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Work-Team Relationships

Building relationships is important in all facets of life, and work-team relationships are no different! These are the people you see and work closely with, day in and day out.  During the week, you spend more waking hours at work than you probably do at home.  Not only is it important to just “get along” with them, but when you can really grow close as a team, it makes your job that much more enjoyable.  Having at least 1 or 2 close friends at work that you can go to to vent, laugh, cry, etc… in my experience, is priceless.

I just started a new job last summer and had to start all over again at ground zero in building my work-team relationships after being at my previous job for 5 years.  That being said, I have had wonderful work team relationships in both places I’ve been, so I want to share with you some things I think have made it work as well as it has (and a huge thank you to my work friends who helped me brainstorm ideas for this post!).

I’m writing about building relationships both from the perspective of being a fellow team member on the therapist/teacher team, and also from the perspective of building a relationship with someone you are supervising.  This is a long post, but stay with me.  I have some valuable input for you!


First up.. building relationships with fellow teacher/therapist colleagues!


Be open-minded and don’t take offense.  I just had this chat last week with the BCBA I work with.  No one on our team gets offended if she (or anyone else) asks if we need help or steps in when a kid’s meltdown is escalating and she/they have a strategy to try.  The reverse applies, too- she has told me multiple times that if I want her to be using a different communication method/strategy with a kid, to please tell her and she will not be offended.  I think a big part of being on a successful team is knowing that you are knowledgeable in your specific area, but that because our professions all overlap in so many ways, we all have things we can learn from each other.  As long as no one oversteps boundaries (e.g. making decisions about another professional’s area without consulting them), it can be a wonderful learning experience.  I am always eager to learn more behavior strategies from our BCBA and more about sensory processing from our OTs.  Keep an open mind.  You might just learn something that completely changes the way you view a particular student or situation!

Pitch in.  The other day at work, during my therapy time with one of our kids being potty trained, there was a “misfire” all over the bathroom.  One of my team members got me some towels while another one wiped up the floor, while I was cleaning up the kiddo and getting him changed.  I cannot tell you how much I appreciated the help! At my last job, there were a few times where I helped with administering language-based tasks of G-3 testing (our PreK testing in the school district that happened 3x a year) for kids on my caseload if the teacher was getting really backlogged.  My therapy schedule was shot during testing week, anyway– pitching in a few minutes here and there doesn’t take a ton of effort, and lets your team members know you’re a team player.  A small gesture often times goes a long way!

Co-teach! I know this is a lot easier in the early childhood setting, but I always LOVED doing in-class services in our preschool classrooms.  It gives the teachers a chance to see what you do, what you’re working on, cuing strategies you use, etc… so they can carry out the same things throughout the rest of our students’ days.  The early childhood teachers I worked with loved having SLPs and OTs come in and do a small group rotation.  The reverse is true, too– I would see an activity the teacher was doing and would be inspired in how I could spin it into a language activity! Buy-in is way higher if the teachers can SEE what you’re doing and see it implemented successfully!

If you’re in an elementary school setting where in-class lessons are a little trickier, and the buy-in is much lower.. pick 1 teacher you get along with who is open to you coming into their classroom.  Start with that one classroom, and when things go well, inevitably they’ll tell their other grade-level teammates, and they’ll start to get interested, which may open up doors for you to work with other classroom teachers, too!

Celebrate! Celebrate the funny stories and little successes with your team members.  Even if you have nothing else in common, you have your students in common, and that is something you can bond over.  We all need encouragement to keep going sometimes– sharing a breakthrough is sometimes the confirmation that “I AM doing it right and we ARE making progress!”  Sharing successes also allows your teammates to see your passion for the kids you are working with!  Additionally, a funny story to make your teammates laugh is sometimes just what they need after a stressful morning/day!

