entire school staff, but I think our system can be implemented easily and is based on a few simple changes: grade-level uniformity, consistency from year-to-year, and collaboration among all of the departments in the building.

I hope this helps!

- Xoxo

Ingrid

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