Shawanda, a teacher in a community-based childcare program shares a dilemma about collaborating with a speech therapist to address the learning goals of David, a 4-year-old boy in her class (running time 1 min. 50 sec.).
View Transcript
Shawanda:
I work in a child care center as a teacher in a preschool classroom where there are 15 children. I have been working in this early childhood program for over 10 years. One of the benefits of my job is that I get to meet and work with so many different kinds of people. One of the specialists I work with is Ashley. She visits my classroom once a week to work with David who is a 4-year-old with some language delays. Ashley is a speech therapist. Her job is to help me address David’s communication goals in the classroom. I have a pretty good relationship with Ashley, although I think there are some ways it could be better. Ashley typically works with David for about 20 to 30 minutes. Then she explains what she has done and gives me some things I can do with David during the week. I don’t exactly know how to say this to her…and I feel bad about it…but I rarely follow up on anything Ashley suggests. I realize that Ashley has a lot more training in this area than I do, so I don’t want to question her advice, but some of her ideas just aren’t that practical. I have 14 other children I’m responsible for and I can’t spend all of my time working on David’s goals. I have a few ideas that I think might work better, and I really want to help David learn, but I’m not sure how to bring this up with Ashley. I would also like us to focus more on how we can collaborate to involve David’s parents and share information with them. How do I communicate all of this to Ashley in a way that comes across as helpful and not critical?