Most of the kids we served had language or speech problems. We did a lot of assessment of kindergarteners. The kids were great! They were well-behaved and so much fun. I had to create a lesson each week to do with the groups. Because that age group is so focused on literacy, many weeks I went through a book and asked them lots of questions. Therapy was conducted in groups of 2-8 kids.

My favorite group was the preschoolers. The 3-year old preschool class was across the hall from our room, and we were in there quite a bit. According to state law, for every special ed preschooler you have to have a normally-developing peer. Of course the parents decided whether or not their child was normal, which made some interesting situations (there were two boys who were supposed to be normal, but seemed to have some mild autism characteristics). The class had about 14 kids. The special ed kids included 2 boys with autism, a boy with a seizure disorder (and did not speak), a girl with a cleft palate, and a boy with childhood apraxia (we think). The kids loved sitting on the adults laps during circle time. Sometimes I would have 2 or 3 kids trying to sit on my lap at once.

Here are a few funny stories from the semester.

We evaluated a little boy for speech and language. We see his sister for speech, and she is not the brightest light bulb in the box. After talking to the father, I think it might be hereditary. After the testing, the father asked if the boy would need speech. My supervisor said we would have to calculate the scores before we knew. The father said, “Well, if he has a 7 year old brain he won’t need to come to speech.” Then, with a very pronounced lisp and accent said, “I know where he gets his speech impediment from. His mom’s cousin has a real bad country accent.”

Dawson (one of the preschool boys whose mom is the teacher) went with his father to a meeting. The lady had short, dark, and curly hair. Dawson pipes up, “You have dark curly hair just like Miss Melanie!” When they got home the father asked his wife (the preschool teacher), “Who’s Miss Melanie?”

Fall Fun Day was a school-wide day of different activities to celebrate Fall. I helped the preschool class as they went to their various activities. Our first stop was singing and story time in the library. We sang a song, and then a lady portraying Mary Draper Ingalls told her story. Unfortunately, she didn’t do a good job of bringing her story down to a 3 and 4 year old level. Add Special Ed kids in the mix, and it was an interesting time. The kids did a great job paying attention during the first 15-20 minutes. But then attention started to wane. One 4 year old girl lay on the floor and sang the “ABC” song. Our probably-autistic boy started scooting closer and closer to the story teller and eventually had to be held. Thankfully he did not hum much during the story. At one point they passed around sunflower seeds for the kids to eat (since that’s one of the foods Mary found to eat on her way home). I was surprised how many of them like it. Our little syndrome boy devoured his seeds and then held his cup up saying “more” several times (meanwhile the story is still going on). At one point Mary talked about how she was in the river and she didn’t know how to swim. She asked what happens when water goes over your head. Instead of saying “you drown,” Dawson pipes up “You go up to God.” Mary didn’t quite know how to respond to that. Then she asked the kids what language we speak (like they know the answer to that). “Do we speak French?” The 4 year olds say no. “Do we speak Spanish?” The 4 year olds again say no. “Do we speak English?” Our little syndrome boy, who is pretty unintelligible above the one-word level says “no!” Thos of us who know the boy started laughing because listening to him talk you wouldn’t think it was English!

Our final stop on Fall Fun Day was to listen to a man talk about bee keeping. He mentioned honey and then he had some honey for the kids who wanted to try it. One of the aids went around and put it on the finger of the kids who wanted some. Several of the 3 year olds were interested until the honey was put on their finger. One “normal” kid had some sensory issues and started wiping it off on his clothes. The autistic boy gestured that he wanted some, so the aid went and put a large glob on his finger. While they were trying to get him to put his finger in his mouth he freaked out about the texture on his finger. He spastically shook his hand and honey went flying in the air, on the aid who was holding him (who didn’t react because she was probably expecting it) and the aid next to them who freaked out (she helps the other preschool class that isn’t as severe and I think she got some in her hair). It was pretty funny.

