343: How to Collect Data Without Stopping Therapy

Show Notes:

Feeling like data collection is eating up all your therapy time? In this episode, Hallie sits down with Michele Rothstein of SLP Madness, a 26-year elementary school-based SLP, to talk all about how to make data collection clean, efficient, and legally defensible. Michele shares her 3:1 treatment-to-probe ratio, how she handles Medicaid billing without sacrificing real therapy time, and why she believes data is her favorite four-letter word.

Here's what we learned:

  • Data collection and therapy charting are not the same thing
  • Consistent stimuli each time you probe is what makes data legally defensible
  • An IEP is a blueprint, not a complete list of everything you're targeting
  • Honesty about inherited goals builds trust with families and teams
  • Starting small with one student or goal is the key to sticking with a new system

RESOURCES

📘✨ Grab your copy of The Secondary SLP Roadmap here! https://www.speechtimefunpd.com/stf-book 

Learn more about Hallie Sherman  and SLP Elevate: 

Learn more about Michele Rothstein: 

JOKE OF THE WEEK:

Q: Why did the pencil get sent to the principal's office?

A: It couldn't stop drawing attention to itself.

Where We Can Connect: 

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TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Hallie: Hey there, SLP working with grades 4 through 12. New school year, new you. Let's not go into this school year feeling overwhelmed and behind on paperwork. Let's not worry about students asking why they are coming to speech. Let's not have students shrugging their shoulders and looking at you saying, why am I here? I don't want to be here. Let's instead have your students excited to come to speech, ready to take on the challenges you provide and make massive progress towards their goals. 

00:00:31 Hallie: If you are ready to make this school year the year that you leave work promptly at the end of the day, plan in an hour or less a week and go into every session confident that your students will grasp the session objectives, then SLP Elevate is just what you need to make this school year a successful one. Either go to slpelevate.com or send me a DM on Instagram with the word club C-U-L-B and we can discuss if SLP Elevate is right for you and your students. Now is the time to get your time back and now is the time to get your students excited to come to speech. SLP Elevate is perfect for you. 

00:01:14 Hallie: Welcome to SLP Coffee Talk, the podcast designed exclusively for speech language pathologists who work with older students, grades 4 through 12. I am your host, Hallie Sherman, your SLP behind Speech Time Fun, the Speech Retreat Conference, and the SLP Elevate Membership. And I'm thrilled to bring you conversations, strategies, and insights that will give you the jolt of inspiration that you need. Whether you're tuning in during your morning commute, on a break in between sessions, or even during a well-deserved relaxation time, I am here for you each and every week. Let's do this SLPs. 

00:01:54 Hallie: Hey, hey and welcome to another episode of SLP Coffee Talk. Today I have the SLP Madness SLP here herself, Michele Rothstein. Welcome to the show. 

00:02:04 Michele: Hi, how are you today? Thanks for having me.

00:02:07 Hallie: Of course. Thank you so much for joining us and talking all things data collection, which when people hear that they're like, oy vey. Okay, so if you're saying that, don't change the podcast channel yet. Michele, tell everyone listening, who you are and your SLP journey, and why you love data collection so much.

00:02:24 Michele: Yes, so I will start by saying this is my little tagline is that like data collection is or data is my favorite four-letter word. So I am happy to talk all things data. I am like you introduced me. Thank you. I'm Michele. I say with one L in case you go to look for me from SLP Madness. And I have been just concluded my 26th year in school district outside Philadelphia. I have been predominantly in elementary school based SLP for my entire career. And I am super passionate about creating systems and conquering our paperwork in a way that allows us to effectively do our job and spend the most time with students and on treatment possible. So I'm really happy to talk about data and how to make it work for all your listeners.

00:03:15 Hallie: What made you become so passionate about data? And like, were you always this passionate? 

