Episode 22: Pathways to Speech-to-Print Instruction with Speech-Language Pathologist Miriam Fein and Educational Therapist Sherry Cramer

In the twenty-second episode of The Sounds-Write Podcast, Miriam Fein and Sherry Cramer discuss their roles and experience, the partnerships between parents and different education professionals in a struggling reader's life and talk about speech-to-print and how it's affected their practice.

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Transcript

Laura: 00:02
Hello, and welcome to the Sounds-Write podcast. I'm the host, Laura, and in today's episode, I'm joined by Miriam Fein and Sherry Cramer. Miriam is a speech language pathologist based near Boston. She provides interventions to students of all ages in the areas of reading, spelling, writing, and language. Sherry is an educational therapist who supports students with a wide range of academic skills and subject areas. In this episode, Miriam and Sherry discuss their roles and experiences, the partnerships between parents and different education professionals in a struggling reader's life, and talk about speech-to-print and how it's affected their practice. I hope you enjoy the episode. Hello, Miriam and Sherry. It's lovely to have you on the podcast.

Miriam: 00:50
It's wonderful to be here. Thank you.

Sherry: 00:52
I appreciate your offer to have us speak.

Laura: 00:57
Great. So first off, we're going to do this kind of one by one. But first, Miriam, I'd love for you to introduce yourself and tell listeners a bit about your professional background first off.

Miriam: 01:08
Sure, I would love to, Laura. Thank you. So I started out in my career as a speech and language pathologist. It was a field that I actually didn't really know about until about maybe a few years after I graduated from college. I was always really fascinated by language as a child. I was in a position early on, about five years old, when I had to learn English. And my family immigrated from Romania to the United States, and I was in a dual language school. So I was actually learning English and Hebrew at the same time, and learning to read and write the two alphabetic systems. And I think it just, I was always fascinated by language and language learning. I was a language major in college, Russian language and literature. And so I loved language, and I taught English as an additional language to adults for a while, but I didn't know about speech and language pathology. So I was very, it just seemed like a very good fit. That was my, my interest. And I started out working with older students, middle school and high school, and then kind of made my way down to the beginning readers.

Laura: 02:29
Yeah. Brilliant. So you were just talking about some of the students that you work with. Could you describe some of the specific challenges that they have and how you work with them?

Miriam: 02:41
Sure. So, you know, with my initial work with adolescents, that kind of led me to peel back the layers and realize how much literacy had impacted their trajectories. I think some of the biggest challenges with the older students are the social emotional impact of the literacy challenges that they've had. And developing a safe, kind of trusting environment where they can feel vulnerable and be vulnerable and take risks and do what they need to do to improve their literacy skills. And then also the language, the broader language difficulties that some of the students face beyond the word-level decoding, some of which is because there tends to be a correlation, an overlap between children who struggle with that word-level difficulty and some of the broader language comprehension difficulties. And also because for the older children, they just have missed out on so much text reading and knowledge and language. And so, you know, those difficulties can present a challenge, too, in terms of how to address everything that they've, that they need to work on.

Laura: 04:14
Yeah, of course. And I thought, I think it's interesting what you said there about the kind of emotional aspects of illiteracy, and that's something that I've asked a few different podcast guests now about, because it's one element of reading and writing instruction that isn't mentioned very often but actually can have such a significant impact on how students kind of respond to that intervention, because so many students go into reading interventions, you know, so angry, frustrated, anxious about the situation that they've kind of been left in.

Miriam: 04:54
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And they're also, you know, they're also used to kind of hiding their difficulties, and they've, you know, many of them have had a certain amount of success in hiding. And so that becomes a reinforcing kind of behaviour and, you know, impacts, you know, even just the basic, you know, reading words and not guessing. I see that as a factor, because it just feels easier to just guess, and sometimes they're right and they can get away with it. And so the emotional aspects really interact with the nitty gritty of intervention, for sure.

Laura: 05:39
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's interesting when you're, for example, reading with a student and you can see where their eyes are flitting. You can see that they're struggling with a word, and their eyes are kind of flitting around the room, flitting to the picture to see if they can guess what it is from the picture instead of using their decoding strategies, or maybe they don't have them yet. Sherry, same to you. Could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your professional background, please?

