Teaching Statement

Guiding Philosophies and Principles

As a clinical speech-language pathologist, I developed a passion for serving individuals with complex communication needs and who benefitted from augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems. While I had minimal formal training in AAC throughout my Master’s level education, I developed knowledge and skills in this area of practice on the job and through mentorship from other SLPs, attending conferences specific to AAC, and independently reading research related to AAC. I found that having advanced AAC knowledge and skills benefitted me in many ways; it was both my passion and a desirable competency that made me an asset to my employers. I worked on a team of eight speech-language pathologists, and only three of us were willing and had the skill to complete AAC assessments. Some wanted to know more, but did not know where to begin, or did not find the available continuing education comprehensive or applicable enough to meet their needs. I wanted to do more, and this was one of the major reasons I returned to school for my PhD. The opportunity to teach, inspire, and empower future speech-language pathologists about AAC continues to be a driving force of my career.

The tenets of my teaching philosophy derive from two sources: reflection on my own experiences of successful learning as a clinician and my experiences and coursework within the PhD program. Anchored in both Adult Learning Theory and Universal Design for Learning (UDL), the primary tenets are 1) encouraging learner self-selection of goals, 2) fostering a collaborative learning community, and 3) building clinical-classroom connections.

UDL Principles

Source (CAST, 2018)

Encouraging Learner Self-Selection of Goals

Encouraging learner self-selection of goals is one of the key principles of adult learning theory (Knowles et. al., 2005). In academia this may appear to be a difficult principle to foster due to learning requirements and required classes. I believe that there are ways to actively engage a student's ability to self-select learning goals within a classroom. This need and desire is important to foster in undergraduate and graduate students alike, as the students now will be the professionals of the future. Fostering their ability to self-direct their own learning will hopefully lead to their ability to use those skills after graduation.

One way to do this while also ensuring that learning objectives are met, is by developing assignments with this principle in mind. Working with Dr. Jane Wegner in my directed teaching experience, I was able to do this for the AAC Resource Assignment for AAC in the Schools (SPLH 838). Within this project guidelines, students were able to independently select 1) who the target audience would be for their resource, 2) what the mission statement would be for their resource, and 3) what product they would create as their resource. Some students chose to create projects that they felt would be helpful in current or past clinical experiences and drew upon those experiences in the process. It was amazing to see their creativity and ingenuity flourish when they had the freedom to choose the goals.

Fostering a Collaborative Learning Community

Creating a space where all of my students feel comfortable and able to participate in discussion and lecture activities is important to me. I know that active participation from all students means that diverse perspectives will be shared. This allows for students to learn from each other. To achieve this tenet I draw heavily upon principles of Universal Design for Learning including engagement, representation, and action and expression. For the purposes of illustration, I will focus on the perception principle.

To summarize perception principle of UDL, it means providing information in different modalities so that key information is equally accessible to all students. It is important for me to use in my own instruction because it is important for SLPs who provide services for children who need AAC. Additionally, a key feature of perception is to allow the learner the opportunity to customize how information is displayed. Ensuring closed captions are available in videos I share, that text can be enlarged, and the volume adjusted as necessary makes the information accessible to all students. I want to provide a model for my students that accessibility matters.

One way that I did this in my clinical teaching experiences was in my feedback to my students after a clinical session. I attempted to always set my schedule so that I had time for a face-to-face debriefing opportunity with the student after sessions for them to ask questions and for me to give verbal feedback. While this time was valuable, I also always provided written feedback on sessions in a format that they could access later if they needed a refresher on what we had discussed in the face to face debriefing.

Building Classroom-Clinicial Connections

I am and always will be a clinician first. My diverse clinical experiences as a speech-language pathologist help me to prioritize learning experiences that begin to make the connection between classroom and clinical experiences. There are many ways I foster this connection. For example, in my lectures I draw upon anecdotes from my time as a clinician. I am open about sharing my own personal experiences, and also willing to answer student questions. I also emphasize the connection of the topic or assignment to future clinical work. In this way, I hope to draw student attention to beyond the "right now" implications of classroom performance to how this learning activity is building them into better speech and language professionals.

In both classroom teaching experiences case studies have been included for students to apply new knowledge. Students are able to draw upon previous knowledge and knowledge used in class to solve hypothetical clinical problems. This provides rich opportunity for discussion as questions arise on projects, but also allows for clinically focused feedback. The students have an opportunity to learn from clinical perspectives of hypothetical clients and examine different factors that may influence success of an intervention plan. In addition to case studies, I attempt to make class assignments provide application examples for students that are framed for use in a clinical setting (examples below). Not only does this allow for students to have structured practice in applying knowledge, but it allows for me to provide feedback.

An example of how I fostered this connection through assignments can be found in the student learning activities for SPLH 838 AAC in the Schools. For this directed teaching experience, I had the opportunity to revise two assignments. The first was the AAC Resource Assignment and the second was research review assignment. Both of these assignments were meant to be useful to all members of the class long after the class was over. In the AAC Resource Assignment, students worked independently or in pairs to create a resource that could be used in a school setting to support AAC. Student products were compiled in a folder that was shared with the class for future use in clinical settings. By creating resources with an intent focus, the students developed a clinical expertise in their topic. This expertise was then shared with peers through the sharing of resources. The AAC review assignment required students to select and summarize an AAC research paper in the style of reviews at The Informed SLP. This allowed students the opportunity to read, evaluate, and apply external evidence toward clinical practice. These research summaries were compiled in a single document and shared with the class for future use. More information about these learning activities and examples can be found at the above link.

Teaching Interests

My clinical and academic experiences have largely focused on AAC in the pediatric population. I am particularly interested in teaching courses related to AAC service delivery. Additional interests include childhood language disorders and professionalism and advocacy.