00:03:19 Michele: I think out of necessity. Obviously, I'm sure you know, we're probably been in the field a similar amount of time and what you come to realize is that the reason therapists cry in their car or cry in their office in the dark is not because of the students and it's not because of their therapy. It's because everything else that is required of us that comes with the job that I feel like none of us had any idea going into it that we were gonna have to wear so many hats. 

00:03:46 Michele: So the paperwork hat really is… it can be so overwhelming for a lot of therapists. And so really out of necessity, from an experience I just have figured out that if you have what I call really clean data that leads to really important documentation, really valuable documentation and more legally defensible documentation, which for the region I'm in is extremely important. So where I'm located that legally defensible piece comes into question more than anybody would like.

00:04:19 Hallie: And I was also gonna go the route of those that needing data for like Medicaid billing purposes. I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

00:04:28 Michele: Well, so I obviously being in the school I do have students that I have to bill what we call in Pennsylvania our medical assistance medical access billing and so we are required to provide that information so that the school district gets reimbursed. But I also know that there are lots of therapists in the world outside of schools that also are required to do billing that is rooted in data collection. So what I will say is that we live in a world that if you don't have it documented and you can't prove that it happened with numbers, paperwork and a trail, then it didn't happen.

00:05:06 Michele: And so it's great that you can report and give your word that something happened or report that your senior student make progress or report that you started at this baseline and you've measured their IEP goals and objectives all year long in this way. But if you don't have the ability to turn that over in a hard copy to somebody in real numbers with real documentation, then it doesn't happen. And so for medical assistance and billing, that is certainly paramount for that as well.

00:05:36 Hallie: And I feel like so many, especially so many listeners are fresh out of graduate school and, you know, they're told if they didn't take data, it didn't happen. And they are focusing more on the data than the therapy itself. What are your thoughts on that?

00:05:49 Michele: So that is a huge component to I think where when we all came out of graduate school… again, it was if you didn't take data, it didn't happen. But there is a difference between teaching and testing and what a lot of new therapists are doing, which was exactly what I was doing as a new clinician, is I was testing my students every time they got in front of me because I was taught, as I'm sure many still are, that you need that plus, you need that minus every single time that child is in front of you. And that is just testing your students. And that is not treatment. So I would say… I differentiate out what is therapy charting and what is data collection. So those are two contrasting terms.

00:06:32 Michele: Therapy charting would be exactly what we were taught to do in school. That child's in front of you and you're marking correct and incorrect responses at a feverish pace. Data collection rooted in therapy probes is something that is systematic, done on a regular interval. It is done outside of your treatment and therapy, and it's done with the same materials each time you progress monitor that goal so that you have an apples to apples comparison. And you're not dependent upon the stimuli that's in front of that child that day to know whether the child got it right, or they didn't know the stimuli that was in front of them. You teach it in every way, shape or form, with every stimuli, with every material, with every word, with every picture you have. But when it comes down to assessment, you're going to use a data collection probe so that you have that comparison over time. And those numbers actually mean something rather than that therapy charting, which is random.

00:07:32 Hallie: And how long should this charting take? This probing? 

00:07:36 Michele: Well, I would say, obviously, it depends on how your IEP goal is written. So, first and foremost, that legally defensible piece is it needs to match how you're writing that goal. So, if you're writing that goal for a percent accuracy, then you're reporting it in a percent accuracy. I much prefer to write my data collection probes in trials or opportunities. So, usually out of 10. So, it is a 10-item probe. It is quick. With that said, depending upon how many goals and or objectives you have for your student, right, you're going to have a probe that matches each one of those goals. 

00:08:11 Michele: And if your objectives are separate skills, then you have a probe that matches each of those objectives as well. So, in terms of this would be my also cautionary tale for lots of therapists out there, especially the new ones. Your IEP is a blueprint of what you're working on. It is not everything you are targeting. So, you do not need an IEP goal for every single skill you're going to expose a student to during the year. So, the more goals you have, the longer your data collection will take.