Sherry: 06:08
Well, my original career plan was to teach language arts at the high school level, which is kids from around 14 to 18. And my first job, I had a student who was basically a non-reader, and I was not prepared for that. So I tried to figure out, you know, how does this happen? And I had a conversation with a school psychologist who suggested that I look into learning disabilities, which was a fairly new concept at that time, this was in the early, late seventies, early eighties. So I went back to college and I'd already had a master's degree, so I ended up adding to that and I got certified as a special education teacher in learning disabilities, and spent 30 years teaching high school and middle school students with reading difficulties in public schools.

Laura: 07:17
Brilliant. Thank you. And more recently you've been involved with the association of Educational Therapists. Could you tell us about that, your involvement with that and the journal The Educational Therapist, please.

Sherry: 07:31
All righty. The Association for Educational Therapists - usually called AET because it's a mouthful to say it otherwise - it's a professional organization that was established in the late seventies and it sets the professional standards and requirements for people who practice the profession of educational therapy. It includes the academic requirements, which are quite hefty, ethical standards and continuing education requirements. And one thing that I really appreciate about AET is the fact that we're really expected to know deeply the areas that we deal with, with clients. Another thing I think is interesting about AET is that it is an international organization, and the majority of folks who are educational therapists are actually in California, in the US. But we have people scattered all over the world. In fact, we have one member in the UK. Her name is Catherine Wimpey and she's in Southport. We've communicated by email. So it's interesting to see how it spread from a small group of folks in California to all over the world. And it's something I didn't even know about until after I retired and was trying to think, okay, what do I do with the rest of my life now? And I happened to notice an ad about AET in another journal. And when I started reading it seemed like it would be a nice fit for me. Some of the things I thought were really important to me was the fact that we could serve children, adolescents, adults. There was a broad span of options there. And also people who practice educational therapy often have a variety of specializations. Some people might work on literacy, others on math, some might be executive functioning specialists, some might work it with specialized populations like people on the autism spectrum, so there's a lot of flexibility there as well. And there was no requirement for a specific method to be taught. Whatever was taught, of course, you needed to know well, and to be well trained in it, but they weren't trying to promote any specific thing. Also, speaking of the social emotional aspects, one of the core values of educational therapy is understanding the social emotional factors that are related to learning. And that is powerful. I think it makes all the difference. And also that we need to work as a team. We're not just working individually with a client, but we're working with parents and schools and allied professionals, and all working together to make things work better for the child or possibly the adult that we're working with. In fact, we have a category within the organization for allied professionals. And that's wonderful because it gives me options to communicate with people with some different skills than I have, and I can learn from them and they can learn from me, and sometimes they're just the right person to answer a specific question. Something else I really value about AET is the support and camaraderie that I get from my fellow ed therapists. I think this is the most welcoming group of people I have ever known. And there's also a real value for understanding the importance of the depth of learning and knowing as much as you can about what it is that you do. We have a yearly national conference, which is now online. We have webinars and study groups, monthly meetings with a smaller group. Since the pandemic, a lot of these have become online, although some are still in person. And like I mentioned before, we often can just consult with other folks who have some slightly different knowledge than we do so we can add to our own knowledge. Right now, I am the chairperson of the Member and Public Information Committee and the editor of The Educational Therapist Journal, which is a professional journal and it's published twice a year online. We publish formal articles like the one that Miriam did, and practice oriented columns on different topics. The same person has a number of of issues where they talk about their area of expertise, and we do book reviews, all related to things that educational therapists might be interested in. Most of the content is authored by our members, but we do welcome others to submit articles, which is why I contacted Miriam after attending the last Structured Linguistic Literacy summit. I listened to her presentation and I thought, this is what people in AET need to know about, because I wasn't aware that others had any knowledge about speech-to-print. And I really loved the way that Miriam presented her information, and I thought she would be just the right person. And she was. So after Miriam's article came out and it became quite popular, in fact, we have the access to it on the front page of our website, aetonline.org, in case anyone's interested in looking. And we started to think about ways of making the journal more accessible to people outside of the organization, because I think we've got some really good information to share and we would like to make it more, more common, easy to get to.