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) was a good class. Typically, students take a class in Childhood Apraxia of Speech, but because most of my classmates are interested in the medical setting and they did not get much of an aphasia class, Apraxia was replaced.  TBI was taught by the director of the clinic who worked several years with this population. The teacher doesn’t have a doctorate, so she has to get special permission to teach. This is the same teacher we had for Motor Speech Disorders last year. She is still one of the best teacher’s I’ve had. In the class we learned about cognitive communication disorders (impairments in memory, executive functioning, and attention) that result from a TBI and how to treat people with these impairments. It is an interesting field, but very heartbreaking to see individuals with injuries that have caused such damage to the brain.

Fluency (or Stuttering) was somewhat boring. The teacher is a retired professor who came back to teach the class since the department lacks someone with expertise in this area. The man who taught our class has been a speech therapist for at least 50 years. He personally knew a lot of the big names in the field of stuttering.

Aphasia was one of the best classes I’ve taken. The teacher was also a retired professor. Because of a previous obligation, she agreed to teach the class only if she could be finished by the middle of April. As a result, we had class 5 hours a week. While it was intense, it was wonderful to get all that free time in April. Aphasia is an impairment in speaking, listening, reading, or writing that a person can have after a stroke in the language area of the brain. We learned about the different types of aphasia. This is such a fascinating field. Aphasia can differ. The person may not be able to talk much at all but can comprehend fairly well, the person may talk but nothing he says makes sense and he can’t comprehend very well, the person may be able to talk normally (what he says makes sense) with an impaired ability to repeat,  or a person may be unable to talk normally but be able to repeat. Of course each type of aphasia can be to varying degrees and levels for each person. I am interested in working some more with people with aphasia.

Dysphagia (swallowing disorders) was taught by an adjunct teacher. She works part time at a hospital in Roanoke. She’s taught the class almost every year since she graduated with her master’s. She was a good teacher and really knew her material. It was amazing to learn how everything works and comes together to make a swallow occur. It was even more amazing to realize all that has to happen happens so fast. I won’t mention the specifics here, but if you are interested just ask me. We also learned how to treat people who have problems with swallowing. I decided I’m not very interested in this field. I don’t want to be looking in people’s mouths at their unchewed food, hearing them choke, cleaning out their mouths, etc.

Well, that’s a brief summary about my classes this semester. I was able to get an A in all of my classes. The good news is that I have completed all of my classes for my Master’s degree! I’m very happy about that. I have 7 credits and 2 externships left. I will do a 5 credit externship this summer in a medical setting and a 2 credit externship this fall in a school setting. I am taking the Praxis 2 exam on June 13 and will have a comprehensive exam in the fall. I’m looking forward to graduating on December 18, 2009.

In particular, it seems that ICR is the intended beneficiary of this change, which apparently would allow them to grant the M.S. without state permission or regulation.

Some thoughts:

It is in a sense unfortunate that education has become such a political football. I have absolutely no problem with the state controlling education in a limited sense. It is in the interest of the state to do so. However, the politicization of education means that serious discussions about its goals and procedures will be heavily colored by political rhetoric. Again, the political rhetoric is necessary in the abstract, but modern American political rhetoric is simply too weak to substantively address the weight of a robust educational debate.

I don’t know that I would support this bill. On the one hand, I think it would be a good thing if ICR could issue an M.S. It sounds like much of the opposition is ideological — the education board doesn’t want to condone, or possibly even permit, creationism. But the bill would have far wider consequences. Basically it would allow non-profit, non-government-funded schools to invent and issue whatever degrees they wish. Eugenie Scott, quoted in the FoxNews article, makes this very point, and with good support.

It sounds like ICR is appealing to the state board for the right to issue the degree under the current statute. I think this is the route to take. I’m sure the state representative is well-meaning, but I fear that his approach is likely to further discredit schools like ICR.

In the news article, Scott claims that ICR’s offering is vastly inferior to UT’s or Baylor’s. According to his article, his primary concern is the ICR position that the Earth is only about 10,000 years old. I fail to see how this point is relevant, except in the sense that it treats seriously a view that a fairly decent percentage of Americans actually hold.

