America Swartzel is the speech pathologist at Dixie Elementary and Middle School in New Lebanon. She is always so positive and knows how to engage with her students. We have seen America connect with some of the most challenging students and facilitate meaningful use of AAC, encouraging implementation across settings. We also love that she educates herself on the perspectives of neurodiverse individuals to make sure her goals and strategies are respectful of their unique differences and abilities. America is a great team player and demonstrates the ability to collaborate with others to support shared goals. We are excited to feature America today on our A-LIST Spotlight! Read below to learn more about America and the supports she implements for her students.
My name is America Swartzel and this is my 13th year at New Lebanon Local Schools, where I service all three buildings–grades 1 through 12+. The 2023-2024 school year was a big one for me, as I was honored to be selected as part of the A-List and was named Teacher of the Year in my district! My true passions in this field lie in the areas of Autism and AAC. When working with my students, I strive for neurodiversity affirming therapy practices. This is an area that is constantly evolving and it is crucial for us,as clinicians, to listen to Autistic voices and to have a willingness to change and grow our skills accordingly.
My number one goal with my Autistic students is to build strong relationships. I do this by ensuring that my sessions are child-led and as sensory friendly as possible. Although my therapy space doesn’t allow for all of the sensory items I would like, I am never short on fidgets, squishies, and visual sensory toys like bubbles and spinners. I offer those items, as well as physical input (deep pressure, rocking, etc) to my students freely during every session. My students know that sensory items and activities are not something that they need to work for–we never work to meet our sensory needs!
I think it is so important for kids to understand their brains and to embrace the differences that make each one unique. Some of my students have really enjoyed learning about the Autism spectrum wheel. We discuss each section and then they color in a blank wheel based on how they view their own Autistic characteristics!
Because most of my students have varied special interests, I try my best to incorporate their interests into as many visuals as possible. Here are some of the visuals I have made for my students.
A visual schedule for a student who loves dinosaurs:
I have one student who speaks so softly in class that it is very difficult to hear her. Since she loves The Little Mermaid, I created this visual to help her teacher communicate when she needs to speak at a higher volume. Although the student was apprehensive to use a visual at first, she was fully on board once her favorite princess was added.
For students who struggle with anxiety, a simple visual like this one can promote self-advocacy skills without drawing a lot of attention to themselves. Again, incorporating their preferred interests helps with buy-in from the student.
This was a picture book that was created to help students transition from elementary school to middle school. The students took the picture books home over the summer after touring their new school. They were able to read the book as many times as they needed so that they could have visual reminders of what the upcoming year would look like and, hopefully, help ease their anxiety about the transition.
Being student-led does not mean that you have to let a student make all of the demands and run the entire session. I have a couple of students who would do nothing but scroll through YouTube clips or play the same iPad games if I would let them. Learning what they really enjoy in those clips or games is key. I try to use toys or visuals from their interests in ways that do not involve being on the device, but mimics the same type of play. Busy Books are great therapy toys for this and there are tons of characters available to suit lots of interests.
Another trick is to make finger puppets using cut up gloves and printed, laminated characters from YouTube or games that the student enjoys. This “dancing doll” finger puppet was created for a student who absolutely loves the dancing doll character from the Starfall iPad game.
I still like to honor those requests to be on the iPad, but I save the actual device time for the end of the session. One of my most used visuals to help with this transition actually came from my very first ACT professional development session! This countdown strip is my go-to visual for nearly every session and helps in situations where I want to honor a student’s interests or requests without allowing them to take over the entire session. Personally, I prefer to use this countdown exclusively for elapsing time and not for individual tasks completed. When I first introduce this countdown tool to new students, I always start with the time going by very quickly, pulling off a number every few seconds. I gradually increase the time between numbers being pulled each session. This teaches my students that they strip means that time is going by and that they will eventually get what they want when the “one” is finally pulled off. I always use a second timer with an alarm (usually a visual timer) to end their favorite activities. This has helped my students to maintain a more positive attitude about the countdown strip and not to associate it with ending a fun activity.
Another way that I have been trying to build stronger relationships with my students is by learning more about gestalt language processing and tracking my students’ gestalts so that I can figure out what each one means in certain contexts and then use those utterances to expand language. I created this tracking form to help with this task and keep them in my students’ files.
I have also recently discovered a fantastic website that has been a great help with learning gestalts. Getyarn.io is a website that allows a clinician to type a student’s gestalt phrase into a search box. The website then generates a list of possible sources for that phrase in video clips. Here is an example: I had a student who kept talking about “the Bob Barker treatment.” I used getyarn.io to find the exact video clip from which the phrase originated–Shrek 2! The student was so excited that I was able to figure out what he was talking about! This is such a nice tool for clinicians to use in the moment instead of having to wait to ask caregivers after the communication attempt has passed!
Because we focus on a ton of self-advocacy skills, I also work really hard to help grow my students’ vocabularies. Using the various wheels of emotions is a great tool for teaching shades of meaning in emotional language.
I also try to make sure that my students who struggle with figurative language learn a new word or phrase each week. I created an Idiom of the Week poster that changes every Monday to help with that task!
I hope you have found some good tips and tricks to try during your next speech therapy session!
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