Laura: 14:11
Brilliant. Thank you for sharing that. I think we can put definitely some links in the show notes this episode because I certainly think that a lot of our practitioners, for example, in Australia, would be really interested. A lot of practitioners in Australia are speech and language therapists and other professions similar to that. So, yeah. Can you describe some of the specific challenges that your students or clients face? Please talk about that a little bit. We're going to come back to Miriam's article a little bit later.

Sherry: 14:42
Well, honestly, the most common I see are decoding issues, especially with the younger kids or kids maybe up through about the fourth grade. With older students, which I had a lot of experience working with older students in my teaching career, it's more learning and study strategies, children who just don't do well managing school and getting organized, and knowing how to study for tests and that kind of thing. And I think probably one of the reasons that we see so many kids for decoding issues is the fact that whole language was, was the popular way of teaching reading to young children, and that's what teachers were trained in. They did not know other options. And most schools actually followed the whole-language approach, and a lot of children just don't respond to it. Some do. I remember when I was a little squirt, and it was in the 'look, say' era where I learned to read, which is pretty similar. And I had absolutely no trouble learning to read. Spelling was another issue, however. And I think one thing I like about the speech-to-print approach is that it does address the spelling very strongly, and I think that's a wonderful door into literacy. Well, now there's been a lot of change in the way we're trying to approach literacy for beginning readers in the US. Parents were starting to get upset about why so many kids were unable to read well. And there was a journalist named Emily Hanford who started a podcast. You look like you're familiar with it, yes. She started a podcast, you know, looking at why so many children have difficulty learning to read, and that sort of started a movement. So there's been a shift toward more phonics-based approaches recently, and many states have actually enacted laws to require schools to teach with that approach. This has been a little bit bumpy, however, because some educators are strong believers in the whole-language approach and are really not really interested in learning something, something else. Others are eager to learn, they've realized that what they've been doing isn't that helpful for some kids. But it takes time to really get a deep understanding of a particular approach. So this is the first year most of the kiddos, the younger ones that I've been working with, have been getting a phonics-based approach at school. And a lot of times I'm seeing errors made. And I know Miriam was in another program that I had, and we talked about the 1-1-1 rule, which she knows, I'm sure, it's a rule for when you add suffixes. And I got something from a teacher which said they were studying the 1-1-1 rule and it had nothing to do with that. So I think it's going to take a while before people, people in, you know, teachers in the US can get a really good grasp of a different approach. But I know they're trying. And I think it's really benefiting the kids, even though it's not perfect. There, of course, there are other areas other than just how a child is taught that really impacts how they're doing. And I think we can't ignore the fact that dyslexia and other language difficulties are real issues, and just changing the teaching approach doesn't always deal with the whole range of those issues. And that's why I appreciate folks like Miriam who are speech language therapists and can really understand those deep speech and language issues that even those of us who are trained in literacy may not have as good a grasp on as they do. So, I appreciate having allied professionals that I can work with. And you'd asked also about how my literacy intervention had changed over time. Well, at least 20 years ago, I was trained in Orton-Gillingham, which was a whole new approach for me. I had learned nothing about phonics, even in my training as a reading teacher at one point, there was very, very little about that. And some in Lindamood-Bell, which is another popular approach here. And that's what I used when I first started working with students privately in my educational therapy practice. But it was a very slow approach, very, very methodic, and it seemed like we never got through it. I would work with kids for a couple of years, and suddenly they would move into middle or high school and their needs changed, and they needed help with more content, materials, and I never felt like I was really able to give them the full scope of what they needed. So when I stumbled upon speech-to-print, it was during the pandemic when I had a little extra time on my hands. And since everything was closed down, I was a little apprehensive because I'd been trained in all of these other things. But I was intrigued, and I kept going back looking at different versions of this and I finally decided to go ahead and get trained, and I am so glad I did. I don't think I would have had nearly the success with some of the younger kids that I have been working with lately had I not moved to speech-to-print. So I certainly appreciate that approach.