00:08:40 Hallie: And are you doing this every session or whenever the progress monitoring intervals are, whatever the IEP is stating?

00:08:46 Michele: So, yes. So, certainly with the IEP states, but I run on, and this is where I often get lots of questions from SLPs, collecting data on a monthly basis. So, if you're seeing a student once a week or twice a week, we're talking four or eight sessions in a month. We already know that our students don't learn. At the same pace, their language acquisition is delayed and or disordered, depending upon where you are age bracket wise. They're not going to acquire skills at the same rate.

00:09:16 Michele: So, assessment, in my opinion, more than once a month is not going to probably yield you any different information. So, I recommend and what I operate on myself is out of the month, three weeks or treatment weeks, one week is a data collection week. And sometimes therapists get that confused with the 3:1 ratio when it comes to three weeks of direct service and one week of indirect service. That's not what I'm actually advocating for. My students are in front of me all four weeks in a month, but three weeks is designed treatment and lesson planning and implementation to work towards those goals. And then that fourth week is assessment only.

00:10:00 Michele: And so then that brings lots of questions about what does that look like? What are your students doing with you? And I will make the argument, so to speak, that using a 3:1 ratio gets you much better therapy in your three weeks, because if you're not concentrating on charting and probing, you're 100% engaged with your student. You are connected with them, they're connected with you, and you're not interrupting your treatment to be like, oh, wait, let me get that down. How many trials do I have? Let me count that up, right? You are prompting, you are scaffolding, you're delivering whatever cues and strategies they need in order to be successful. It is dynamic and you are engaged. 

00:10:42 Michele: And then in that fourth week, this becomes the testing week, right? We're no longer prompting. We're no – I'm not telling them whether they're right or wrong. I present the probe to them. I write down their response. I chart it, and then we move on. So on that data collection week, I often will give students the coloring part of a craft of a lesson that might be coming up. I'm not wasting my therapy doing all of the crafty things. 

00:11:09 Michele: Now, I know you work with older students, and I know that is not what they're doing, but at my level, we're doing a lot of that. We need a lot of hands-on activities. I also work with students with a lot of OT needs, so we're intertwining those skills. But during my data collection, they may be playing a structured language game with a peer while I work one-on-one at the table. They may be working and doing some boom cards that have audio that are still a guided lesson that they can work through on their own. They could be doing the crafty part of an activity that is upcoming or they're finishing that they don't need me for. So it is still all direct time. They are still with me in my room, in my office. But three weeks is treatment. One week is progress monitoring.

00:11:57 Hallie: All right. But I'm going to ask the question. We have to do Medicaid billing for every session. What do you put down if you're not taking data?

00:12:04 Michele: So every school district obviously has different parameters for that. So I often for… I've had lots of therapists say, well, my supervisor requires me to take data every session. Right? Well, I have to – whether it's for Medicaid or not. So my recommendations sometimes are very based on who's asking the question or the situation. But you can always use first trial data. So you can do one item, plus or minus, correct or not correct. Or you can for your Medicaid billing, use your prompt level, because we're not going to use that information for our progress monitoring for our IEPs. But if you know that they were 100% successful with nonspecific verbal prompt today, then that is what I'm going to be doing.

00:12:51 Michele: What I tend to do is break up my data collection across my medical assistance billing. So if my student has three goals that I progress monitor in a month, I break each of those ten into half and I report out of five trials each of my sessions that I see them. So I just take my data that I've collected on that one week and I report it out over the month. Now, obviously, not everybody feels able to do that or comfortable to do that. But that is that student data in that. That is how the IEP is written, that we're collecting that ten item probe data on a monthly basis. I'm comfortable and confident with reporting my access billing that way.

00:13:33 Hallie: Interesting. I love that idea. Splitting it up. And I'm sure a lot of people are asking, how long does it take to gather your probes that you're doing for your monthly progress monitoring and where are you gathering these stimuli from?