I would be curious to see exactly how ICR is pursuing their court appeal with the state board — on what grounds to they claim the right to issue the degree?

So it seems there are actually two issues here. First, ICR claims the right to some sort of equal protection/fairness for their views, religious though they may be. I tend to side with them on this point, at least in a qualified, theoretical sense. Second, the bill at hand proposes to vastly expand the powers non-profit groups to award state-recognized degrees. I tend to oppose this point. It is not in the interest of the state or most of its citizens to devalue degrees. But it looks like several critics of the bill are conflating these two points. They recognize the impact of the bill, but they can’t seem to get away from their instinctive opposition to a creationist perspective. I think the best solution would be for the state to find a way to objectively assess the quality of ICR’s program, without any prejudice for or against a religious position and its implications, and then to grant or deny the degree based on the assessment. The bill is too much

I had two clients last semester. Both were nonverbal. The irony of it struck me at the end of the semester… I was doing speech therapy on two people that couldn’t speak!

My first client was an almost four year old girl with autism. She has been coming to the clinic for several years. She seems to have the  intellectual functioning of about a 1-2 year old.  She is a pretty girl and sweet until she doesn’t get her way. When she doesn’t get what she wants she throws a tantrum and screams and cries. Thankfully she is not violent. She constently hummed and experimented with her voice using vowels. I found out at the end of the semester that’s typical with autism. Because her communication was so limited she would take my arm and direct it toward an object she wanted but couldn’t get to. She loved bubbles and would smile and laugh and pop them for hours if allowed. I worked with her alone one hour a week. During that time we worked on getting her to look to request. I would deny the object or action until she looked at me. This often resulted in her crying. One hour a week she was in a group session with another autistic girl the same age. Another client was a 29 year old non-verbal boy with Rubenstein Taybi syndrome at about a 5 year old cognitive level. We had some fun experiences in group therapy!

My second client was a 66 year old woman. She had a stroke in 2001 and a stroke on the other side of her brain in 2005. She has aphasia (cognitive impairment), apraxia (no volitional control in motor planning and sequencing), and dysarthria (muscle weakness). Due to the apraxia and dysarthria she couldn’t speak. She had a laptop with some programs on it to help her communicate, but she wasn’t very good with it. Her husband really wanted her to be able to speak. During the semester we worked on oral motor muscle exercises to increase muscle strength, vowel sounds and typing on her laptop. She greatly improved on her communication speed with her laptop. She worked very hard and was a good client to have.  Oh by the way, she was trilingual and taught Spanish and French before her stroke (Spanish is her first language).

So, although I had some tough clients, I learned a great deal from having them. This semester I have two boys, and I will be working with them on articulation and stuttering. That is about all I know since I just got the assignment today. Hopefully I won’t wait until the summer to post about them!

My schedule was very different this year. I had 2 block classes on Monday, and a block class on Wednesday night. I had clinic Tuesday and Thursday at 10am, 1pm, and 6pm plus meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday. I didn’t have anything on Friday. It was very nice.

My first class was Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). AAC is providing ways for people to communicate that can’t speak. It can be anything from using a computer to type, computer software with pictures to click that will speak, or pages with pictures and messages. The user points or clicks on the icon and the message is spoken (if using a computer) or the other person reads it. It’s a great way to open the doors of communication for those who cannot speak. I learned how to assess a person to determine if he qualifies for AAC and how to create an AAC system. There were several projects in the class. Every student’s project was a part of the whole. One project was to research quotes for various developmental disabilities to have on file for future use. Another project was to take a category and find a line drawing and a photograph of 10 items and make them in various sizes. This was helpful because there ended up being 28 different categories once everyone did their work. That will save a LOT of time when I need to use them since I won’t have to do all that work.

My second class was Autism Spectrum Disorders. It was taught by the same teacher that taught AAC. She was a great teacher, so it wasn’t too bad to have her for 5 hours a day. This was such an interesting class since autism is such a hot topic these days. I learned the different disorders in the spectrum, how to assess a person, and various intervention approaches. The projects in this class were similar to the projects in AAC in that each part was combined to form a great resource to have for the future.

