Imagine choosing to work in the emergency room because working in a school was too hard. That is the reality that some speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are forced to face. This is unfortunately, not a topic that many people, including SLPs, have properly investigated. For this reason, this research has chosen to focus on a possible cause of this issue, that students under an SLP's scope of practice, specifically those with language impairments, have more behavior problems than their peers without language impairments. This research is relevant to my field because any speech-language pathologist that has worked in schools knows that the children under their care tend to have difficulties in class. Unfortunately, the school system is not made for children with language impairments, so they struggle academically and socially. Hopefully, this research will begin the necessary discussions to better help these children in school and force people to think about other groups that struggle in school.Â
The findings of my research were that speech-language pathologists are not trained to handle the behavior problems that their students have. Speech-language pathologists play a vital role in preventing students with language impairments from becoming part of the school to prison pipeline. Additionally, students with language impairments are disciplined more than their peers and have frequent and varied behavior problems. Future studies could continue this research with specific types of language impairments. This experience is relevant to my intended career because I intend to be a speech-language pathologist and being able to recognize these behavior patterns in my future students is important. Knowing that students with language impairments struggle with their behavior in school is important to begin figuring out why students with language impairments struggle in school, and, more importantly, how schools can work to better support them.