Laura: 20:55
That's lovely to hear. I've got a question for both of you, and I'm not sure who wants to jump in first with this one, but could you tell us a bit about the scope of practice of speech language pathologists and educational therapists in the US, and where literacy fits in with that, and what kinds of settings you've worked in? I know you mentioned there allied professionals and people kind of working together in different fields with different expertise. And I'd love to know how those piece together and how you'd kind of go about constructing an intervention using those skills.

Sherry: 21:38
Well, I guess I'll start. Well, educational therapy is something that is not really well known in the United States. Our organization currently has about 800 members. And when you think of the size of the world, that's not a lot. And California is where it started, so most of the ED therapists in the world are in California. But I'm not in California. I live in Indiana, and I am the only educational therapist in the entire state. And most people don't really understand what I do, but they become enthusiastic when they see the difference between tutoring and educational therapy because we do look at educating the whole child rather than just, you know, specific academic skills. There are some educational therapists who work in schools, especially in places like California, where there are a lot of educational therapists. But most of us tend to work in some kind of private practice with different areas of expertise. And parents tend to seek out educational therapists or even tutors when the school instruction just doesn't seem to be working for their child, especially, you know, with younger kids. With older kids, they're often struggling with homework and not doing well on tests and really lacking effective study skills, which is another area that we often work with.

Laura: 23:09
Thanks, Miriam. Do you have anything you'd like to add to that?

Miriam: 23:13
Sure. I'll just, you know, I'll just say that, you know, the field of speech and language pathology, originally, I think it was just speech pathology, and the word language was added at one point before I started about, well, over 20 years ago now. It's very, very broad to the point, you know, where there are specializations within the field that I would need, you know, to almost, almost start from scratch to, you know, to work, even though it's the same, the same qualification. So, you know, I have, you know, friends, colleagues that who I went to graduate school with, who work, you know, exclusively with students on the autism spectrum, with social pragmatic needs. I have, you know, colleagues or friends, I guess I would say - we don't work together - who work in acute care with traumatic brain injury patients, voice disorders for singers, swallowing, feeding and swallowing. It's a very, very broad field. And so I think, in terms of the numbers, though, I believe the majority of speech language pathologists do work in the schools. So they are working in an educational context, in which literacy is the currency, as they say, in an academic context. But in my initial degree, I think the training and the understanding of language development and phonetics and phonology and the difference between those two, I think that all gives a very solid foundation that can be used to then get into more academic literacy, reading instruction, spelling instruction. But that isn't really part of our training. So that was something I had to kind of, you know, develop, but it does provide a really good foundation. So everything I learned about written language and how children and adults and anybody learns to read in different writing systems, I could rely on the foundation that I had, but it was still new. And I also, like Sherry, originally when I started working with adolescents with language-based learning difficulties, I had the opportunity to have Orton-Gillingham training, which was the method that I write about a bit in that article, too, when I compare it with a more speech-to-print approach. And it was a wonderful kind of entry point for me, but I also found some of the same challenges with it that Sherry described. So. But, yeah, with speech pathology, I have worked in public schools in the US. That's, you know, schools that are free and, you know, available to everyone in the country. I have worked in private schools. I have worked in what's called collaboratives. So these are, you know, several public school districts get together and form some specialized programs when the individual schools cannot provide the services for the needs of the children. And so they form a collaborative and have specialized classrooms that are less pricey than sending a student outside of the district to a private school completely. So I've worked in collaboratives, private schools, public schools, and also in private practice, working directly with families and students as well, which is primarily what I do now.

Laura: 27:16
Amazing. Thank you. So speaking of the article that you wrote, as we mentioned earlier, you had an article published in The Educational Therapist journal last year, where you kind of explored the characteristics of speech-to-print approaches and how they differ from Orton-Gillingham, based on your kind of experiences as well. Could you share some of those insights with our listeners, please?

