SLPs - Introducing yourself to your new school team!

You may be working remotely but you still have the opportunity to be an integral part of the school team. Building a relationship with the site principals, teachers, and other SLPs will make your job more enjoyable and effective.

If you put the time in early to get to know your people, daily hiccups won’t become big challenges. A good relationship will help with:

• Scheduling: we all know that a speech therapy schedule is like a sudoku puzzle and we sometimes need some compromise all around to make it work.

• IEPs: getting teacher input for your assessment and report is so important to gain a complete picture of your student. Whether it is asking them to complete a survey or to provide input for the IEP, teamwork will provide the best outcome for your student.

• SLP strategy implementation: a good relationship will allow you to share strategies that can be implemented in the classroom to facilitate optimal communication and comprehension.

We recommend creating an email or letter with the following:

• basic contact information. The best way to contact me is via ….. at…..

• photograph of yourself -it is nice to put a face to a name.

• education background info

• experience and info about any of your specialities (literacy, bilingual, etc)

• maybe a little info about your hobbies, etc, to make you relatable. (ex: I love spending time in nature during my free time).

You may be remote but you are a very important part of their SLP team. Your effort to build that relationship will be appreciated!