00:13:49 Michele: Yeah, so I would say the good news for everybody listening is that if they do head over to either my TPT store, which is SLP Madness or my website, which is slpmadness.com, I have put together a compilation of everything that I use. And so I would say that to many of the therapists, if they look at the resources they have, a lot of our books, even you go back to SuperDuper or Lingua Systems books, I'm dating myself. They have – 

00:14:19 Hallie: CD-ROMs in the back.

00:14:21 Michele: Yeah, I mean, a lot of those resources, based on a skill set, have a pretest at the front, right? How do you know whether you need to work on synonyms and antonyms, tier one, tier two, whatever it is, vocabulary I always use. Like it's infinite. There's always new learning of words, right? But what we're teaching is the relationship between words, how words interplay together. These words go together because they mean the same thing. These words go together because they're opposites. These words go together because they're categorically the same, right? We're teaching the framework behind the words. We're not teaching specific words.

00:15:04 Michele: So I digress slightly there. So but if you… those resources, they are available when you start looking. And again, data became my favorite out of necessity. And I started creating on my own, like many years ago, like I need picture description task. I need similarities and differences by category, by function, by feature. And then I just started pulling together, started with old boardmaker clipart and pulling together what do I need in order to assess these goals? 

00:15:39 Michele: That has then turned into again, if I think it should be in the show notes, but one of the links to a freebie that I put in there is that I have an IEP goal bank that anybody can sign up and download that is aligned with every single one of my data collection probes. So it is a discrete skill. And then those IEP goals match the data collection probes that I personally use. So they are out there. You can create them as you go, as you get new IEP goals. Whether you have a move in or you write something different for a student for the first time, you can start creating. 

00:16:18 Michele: And so that's really just kind of where it came from. It happened organically over time out of necessity for figuring out how to progress monitor in a way that I could then later defend. So if somebody says to me, whether it's a parent, another IEP team member, a colleague, an attorney, right, how did you measure this goal? On October 18th, 2025, you said your student, you know, this student had 5 out of 10 opportunities on said goal. How did you measure that? Well, I can pull it right out. They can see it digitally. I can print it for them. I know exactly how I measured that.

00:16:58 Michele: And if I use that same probe as their starting point for their baseline, and every month I am tracking in the same way that their progress, hopefully linear, but sometimes it's not right. Sometimes it's up and down. Hopefully their progress is linear. And I am able to show progress that they have made on an IEP goal because I'm using the same stimuli each time I measure it.

00:17:22 Hallie: That's so cool. And for those listening that are SLP Elevate members, you can take any of the themes, like go into, I don't know, cookies and just use that each and every month to assess. You do have progress monitoring probes in there as well, but you can just take any resource and just hold that aside and use it over and over again. 

00:17:42 Michele: Correct. And it's about the consistency with what you're doing. So I love that. Yeah. So what's available to your listeners and your members already? It's just about not changing it, right? Don't change what's in front of the student when it comes to measurement, right? That testing part is critical. What we do is… this is what makes us different than teachers, right? We're remediating something that is not supposed to be taught. It's supposed to happen organically and it's infinite. 

00:18:12 Michele: So the learning doesn't end like when I learn two digit addition and I can carry and borrow and do some – like, yes, you can keep going. But like, that's a discrete scale, right? It is. And it is a skill that is meant to be taught specifically. What we're doing, we're remediating something that didn't happen in natural development. And because language is infinite, if you just allow yourself to progress monitor with anything that's in front of you on any given day, I hate to say it, but the data is meaningless because it's not representative of what your student's learning. And you want to be able to come to the table to report to families, to report to your IEP team and really show what, you know, your student is making great progress.

00:18:58 Michele: And having really sound data, what I'm going to call clean data will allow you to do that efficiently, effectively. And it will help you when you come to an IEP meeting, whether all of them still make you nervous or there's some that, you know, might be contentious and you're feeling a little bit more unsettled. Being really rooted and grounded in good documentation will make you feel so much more comfortable and confident at what you're going to communicate to the IEP team when you come down and sit at the table together.