Miriam: 27:43
Sure. Well, first, let me say that I'm so grateful that Sherry contacted me. You know, reached out and suggested that I write this. It was really a wonderful opportunity for me - as happens when we write - to kind of clarify my own thinking. And so it was really a great learning opportunity for me, and I'm really also grateful that it's now available on the website, thank you so much for doing that. So in the article, I, you know, it's quite nuanced, and so it was hard to really figure out how to compare the two there. I started with the similarities because, you know, there really are, you know, so many similarities in terms of this being both, you know, code-based approaches that are focus on the relationships between, between the writing system and the sounds, decoding and encoding, spelling, structured and systematic and explicit. You know, this to contrast with a more whole-language or balanced literacy approach. There are many similarities. And yet what I try to do is kind of show how the, you know, what we're calling a speech-to-print or linguistic phonics, structured linguistic literacy, really kind of pares things down to the essentials and cuts out a lot of the rules - well, all the rules, all the clutter - and really focuses on the concepts, the understanding of how the code works. We have a sound, it can be spelled with one or two letters, three letters. We have multiple ways to spell sounds, we have overlap in the code. So that need for flexibility, if you see a word with a particular spelling, and you have to be flexible with which sound it could represent, that gets built in. So it focuses on the essential features of the code and the language of instruction, and the procedures are very kind of pared down. Which, as I noted in my article, I think is really helpful for students who have those broader language difficulties, developmental language disorder, whether or not it's been diagnosed, whether they've been labelled as having that, or not. But there are many students who have those broader language difficulties. And so having this kind of very streamlined approach lessens that the cognitive load, lessens the language demands, and allows them to really focus on the skills and the knowledge and understanding how the code works. So I tried to compare that with some of the methods in Orton-Gillingham that are a little bit more, place more of a cognitive load on students, in terms of having to learn a rule, remember a rule, articulate it even sometimes, identify the exceptions to the rule. And the key pieces involved in reading and spelling can sometimes fall away when that's the focus. And so I talked about that, particularly with syllable types, and syllable division, and marking up words and how that's different. I went through and discussed some of the features, I tried to give some examples. I try to also convey how the speech-to-print approach really helps students develop the schema. That's, again, with the understanding of the code because the activities are really focused on, for example, starting with the sound, like /ae/, and then the multiple ways to spell the sound, creates an organizational framework for the student that is really helpful. And then especially the way speech-to-print approach integrates. It's very efficient. It integrates a lot of the sub skills together in certain activities. Whereas in an Orton-Gillingham lesson plan, it's a bit more isolated sometimes. I know this was the case for me and I always felt it was kind of a - just a deficiency - something I had to work on when I was using an Orton-Gillingham approach. But then I later found out that this was very common and so it might not have been only me, that you just couldn't even get through the entire lesson plan. And especially reading connected texts and the dictation was at the end, and there were so many isolated components that took a long time, that I would run out of time for the application piece at the end and I didn't feel that that benefited. So there's a lot more integration in a speech-to-print approach that creates an efficiency and allows, I think, practitioners to focus on the essentials, and also give plenty of time for application and consolidation, which is so key. So I tried to compare those aspects and, you know, acknowledging that there are differences, of course. You know, Orton-Gillingham trainings vary widely and there are nuances and, you know, their individual practitioners vary too, and what they maybe bring into it, and how they adapt it. But that's what I tried to do in the article. I tried to, you know, lean on some of the research too, that kind of supports some of these practices of, you know, in terms of cognitive load lessening and integration and flexibility so that people could look more deeply into it. And again, it was just a wonderful experience writing it. So thank you, Sherry, for the opportunity.

Laura: 34:20
Well, it was a wonderful experience reading it as well. So, yeah, thank you so much. And it, it's so exciting to see more talk about speech-to-print approaches, and more and more being published and discussed about it. So, thank you so much for your contribution to that. I'd love to hear, from both of you, how your students have responded to using speech-to-print methods that you use with them.

Miriam: 34:52
I guess, Sherry, you can go ahead. Okay.