Take an interest in their lives.  Ask about how their weekends went when you see them on Monday.  If they mention their significant other, ask how long they’ve been dating/married.  Ask how they met.  Ask about their kids.  They have a dog and you’re a dog lover, too? Share a funny story about your dog! They did something really cool over the weekend that you love to do or have been dying to try, too? Share that! Take an interest in their lives and make connections.  If there’s really no common ground you can talk about… See “Celebrate” above 😉

Understand that each role on the team has their own set of stressors.  Maybe you’re stressed because you have 8 IEP meetings next week and you’re the case manager for 5 of them.  Maybe your OT is stressed because all of a sudden there’s 10 new kids in K-5 who need sensory supports and she has to find a time to get in and observe them.  Maybe one of the ECSE teachers is stressed because she just got 2 new kids added to her already-too-full classroom.  Maybe your PT who is only there once a week found out that an IEP meeting was rescheduled for that same day and the case manager forgot to tell her.  Everyone is stressed.  Respect that.  It is never okay to play the “one-up” game and make others feel like their stressors aren’t as valid as yours.


From a supervisory/assistant relationship standpoint…

When I had my school job, I had my own para for the last 3 out of 5 years.  We had a wonderful relationship and by the end of my time there, I (only half)-jokingly referred to her as my life coach because I frequently asked for her input/advice.  I told her I was writing this post, and asked her what she felt like made our kind of supervisory/assistant relationship work as well as it did.  Here’s what she said:

1.  Respect: “You always acknowledged me (and others) and never made us feel inferior for having a different job title.”  It’s not hard to greet people and respond when they greet you.  Not everyone at my last job did that, but it’s something SO simple and makes a world of difference.  When people feel acknowledged and welcomed, they’re happier and perform better at their jobs.

2.  “You gave me areas of responsibility so I could keep busy, grow in ability, and feel accomplished.  That made me better and made me more valuable to the group as a whole.”   Play to your assistant’s strengths and interests.  My para became excellent at running small group rotations in the classrooms.  She learned how to adapt my activities to different levels of kids and could run these without needing much guidance from me.  This was a win for me, too, because I often used this time to pull kids for IEP/eval data, or to sit down and work on reports for a little bit.  Sometimes, we would both come in if a classroom had a kid that needed more support during a group or a rotation in general that needed two sets of hands to keep things running smoothly.  I could let her run it while I focused more on specific kids.

My para was also really great with the language kids, too, and I felt like that was her strength more than articulation.  Articulation therapy was also less of an interest to her, so when I scheduled her with kids, I tried to have her seeing the language kids more than articulation kids.  Our elementary SLP saw the opposite in her para- she thought articulation was a great strength for her para, so her para saw a lot of artic kids.  Figure out a way to use their strengths to your (and the kids’!) advantage!

3.  “You always complimented when you saw good methods and teaching, but took in stride things that didn’t work by trying something else.  It was never a big deal.”   Positive feedback is so important! Even if you know you’re doing a good job, it’s always nice to hear it from someone else, too.  When you’re supervising a para or SLPA, they need to know what they’re doing well (increased confidence = increased job performance, which benefits you and your students, too!) as well as ideas for strategies they might try to change things up next time if something didn’t go well.  They’re not trained SLPs, and don’t have the same extensive background as us.  We can’t expect them to just know how to do things.  It’s our responsibility to give feedback and gradually shape them into effective therapy providers under our supervision.

4. “You asked for my input and you always included everyone when the breakthroughs happened so we could celebrate!”  I feel like part of why my para enjoyed her job was because I frequently shared new ideas I was excited to try and shared mini milestones of success.  Your passion for your career is contagious and rubs off on people.  Your assistant is doing therapy, too– asking for their input and including him/her in the excitement shows them you value them and their efforts, as well.

Whew! Are you still with me? I know that was a long one.  But, building relationships at work is so, so, SO important in job satisfaction, and I hope you felt like these tips were useful.  For other bloggers’ tips on building relationships at work, check out the link-up below!

An InLinkz Link-up

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Filed Under: Uncategorized 4 Comments

Comments

  1. Kristin Immicke says

    November 6, 2016 at 12:52 am

    Building relationships is so important. Great post!

    Reply
  2. James Lackey says

    November 7, 2016 at 10:20 am

    Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I really appreciate your efforts and I am waiting for your next write ups thank you once again.Keep doing awesome would like to see more blog entry on the website. I have not been this thrilled by a blog entry for a long while! You have it, whatever that implies in blogging.

