119: Collaborating with Your Sped with Ashley Lutz

Let’s talk about special education!

As SLPs, many of us work closely with special education teachers. Collaboration is an important part of helping students reach their goals. Sometimes that’s easier said than done though. There is a lot that goes into each role, and it can be easy to lose sight of that and get frustrated when things don’t go as planned.

The key is to come up with a strategy that works for you and your SPED teacher. In this episode of SLP Coffee Talk, I sat down with a special education teacher, Ashley Lutz, to talk about things like working collaboratively, how SPED views speech therapy, and so much more.

Ashley has been working in Special Education for 10 years. She was a middle school self-contained teacher for 8 years working with students with intellectual disabilities. She just began her third year as a special education inclusion teacher in an elementary setting.

Outside of the classroom, Ashley is married with 3 kids; a 5-year-old and 3-year-old twins. When she is not running after her littles, Ashley enjoys hiking, running, and lots of coffee!

In This Episode You’ll Discover:

How Ashley works with SLPs to reach goals
Tips for working collaboratively
The limits to what the SLP and SPED teachers can do
What to do when you’re struggling to work as a team with SPED
The importance of finding a collaboration strategy that works for you

If you find yourself struggling to work together with the SPED teacher, it’s important to keep your goal at the forefront of your mind. You are there to help your students. Come up with a strategy for working together that works for you. Whether that is a Google Doc, letters back and forth, a journal, etc. You can make it work!

It was so great talking to Ashley and getting a glimpse into the special education teachers' world. She is just full of great ideas for working collaboratively on student goals. If you would like to know more about her, make sure you follow her on Instagram and check out her website.

If you are a new SLP grad, make sure to check out my blog post here for my top 10 tips, tricks, and must-haves for brand new SLPs!

Joke of the Week:

Q: Why did the computer squeak?

A: Because someone stepped on the mouse.

Resources Mentioned:

Check out my tips and tricks for the new SLP

Visit the Spedtacular Days website

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Where We Can Connect:

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