Speech Language Pathologist

Speech Language Pathologist

Starting Date: Immediately

Position Type: Full-Time

Driven by educational reform, legal mandates, and evolving professional practices, the American Speech‑Language‑Hearing Association (ASHA) establishes the roles and responsibilities of speech‑language pathologists (SLPs) listed below to provide the basis for speech‑language services in schools to promote efficient and effective outcomes for students.

Critical Roles
— SLPs have integral roles in education and are essential members of school faculties.

• Working Across All Levels
  — SLPs provide appropriate speech‑language services in Pre‑K, elementary, middle, junior high, and high schools with no school level underserved.

• Serving a Range of Disorders
  — As delineated in the ASHA Scope of Practice in Speech‑Language Pathology and federal regulations, SLPs work with students exhibiting the full range of communication disorders, including those involving language, articulation (speech sound disorders), fluency, voice/resonance, and swallowing. Myriad etiologies may be involved.

• Ensuring Educational Relevance
  — The litmus test for roles assumed by SLPs with students with disabilities is whether the disorder has an impact on the education of students. Therefore, SLPs address personal, social/emotional, academic, and vocational needs that have an impact on attainment of educational goals.

• Providing Unique Contributions to Curriculum
  — SLPs provide a distinct set of roles based on their focused expertise in language. They offer assistance in addressing the linguistic and meta linguistic foundations of curriculum learning for students with disabilities, as well as other learners who are at risk for school failure, or those who struggle in school settings.

• Highlighting Language/Literacy
  — Current research supports the interrelationships across the language processes of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. SLPs contribute significantly to the literacy achievement of students with communication disorders, as well as other learners who are at risk for school failure, or those who struggle in school settings.

• Providing Culturally Competent Services
  — With the ever‑increasing diversity in the schools, SLPs make important contributions to ensure that all students receive quality, culturally competent services. SLPs have the expertise to distinguish a language disorder from “something else.” That “something else” might include cultural and linguistic differences, socioeconomic factors, lack of adequate prior instruction, and the process of acquiring the dialect of English used in the schools.
  
  This expertise leads to more accurate and appropriate identification of student needs. SLPs can also address the impact of language differences and second language acquisition on student learning and provide assistance to teachers in promoting educational growth.

Range of Responsibilities
— SLPs help students meet the performance standards of a particular school district and state.

• Prevention
  — SLPs are integrally involved in the efforts of schools to prevent academic failure in whatever form those initiatives may take; for example, in Response to Intervention (RTI). SLPs use evidence‑based practice (EBP) in prevention approaches.

• Assessment
  — SLPs conduct assessments in collaboration with others that help to identify students with communication disorders as well as to inform instruction and intervention, consistent with EBP.

• Intervention
  — SLPs provide intervention that is appropriate to the age and learning needs of each individual student and is selected through an evidence‑based decision‑making process. Although service delivery models are typically more diverse in the school setting than in other settings, the therapy techniques are clinical in nature when dealing with students with disabilities.

• Program Design
  — It is essential that SLPs configure school wide programs that employ a continuum of service delivery models in the least restrictive environment for students with disabilities, and that they provide services to other students as appropriate.

• Data Collection and Analysis
  — SLPs, like all educators, are accountable for student outcomes.…