    Reply
  3. Mary Cooper says

    November 19, 2016 at 4:45 pm

    These are all such great tips. Thanks for your wisdom!!!

    Reply
  4. sirking says

    April 21, 2017 at 3:14 pm

    Good focuses you composed here..Great stuff…I think you've made some genuinely intriguing points.Keep up the great work. IT Consulting Firms

    Reply

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We’ve been playing with allll the bug and garden We’ve been playing with allll the bug and garden activities this month up until this week when I shifted more to ice cream.. but I’m happy to share that my companion for “Up in the Garden, Down in the Dirt” is finally up on TpT!!

I love this book because it lends itself so well to SO many play extension activities with bugs, birds, flowers, and vegetable gardens.  We are lucky enough to have an outdoor garden where I work, so the classrooms have all been helping to take care of the plants— the best real life extension activity I could ask for!

The book is also chock-full of s-blends— and isn’t anything loaded with s-blends an SLP staple? 😂 I even made lists for you of all the s blend words (and other frequently occurring sound targets within the book) so you know what words you can target if you’re seeing kids in mixed groups. 

Swipe through to see all the fun hands-on activities you’ll get to work on themed vocabulary with your students— through labeling objects, verbs, object functions, and basic concepts.  Easily target multiple goals at once with activities that target different goal areas simultaneously.

Feeling like your brain is mush by this point in the year and just want someone to give you some other play activity ideas for your theme without having to search allll the places? Gotcha covered ✅  You’ll also get a list of some extra play activities with goal ideas to target within them!

Music creates some of the best connections— and it’s one of the best ways to start out your circle times/push in lessons… but you probably don’t have time to search and find the good garden and bug related songs on YouTube, right? 

Well, good news— You’re covered on that front, too, with a separate pdf just for links to different songs WITH Target goal ideas for each song, too! Download to your iPad and go!

I’ll leave this companion on sale for the next 24 hours (through Friday night) so you can still grab it at a discount for next year even if you’re done with this theme (your future self will thank you 😉)

Link in profile! ➡️ @rockchalkspeechtalk
If you’re looking to add some diversity to your If you’re looking to add some diversity to your bookshelf with May’s garden + bug themes, check out these 4 garden books featuring black or Hispanic characters!

1- “Plants Feed Me” - Short and simple text to explain where fruits and veggies come from and the different parts of the plants we eat.

Kids work together to take care of the garden (pick, water, dig, plant, etc.. great for verbs!) No main character, but features kids who are Black, white and Hispanic.

2- Lola Plants a Garden:  Lola wants to plant a flower garden. Her mom helps her through the planning steps. Lola reads books about gardens, chooses her favorite flowers, makes a list, buys seeds, then plants them. She waits and waits, then finally her plants grow! 

This book lends itself to activities that target sequencing, gardening verbs, and object functions. Lola makes a flower book while she waits for her real ones, so art supplies AND gardening tools are depicted in this book— perfect for object function targets!

3- Miguel’s Community Farm: Great book for comparing/contrasting!Miguel is looking for sunflowers, so the book starts off describing all the features of a sunflower.

On each page, Miguel sees a plant that shares a feature of a sunflower and wonders if he’s found them. However, the book then describes one way the plants are different, too (Sunflowers have yellow petals.  Artichokes have petals, too (similarity), but they’re green, not yellow (difference).

Miguel has 2 dads, who aren’t a prominent part of the book but are part of the 1st and last page illustrations.  The last page also depicts a garden party with Miguel’s friends, who are of varying ethnic backgrounds and physical abilities. 

4- Amara’s Farm: Same author/illustrator as Miguel’s Community Garden (featuring the same friends at the end!), and another compare/contrast book in the same format. 

Amara is searching for pumpkins on the farm, but this could fit into a Spring garden theme since it compares/contrasts produce. There’s also a lot of bugs in the illustrations, making it easy to fit into a bug and garden combo theme, too!