Sherry: 34:55
Okay. They seem to respond very well. I've had several young children, maybe first, second graders, who were really intimidated by learning to read because they hadn't been successful. Most of them were working in, in a whole-language approach and they were feeling very, very unsuccessful. And as I started, it seems to just be such a natural process when you work with the speech-to-print approach, that I was able to get them to have some success very early and to feel good about it. And parents have told me that they could see a real difference, and the kids seemed a lot more confident as we worked on things and it kind of made them feel a lot more successful. Something though, that since so many of my kiddos are now working in schools where they're doing more of a traditional Orton-Gillingham type approach, is that they're being told something slightly different than what we're doing. And, you know, we don't use - in speech-to-print - we don't use a lot of the rules in the syllable types and all of that. But I, usually it's not a big problem, and it's not like I'm teaching one syllable type and the school is teaching another because we don't have to worry about those labels. So even though the kids are coming in with something a little different than the way I'm doing it, it seems to be able to, it kind of slides together pretty naturally. And I can show them different ways of doing things if the way that they're doing it in school is not working for them. And instead of saying something like, well, your teacher's doing it wrong, I would never do that. I say, 'well, this is the way your teacher told you, I want to show you another way that maybe will work for you and you can see which one works better'. So in that way, it's worked very well.

Miriam: 37:02
Yeah. I'll just jump into, to kind of echo, first of all, what Sherry was saying, that I've had very similar experiences with teaching this approach, and that initial success, and the way the application is there from the beginning. So they are able to read and spell words very quickly in the initial stages of reading, and that's just a very motivating and exciting experience for them, and that breeds more success. And also, similar to what Sherry was saying, that I also kind of navigate that difference between what I'm doing and what they are typically receiving in school, whether it's in the classroom or in an intervention group at school, with some, you know, tact. Because, you know, you definitely don't want to throw their teachers under the bus, and they are doing the best they can with what they have. So I present that in a very similar, similar way. Like, here's another approach. And typically, they do find it more efficient and they experience more success, so it isn't really a conflict. But there are some children, particularly some older children, who do kind of latch on to the rules that they're taught in school. And so sometimes we do have to do a little bit of addressing that because they are trying to apply it, and we have to kind of let that go gently, you know? And it's helpful to have the background in the approach that they're using in school because I'm familiar with the terminology. You know, some programs use terms like 'glued' or 'welded sounds'. And so I kind of say, 'Well, you know, I like to unglue them. Let's, let's unglue them'. And so it's, you know, it's just a matter of seeing where that particular student is at. Because for some, it's just, there's no conflict whatsoever, and for others, you need to kind of address that. And, you know, if I can, I'll just, since we're on this topic, I'll just tell a brief, brief story because this happened, you know, recently with a second grader who I was working with. And, you know, she, she's been receiving literacy support since kindergarten, but she's, you know, she's very prone to guessing, looking at the first few letters and kind of doing that hiding that I mentioned. And I was doing some polysyllabic lessons with her and asking her to really break each syllable down and say each sound as she was building the syllable, as she was reading and writing the syllables, so that she could learn that really key procedure. And she was able to read the words because she has memorized a lot of words. So I was teaching her that very important procedure, but she was able to just read the word. And she's very used to just, if she knows it or even if she just thinks she knows it, to kind of, you know, just saying the word and moving on. So I had to give her a lot of, you know, reminders of, to explain what I was asking her to do. And she said to me, she said, 'you know, this is hard because I'm at school five days a week, but I'm only with you one day a week'. And she wasn't upset, but she was just acknowledging that. So even a second grader can understand that concept of practice makes permanent. And so we had a little conversation about it and acknowledged that that is challenging. And I explained the reasons why I was asking her to do that, even though she could read the word without doing that in that moment. So I think every child is different, though, because some don't need to have that conversation and some do, and you don't need to necessarily belabour it, but it needs, you know, those differences do need to be addressed somehow. Yeah.

Laura: 41:26
Yeah. I can see how that, you know, how navigating the relationship between what's being taught in school and what you're doing in your intervention sessions might be quite challenging and sometimes maybe a little bit touchy at times. I was going to ask more about this a bit later, but since you're already on the topic, now seems like an opportune moment. Is there ever kind of collaboration between you and maybe the school that the student is attending, or you and other professionals who are all kind of working with the child? And what does that look like?