00:19:30 Hallie: And I'm sure it makes the report writing and IEP writing so much easier because you have so much more information about how they're doing.

00:19:38 Michele: 1000%. And so, again, I would say, like, everything we do comes back to data. You get our screening referral. What data do we have that there's educational impact, social impact? What is the teacher reporting? Even if you were just starting with a conversation, right, you're doing some observation, you're collecting some data about what they sound like. Then you're making a recommendation. Am I moving to an evaluation? So that starts with what data is in front of you. I'm going to move to an evaluation and hopefully best practice. We all know it. And I'm not going to lie. There are times that I'm working feverishly to get the umpteen million evaluations done and they're not all always my best work. But your evaluation needs to include both formal standardized assessment and informal measures. It needs to include both. 

00:20:33 Michele: So you then, as part of that evaluation, can be giving those data collection probes. You're going to start with some standardized assessment and you're going to say, hmm, this area on the language processing test. Guess what? Like multiple meetings, they had every other skill, but multiple meetings, they really bottomed out. I need to dig deeper into this. So then maybe you're going to give a probe that hopefully validates, right, that that's an area of need for your student. You're going to report that probe in your evaluation. That then rolls right into becoming the baseline that's written in your IEP goal. And then that is the probe at which you use to progress monitor for all of your progress reporting periods. And then you start the cycle over again when the next IEP year comes around.

00:21:17 Hallie: You mentioned this earlier, and I want to touch base on this again, that what you're doing on your everyday sessions are not the IEP goals. What are you doing then instead?

00:21:28 Michele: Oh, well, that's I mean, it obviously depends on the student. But I would say that I'm doing skills that are neighboring. I am testing like are there skills that are emerging that weren't there before? Can I get like a twofer? If I target this goal in one way, can I influence a skill or can I start modeling and scaffolding this skill over here? So I would say that one of the things that's super easy for people to understand is like, again, people have mixed feelings about writing questions for W.H. You know, a goal for W.H. questions. But again, it's infinite.

00:22:06 Michele: So maybe I'm just working on initially with a little kiddo like what doing questions. And that might be the goal. But does that mean those are the only question forms I'm working into my therapy? Well, absolutely not. I might be working in can they identify function? Can they start to answer questions related to associated items? Am I going to start to work in who and where questions? They’re related skills. I'm simultaneously working to teach those, but those are not the ones I'm tracking. Right?

00:22:39 M :Again, if you think of a teacher's report card, at least, I'm going to speak for my school district. Right? It does not include every single standard in every single skill that's in their curriculum for the year. It is the big skills. The necessary ones that are building blocks for skills that are to come in the next grade level or the most important standards for that skill area. But a report card doesn't include every single skill like the math test might. Might break every standard down in every skill. But what gets reported in progress reporting time to parents is not every discreet skill. And so I would argue that our instruction and the IEP should be thought of in the same way.

00:23:19 Hallie: So sure. And I always say that if you're working on the end goal all year long, it's like if you're going to the gym and grabbing that hundred pound weight and thinking you're going to be successful.

00:23:29 Michele: Very, very good point. Small steps, scaffolding, getting yourself there and building is the perfect, that's a perfect analogy.

00:23:37 Hallie: Right. And they can use those monthly check ins to see how they're doing towards that end goal. And…

00:23:44 Michele: If right, if the monthly check ins, if you're not seeing that progress, right, then that is letting you know somewhere you need to adjust. So maybe you do need to spend some more discreet time. Maybe I do need to adjust and realize that I've spent too much time over here and I need to redirect or I'm seeing progress in one goal area, but not another.So I'm going to deviate slightly from the direction I was headed and spend more time in another goal area. 