Did you find any new books to check out? If you did, share w/ another SLP/teacher friend!
You asked, so here it is! A post about allllll the You asked, so here it is! A post about allllll the things we were able to work on with this St Patrick’s Day “party” we did last week! ☘️💚 

Swipe through ➡️ to see it broken down into separate parts! It can cover so many areas from speech sounds/ syllable shapes, play imitation, to WH questions, following directions, and categorizing!

Have a friend that would love this? Be sure to share this post and send it their way!
Who else loves interactive books?! These are some Who else loves interactive books?! These are some of my favorite things to make because they’re SO versatile for use across your caseload! You can use this one for…

➡️simple inferences
➡️labeling animal vocabulary 
➡️who questions
➡️what questions
➡️core vocab like “turn” “on” “not” “look” “see” “play” and “eat.” ➡️imitating animal sounds (great for CV and CVCV syllables) 
➡️yes/no questions

I’ve also been pairing “Let’s…” and “It’s…” phrases with my kids who are gestalt language processors working on mitigation (Let’s turn the page! Let’s see who it is, It’s a pig/cow/chicken etc…)

Swipe through to see some sample pages and to hear what other people are saying about this book!
TIP OF THE DAY: Print your science experiment visu TIP OF THE DAY: Print your science experiment visuals or cheat sheets 2 to a page to have a small, handy version in front of you to reference for yourself without taking up extra space! 

Speaking of space… Since we all know SLP workspaces can come at a premium in a school… what’s the worst place you’ve had to do therapy?

I haven’t had any seriously awful ones, but one that comes to mind was probably in the preschool/kindergarten pod, at a table just behind a noisy book fair setup.  That was the day one of my kids loudly asked me “Why you got a stick?” But she did d/st blends so it did NOT sound like “stick” and I was mortified and thought “Welp this is how I lose my job” 😂🤣 

Tell me yours below! ⬇️
Tell me with an emoji! Do you plan… 🌼 Just b Tell me with an emoji! Do you plan…

🌼 Just before a session

1️⃣ 1-2 weeks at a time

🦋 Have a weekly theme but wing it from there

😅 lol what’s planning

I always find the wide range of differences between all of us so interesting!
Story props are one of the best ways to keep kids Story props are one of the best ways to keep kids engaged during book reading- and reenacting a story with props is one of the strongest predictors of story comprehension!

Make sure you grab these free story visuals from my TPT store for Little Blue Truck’s Valentine for your therapy this week, and pair them with your farm toys! We ❤️ Little Blue Truck at home, too!

You can find these visuals at the link in my profile or let me know if you want me to DM you a direct link!
10 on the Sled has been my lifeline for planning t 10 on the Sled has been my lifeline for planning therapy since coming back from Christmas break, when every day I never know which kids will be out, which coworkers will be out, or who’s caseload I’ll be covering when I have said cancelations!

It’s been a minute since I’ve uploaded anything to TPT, and I’m super stoked about getting this 10 on the sled unit out to you!

When I was in the schools, it was always a challenge to find enough time to push in to the preschool rooms— there was always centers and literacy/language small group time, but when they’re only there for 3 hours (with recess in there, too) and there’s 30 kids to see during those 3 hours.. those two times are definitely not enough!

And, even though you’re adaptable and can make just about anything be a language activity.. sometimes it’s nice to come in with a plan vs crossing your fingers that whatever is happening during that time is relevant to you.  But, you also want to be respectful of the teacher’s focus during certain times of their day, too!

Juggling all the things.

So, when I create materials for you, I create things you can use to push in during even more times of the day to give you even more windows of opportunity.

▶️Story props to use with the class if you’re pushing in during whole group

▶️ Size concept play dough creation mats that you could use if you’re going in during a math center time.  Compare sizes.  Count how many long and short, big and small pieces you need.

▶️Fine motor-based activities like tracing lines, creating with popsicle sticks, and play dough pages so that maybe you can be a station during sign-in in the morning, too, after they work on their name with the teacher or OT!

The materials are so adaptable, though, that you can push in or pull out, use individually or in a small group, and lots of the pages can be used to target multiple goals at once.  Using real objects with the activities helps keep it play-based, too, to keep your little ones engaged!

So, whatcha think? Ready to check it out? Head over to the link in my profile or let me know if you want me to DM you the link!

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