In the midst of expanding school closures across the country, school districts are being pressed  to transition rapidly from onsite to online learning and service delivery. Continuity is especially important for students who receive special education-related services. The Department of Education confirmed on March 13 that if a school continues to provide educational opportunities to the general student population during a school closure, the school must ensure that students with disabilities also have equal access to the same opportunities, including special education-related services. As the leading provider of live online special education-related services to K-12 schools, PresenceLearning is expanding its offerings to help school-based special education teams deliver services remotely to students at home. PresenceLearning clinicians are seamlessly working with partner schools to move their…

Leah started working as an SLP in 2017, and started with PL in January, 2019.  How has the PL online platform enabled you to help your students and the schools you serve in new ways? With the PL platform I am able to organize my therapy sessions and activities more efficiently, which allows for better-run therapy sessions and more time for communication with school staff.  Doing teletherapy, all the activities are right there on the computer. Working in a school, a lot of time is taken up simply finding, corralling, organizing activities, etc. With PL, having all the activities online and then being able to organize them into categories and subcategories allows me to do all these steps very quickly and spontaneously as needed. Because…

Lindsey T., M.A, CCC-SLP, is speech-language pathologist, teletherapist, and parent of four children. She joined the PresenceLearning Care Network in 2015. We spoke with Lindsey about her experience working as a teletherapist. How has the PL online platform enabled you to help your students and the schools you serve in new ways? I have been able to provide services to districts that do not have an SLP. In addition, I have been able to provide virtual services to students in their homes which is super convenient for them.  The PresenceLearning Library has a ton of resources which is really great. Whenever I have a student on my schedule who I haven’t met before, or a special ed director calls me and wants me to see…

Deidre Sturm, MS, MA, CCC-SLP, BCBA, received twin Masters degrees, one in Speech Pathology Audiology, and a second Masters in Behavior Analysis, in the 1980s. She received the first degree at the University at Albany in Albany, New York, and the second degree at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. In addition to being an SLP, Deidre is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst.  A California resident for 20 years, Deidre moved to Longmont, Colorado three years ago to be close to her two sons and new granddaughter. She’s an environmental activist and commutes everywhere by eBike. On her eBike, she can travel 25 miles in a pop. She loves the wonderful trails in Colorado. What inspired you to become an SLP? I wanted to…

Kim Priola, M.C.D., CCC-SLP, is a Louisiana native, born and raised in South Louisiana in the New Orleans area where she still lives today. She did her undergraduate studies at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana, and attended Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans for her M.C.D in Communication Disorders. Kim enjoys biking and kayaking. She loves to read. And she especially loves to spend time with her family. Three generations live near each other…her grown children live nearby and so do her parents. She started with PL in 2018. What inspired you to become an SLP? My high school had a career day when I was a junior. A speech pathologist came and talked with us about all the opportunities in…

Natalie Post, M.S., CCC-SLP, lead clinician, joined the PL Care Network in 2014. We interviewed her about the roots of her passion for speech language therapy and asked her to tell us a little about her experience transitioning to teletherapy.  Introduction I was born in Pensacola, Florida. When I was in high school, we moved to Colorado. We were very involved in the church. Our church college was in Nampa, Idaho, a little town outside of Boise, which is where I went for my undergrad. After that I went across the state to Idaho State University, in Pocatello, for my Master’s degree. My family has moved all my life—every 2-3 years we’ve moved—so it’s just normal for me to hop all over. After grad school,…

Natalie has been working as an SLP for over 30 years. She joined PL in 2014 and is a lead clinician. How has the PL online platform enabled you to help your students and the schools you serve in new ways? I think it helps serve the students better because the students are drawn in more to the activities on the computer. The platform also lends itself to more turn taking. If you have kids in a group in a typical school setting, when you’re playing a game, kids will be reaching out to each other and getting into more interactions physically and verbally with each other because everyone is right together. But in the teletherapy group session, even though they are sitting right next…

Before joining PresenceLearning, Cheryl Messier, CCC-SLP, practiced speech-language pathology for 19 years in K-5 in public schools. She’s been working with PresenceLearning since 2016. We sat down with Cheryl to talk about her work as a teletherapist. Could you walk us through your daily routine? A “day in the life of a PL therapist” if you will? Every day is different. I mostly focus my therapy sessions on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Mondays I focus on IEPs and evaluations. And on Fridays, I babysit my grandchild.  I’m licensed in Maine and California. I start my teletherapy sessions early in the morning at 8 am Eastern (5 am PT) with my Maine students. Then I take a little breather before my California students begin. I like…

Janine Kessler, M.S., CCC-SLP, has over 20 years of speech therapy experience in schools and has been a teletherapist with PL since 2017. She grew up in Canada, owns a home in Missoula, Montana, and currently lives in Sacramento, CA. Janine and her husband love to travel.  What inspired you to become an SLP? Growing up I thought I might want to be a teacher. I liked the idea of being in education. My dad had a friend whose daughter was a speech-language pathologist. One thing led to another and pretty soon I was going to college for speech therapy. I was always attracted to the kids in school who struggled with learning. Even in college, we had to take education classes for our undergraduate…

  Jenna has been working as an Occupational Therapist since 2009. Jenna is a Lead Clinician at PresenceLearning. How has the PL online platform enabled you to help your students and the schools you serve in new ways? The PL platform is highly interactive which helps us to better engage the students. As a clinician, I have a wide range of treatment activities readily available and I can switch between them seamlessly as needed throughout the session. As an OT, I work off of the platform a lot too, working on hand strengthening, scissor skills, etc. The students love watching me mirror things for them (we usually turn it into a game!). The various camera/screen sizes and the ability to use two cameras simultaneously has…