00:24:12 Michele: But remember, like those numbers, that progress monitoring is to inform our instruction. So if we're not getting or we're not able to demonstrate that progress, then we need to change course in some way. And it could be minor, but we need to adjust in some way to show that we're trying to do something different because doing the same thing and like you said, not getting to pick up the hundred pound weight at the end of the year, somebody's going to say, well, I mean, did you just pick up the hundred pounds every single time you went to the gym? Like, did you try something lighter? Did you ask somebody to help you? Did you do it in a different way? Did you use a kettlebell instead of a dumbbell? Like whatever it is, we need to adjust. And that data collection obviously is there to inform our instruction.

00:24:59 Hallie: What advice would you give to someone that inherited goals they don't agree with and now have to progress monitor these goals?

00:25:08 Michele: So, yeah, I mean, that is always – and Hallie, that actually makes me think of one site. So remind me to go back to like that concept of consistency when it comes to progress monitoring, like cross therapists and the benefit of data collection probes. But when you inherit an IEP goal, we all do and we all either don't agree with the goal. We're not sure what the goal is really measuring. There could be four skills in one goal. They have one data point. You have no idea what they're using. It's really muddy. It's really, really muddy.

00:25:46 Michele: What I will always say is do what you know to be best practice. So I am going to learn the child. I'm going to see what the child is like in our setting, in their classroom. What do the needs look like? I'm going to do the best right to pull apart and tease apart what the skills are and measure those. But again, an IEP is a blueprint. It's not set in stone. And we say all the time, like to parents, remember, anybody can call an IEP meeting at any time to revise if we need to. And I would tell therapists to not hesitate to pick up that phone and say, hey, you know, it's been great getting to know your son. We've spent the first three months at school together. The previous therapist reported this in their previous school. I'm now seeing this. I would like to modify their IEP in this way because it's based on what I'm seeing in my setting. 

00:26:41 Michele: I think that that's hard, but I think that it's necessary, especially if the IEP was just written right. If you've got all year to go with those goals that you're not sure about, it's better to say like to be honest and say, I'm not really sure what this therapist was referencing. I'm not really sure how this therapist previously measured it. But I want to make sure that the information I'm communicating to you and the entire team is meaningful and relevant and I can replicate that over over time. I think honesty is really sometimes we don't want to say that, but it's really the best policy. Like parents appreciate that and respect that.

00:27:22 Hallie: And I'll put the disclaimer that when your school psychologist is mad at you for this, you have to show them how the meeting at the end of the year will be easier.

00:27:31 Michele: Now, 1000%. I mean, absolutely. Yeah, 1000%. The other benefit that I wanted to share just about and it really relates to this. I know that there are a lot of school districts and mine is – so I'm in the third largest school district in Pennsylvania. So the largest suburban school district behind Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. So we are huge and we have a lot of movement within our school district. And I know that there are certain areas of the country that have lots of transient populations or movement within their districts. 

00:28:04 Michele: And so imagine a world where every therapist in your district all used the same data collection probes. Everybody measured goals in the same way so that when you inherit that student from somebody else, you know exactly what they used to measure to get that baseline to measure that goal. And then it is seamless when they fold themselves into your treatment schedule, because you are then very confident about exactly what they're doing. 

00:28:36 Michele: And so I think that that is something that. All school districts, while I love the autonomy we have in our job, it's a double edged sword because then you get IEP goals that you might not love. You're not sure how somebody measured them, but when there is consistency and clarity again, it just makes your ability to demonstrate the progress that you know your students make even better when there's consistency across therapists.

00:29:08 Hallie: Oh, my goodness, especially those of us that work with older students and they're coming from the elementary school. And I'm like, why do we have a double age goal and an inference single in one year? Like, if you can't do one, you can't do the other… And I'm like, and then I'm having to explain to parents why we didn't work on this yet or why that was already achieved. There's so many benefits in everyone having the same system. 

