Better Hearing & Speech Month Ideas 2022

Episode 94: Better Hearing & Speech Month Ideas 2022

You're listening to the Speech Space Podcast, a podcast full of tips and resources for SLPs. I'm your host, Jessica Cassity, and this is Episode 94.

As many of you listening probably already know it is Better Hearing and Speech Month. So that is what we're going to be talking about today, specifically, how we can celebrate this month together as SLPs and audiologists. So before we get started, I did want to let you know that this podcast is brought to you by The Digital SLP membership site, which is a site that features time-saving, interactive digital resources that are all teletherapy platform friendly and great for in-person sessions as well. You can learn more or even sign up for a free trial by heading on over to thedigitalslp.com/digitalslp. So like I mentioned, May is Better Hearing and Speech Month, which is a time for us to promote the field of speech-language pathology and audiology to help educate others about the valuable work that we do. Now, this year's theme is Connecting People. And today, I'm going to share with you some ways to celebrate Better Hearing and Speech Month. And as you'll hear in a moment, some of these ways are going to be more about reaching and educating others, while other ideas I'm going to share are more about you celebrating and contributing to the field itself. So let's go ahead and get started.

My first suggestion is to host an open house for your colleagues. This is a great and really fun way to educate your colleagues about our field. You can even add some food into the mix to make it a little bit more enticing to come. But what you wanna do here is explain how your role as a speech-language pathologist can help each of your colleagues individually within their disciplines. So since school-based SLPs work with paraprofessionals and occupational therapists, teachers, reading therapists, special education teachers, all of these occupations can benefit from some interprofessional collaboration and education. And you just really wanna make sure to emphasize our involvement in all aspects of communication in ways that we can help the students that they are already working with.

My next suggestion is to choose a speech-language or hearing foundation to donate to. Now with this, I wanna add the disclaimer that I know that we are not all in financial positions where we can be making donations right now, but my suggestion is to use a third-party application to help to raise money, if you are not in a place where you could make a small donation yourself. You know, I think that most social media platforms, Facebook specifically comes to mind, have ways that you can start fundraising. Even if it's for, you know, make a commitment to do it for your birthday this year or something like that, it does not have to be in the month of May. There is another website out there, Better World, where you can do free fundraising there. So that's another option if you wanted to do a fundraiser and there are so many different organizations out there that you could donate to or raise money for during Better Hearing and Speech Month. All throughout just a few different ones, but honestly, there's so many. So you just wanna choose one that really speaks to you. So the first organization that I would like to mention is SAY: The Stuttering Association for the Young, which is a nonprofit organization that provides support, advocacy, and life-changing experiences for young people who stutter ages 2 to 18. And more specifically, I wanna talk a little bit about Camp SAY. Now Camp SAY is a summer camp for young people who stutter. And if you missed the episode that I did with Ryan Gielan of My Beautiful Stutter, you definitely wanna go back and check that out and learn a little bit more about it. But like I said, it is a nonprofit and by donating to Camp SAY, you can help to fund a summer camp for a child who stutters. So it actually says on the site to date no child has been turned away due to a family's inability to pay, which is absolutely amazing and just shows how much your donation makes such a big difference in a young child's life. So definitely consider donating to Camp SAY, which you can access at campsay.org. The next organization I wanna talk about is Apraxia Kids. Now on their website, they indicate that they exist to strengthen the support and systems of care in the lives of children with apraxia so that each child is afforded his or her best opportunity to develop speech. So definitely go ahead and check out Apraxia Kids. Their website is apraxia-kids.org. And last, but certainly not least, another great organization is Smiles for Speech. Smiles for Speech is committed to empowering caregivers by providing access to developmentally appropriate resources to support children with disabilities and ensure long-term sustainable solutions given by expert professional volunteers from all around the world. So they have such an amazing mission and their website can be accessed at smilesforspeech.org.

All right. Another great way to get involved is to visit your local legislators and organize a state advocacy day. The month of May is a great time to visit your local legislators and remind them of the policy changes needed in order to make a difference in our clients' and patients' lives. Be sure to remind them of all the work that ASHA does to advocate for us every day of the year by lobbying for the issues that matter most to us as clinicians, such as caseload caps and bilingual classrooms. You know, you really just wanna emphasize how important speech-language pathology and audiology are to the success of our country.

Another great way to participate this month is to attend a support group for any of the clinical populations that you serve. Whether this is an aphasia support group or a support group for people who stutter, take the time to understand your client's perspectives on life and how they have overcome obstacles associated with their communication disorder and what some of those obstacles are, because that will really help you to become a more well-rounded clinician whenever you can see things from their perspective and learn about what it is that they go through and how their communication difficulties have affected their life.

I hope that you found these ideas helpful, and if you do try any of them out, I would love to hear how it went. If you are just too busy this month, because I know as SLPs, we are so busy. I did make a free poster for you that you could hang on your speech room. And that way as colleagues are passing by your room or different professionals who may be bringing students to you, they can just see that poster on the door and hopefully read it and learn a few things about speech and hearing that they possibly didn't already know before. So if you're just feeling very over-committed this month and you still wanna do something, I wanted to try to sneak something in there for you too.

So, if you would like that, I'm going to link it in the show notes because I actually have not published it on the website yet. So there's two ways that you can get it. One is I'm going to link to it in the show notes, and two, I'm going to send it out to email subscribers. So if you are not an email subscriber, please go ahead and head on over to thedigitalslp.com and sign up for the newsletter. All right. So that is it for me for today. Thank you so much for tuning in, happy Better Hearing and Speech Month! And like I said, please do share what you're doing this month to spread the word and to get involved. Like I mentioned, at the beginning of the show, this podcast is brought to you by The Digital SLP membership site, head on over to thedigitalslp.com/digitalslp to sign up for a free trial or to learn more.