My Wednesday night class was Research. I couldn’t take it through my department because of a schedule conflict (I was supposed to take this class last year, but couldn’t because of another schedule conflict). I ended up taking it through the education department. Let’s just say that it was a waste of my $1710. It wasn’t a waste of my time because we only met one hour out of the three (other than the last class where we met for 1 1/2 hours) and halfway through October the teacher canceled class for the rest of the semester. Her reason was so we could work on our research papers. I think I could have taught the class better than she did, and I haven’t even written a dissertation!! I’m thankful I learned how to write a review of the literature in undergrad, otherwise I would have struggled alot with this class.

In a nutshell, those were my classes for the semester. I’ll write another post on my interesting clinic experiences.

The whole discussion is silly. Experience is important, but we need to understand what experience we’re talking about. Usually people compare her to Biden or McCain and point out her relative youth and provincial attitudes. In reality, if she should be counted out for not measuring up to their tenure, then the top of the opposite ticket is out of luck too.

But what about this whole “experience” thing in politics anyway? Is experience really necessary? Gov. Palin’s critics seem to be equating experience with knowledge. She supposedly hasn’t been around long enough and therefore doesn’t know enough. But does experience always lead to knowledge?

I say no. And here are three arguments:

First, the kind of experience matters. It’s one thing to get to sit in on a board meeting of a major corporation. You might learn a lot. But it’s quite another thing to run the meeting. No amount of watching can fully prepare you to actually run the thing. Likewise, many Americans have the “experience” of watching politics (filtered by their televisions). But relatively few could actually do what politicians do (or ought to do). Teachers know that teaching a subject requires far greater understanding than just soaking it up in a chair. We can over-emphasize the value of “hands-on” experience, but we cannot deny that doing is not the same as watching. Governor Palin is the only candidate with actual political executive experience. Does that make her qualified? Not necessarily, but her experience of running things is somewhat different than the others.

Second, the content of the experience matters. We could find some aged musician with lots of frequent flier miles, but he wouldn’t necessarily be a reliable source on foreign policy. (Then again, he might be.) If a crime boss ran for political office, he might be able to claim lots of executive experience, but it isn’t quite the executive experience that most people are looking for in a leader.

Third, and most important, experience doesn’t necessarily produce knowledge. We could take a behaviorist tack and claim that, after a while, everyone can be trained to do certain things. But this is not the kind of knowledge we want in a leader. We want someone who will learn from mistakes (both theirs and others’). Moreover, we want someone who can learn without experience–i.e. by direct instruction¹ . When someone persists for years in foolishness, they probably aren’t qualified for public office. This would be a problem for Senator Biden. His weath of “experience,” particularly in foreign policy, has managed to land him on the wrong side of nearly every major foreign policy issue in the last decade. Further, he doesn’t seem to have learned that when he doesn’t know what to say, he shouldn’t say anything at all. For all his “experience,” his knowledge, judgment, and wisdom are certainly in question.

Governor Palin needs more knowledge, as we should expect. (She is, after all the governor of one of the states furthest from Washington D.C., and governors aren’t always in the “need-to-know” loop of national security and foreign policy.) But as I anticipate tonight’s debate, I hope Gov. Palin will have an opportunity to demonstrate that she learns quickly and that she can draw on the wealth of knowledge among her advisors. If she does so, she will further convince me that the media doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about. She can’t attack “experience” per se, since her running mate is running on that very thing (in an earlier post I suggested that this might not be all good). But she can attack Biden’s knowledge and judgment, and I hope she does.

It would be great to have someone with real experience in the White House again.

1. Consider how often the book of Proverbs connects wisdom, understanding, and instruction with “hearing.” back↩

My question is this: Would the amorphous, free learning environment that the author appears to propose actually contradict the content of the learning? Part of education (a liberal education) is to learn the structure of and connections between spheres of knowledge. I would be concerned that the undirected learning approach might create a contradiction between content and vehicle.

Thoughts?