00:29:31 Michele: Being on the same page. And not to lock anybody in by no means. And it's not that those are the only goals students can work on. You get a student. You see a need, then you need to work on that skill, whether there's an established probe or not for it. So but, yes, going… we have lots of discussions again, because I'm at the elementary level only, with our middle and high school therapists about should they be discharged before they get to middle school? What does therapy look like at middle versus high school? What do they need versus what is nice to have or what parents haven't wanted to let go of? And so, yeah, it would certainly make… as a secondary therapist, it would make your life a whole lot easier if there was consistency and communication amongst the therapists about what was happening at the different levels.

00:30:20 Hallie: Any last bit of advice that you would give to someone who is heading into this new school year or has just started that is already feeling a little overwhelmed and wondering how they can start now, using this new format? 

00:30:36 Michele: So I would always say… my recommendation always is start small, because the reason people feel paralyzed or scared to make a change is because it just, it's so overwhelming. So pick one student, start with one kid, and I'm going to make this transition or I'm going to pick one goal or one goal area. Like, I'm going to do this only with my students this year, because that's much easier to come up with data probes or word lists for articulation. Start there, start small. 

00:31:07 Michele: I tend to, if you're going to pick one student, I always say, pick pick the student that has the most chance of a meeting going sideways, right? Start with the high profile one that has historically had some issues or you've heard the students moving in. They sued their previous school district. It's not all about that, but start small. Pick the one or pick the student that you've been with the longest that you feel the most confident working with. Right? You have the best relation, really established relationship with the student, really established relationship with the parents. There's a lot of trust and make the change starting small and then work your way through as IEPs come due, right? 

00:31:51 Michele: Then you start to think of like, okay, this child's IEPs coming up. I know I've got a month before I'm going to be writing the new one. Well, let me start probing new skills. And guess what? You should probe some skills that you're not going to need to work on and you're going to report great, probed this skill. Already established. Don't need to worry about it. Doesn't need to be an IEP goal, but if you start small and you won't overwhelm yourself, then you will stick with it.

00:32:19 Hallie: I love it. Where can everyone learn more about you, Michele, and everything you have to offer?

00:32:22 Michele: Oh, thank you for asking. I did mention before. So, if you go to SLP Madness, there is a free VIP freebie library that you can sign up for. There are free resources on there. Also my TPT store by the same name is SLP Madness, and you can find me on Instagram and Facebook @slp.madness. Hoping you guys all come and connect with me.

00:32:47 Hallie: Thank you, Michele. So, so much. I always end my episodes with a joke since it builds rapport and is very language based. So why did the pencil get sent to the principal's office?

00:32:58 Michele: Why did the pencil get sent to the principal's office? I don't know why. 

00:33:03 Hallie: It couldn't stop drawing attention to itself.

00:33:09 Michele: Very cute. I thought it was going to have to do something with the point. I was trying to figure out what the play on words was with the point, but yes, I love that.

00:33:17 Hallie: It could be on with a crayon either. You could just go – or a marker, but you know? 

00:33:21 Michele: Very cute. 

00:33:22 Hallie: Thank you, Michele, so, so much. Go check out her Instagram. Go check out her Teachers Pay Teachers store. Go grab her a free resource. And if you walk away with anything today, it's that start small. Don't feel the need to test all session, every session. Otherwise you're going to feel that madness, that SLP Madness. And we don't want that, too. And hopefully you'll start to love data as much as Michele does. So… 

00:33:50 Michele: Thank you very much. 

00:33:51 Hallie: Thank you, Michele, so, so much. And until next week, everyone, stay out of trouble. 

00:34:00 Hallie: Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of SLP Coffee Talk. It means the world to me that you're tuning in each and every week and getting the jolt of inspiration you need. You can find all of the links and information mentioned in this episode at my website, speechtimefun.com. Don't forget to follow the show so you don't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, it would mean the world to me if you would take a few seconds and leave me an honest review. See you next week with another episode full of fun and inspiration from one SLP to another. Have fun, guys.

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