Miriam: 42:08
I'll just follow up on that, and then I'd love to hear from Sherry on that, too. But yes, and I was going, that's exactly where I was thinking, too, Laura, so thank you. That, something that can help a lot is that communication, both with the teachers and other professionals in the schools, working with the students, and via the parents, too. So I think helping parents understand the different approaches that are being used, and helping the parents communicate both with their child and with the teachers about that. So I do a lot of discussing with parents and with teachers and other professionals as well. And again, it's also kind of a case-by-case situation. I find, as with the student, there are some teachers and literacy specialists in the schools who are very eager to understand the nuances of the differences, and some who appreciate the information but might not want to - or might not have time to - to look too deeply into it. But I always try to really reach out as much as possible, understand what's happening in school, cross that bridge, bridge that gap as much as possible, because I do think that the, the student benefits the most from that kind of communication. Yeah.

Sherry: 43:43
Well, I think I'll jump in here. One of the roles that an educational therapist has is case manager. So we kind of think of ourselves as, as the one who tries to pull all these different aspects and different approaches together, and the different people who work with the client. So when we first start working with the client, we will ask parents to just sign release forms so that we can communicate with the school and with even other family members, because we want to make sure that we have parent permission to do that. And also with people who are working with the child in other aspects, maybe a mental health professional, or an occupational therapist, or a speech therapist, or whomever they're working with. And that does give us an opportunity to kind of look at the big picture with the child and see how other people are working with him or her and how we can fit into that and to ask questions. I frequently will communicate with teachers about what's your next lesson coming up? Or where are you in this? Or how did the child respond to that? And I also am working with one family whose both parents are educators, and we have really been able to share a lot of information. There are posters and things that I've designed for kids that are now hanging in classrooms in their school. So it's become a really wonderful collaboration, and I think it really serves the client much better when we're all working together.

Laura: 45:34
Brilliant. Thank you. So to wrap up this episode, I'd like to ask for what advice you would give to parents or teachers of children or young people who are struggling with learning to read and spell, or maybe who have learning difficulties or speech and language difficulties? And what advice would you give to them in terms of how to proceed and how to do the best by that student?

Sherry: 46:07
There is one thing I'd like to mention, and that is so often in schools parents are told, 'well, let's just wait and see. They'll catch up'. And I think that wait and see approach is one that really is harmful to a lot of kids. And if there is an issue, it needs to be figured out and dealt with as soon as possible, because otherwise the social emotional issues are going to start ramping up and the child is not going to feel successful. Something else I think I'd like to address is I think sometimes teachers might feel a bit threatened when a student is receiving outside support. And I was a teacher for 33 years. I know how hard it is to try to deal with so many kids with so many needs. And I think that teachers need to recognize that we're there to help, too, and that we all need to work together.

Miriam: 47:08
I think that's wonderful advice that Sherry gave. I would definitely echo that message that there's no benefit in waiting to see, that prevention and very prompt support and help is really necessary when there's a challenge in learning to read and write. It can really go so far to have that timely support. So I would echo that message to both parents and teachers. And Sherry's comment about that working together and collaborating. But I also, I'm not a classroom teacher, so I have just enormous - I'm in awe of how classroom teachers are able to manage the classroom environment and the needs of all those students. I've been doing some modelling of lessons in classrooms at a school that I'm supporting, and just the cognitive load for teachers to be able to give the precise feedback and notice what all the students are doing. When I have one or two students in front of me, it's a completely different story, but when there's a room full of students. So I have just enormous respect and awe for the job that classroom teachers do and the challenges that they face.

Laura: 48:49
Yeah, absolutely. Well, that brings us to a close. Thank you so much, both of you, for sharing all of your insights and also for all of the amazing work that you do.

Miriam: 49:04
Thank you. Laura, thank you so much for having us.

Sherry: 49:07
Yeah, I echo that as well. Thank you.

Laura: 49:11
All right, see you next time.