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Speech therapist Debbie Case uses a tongue depressor to help Hucrest Elementary School third-grader Gunnar Campman form his "r" sounds during a session in her office on Wednesday.
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ENLARGE
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Case works with Hucrest Elementary School third-graders Crystal Wilson and Gunnar Campman.
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ENLARGE
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Speech therapist Debbie Case works with Hucrest Elementary School third-grader Ryan Highley on naming his body parts.
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"Raft.” “Cherry.” “Vampire.”
Debbie Case read these words aloud with two students in one of the modular units tucked behind the main building at Hucrest Elementary in mid-January.
Though seemingly unrelated, those three words carry a challenge for third-graders Gunnar Campman and Crystal Wilson.
The letter “R” is in a different position in each word — the beginning, middle and end — and changes where the sound falls and how it’s made.
“The first thing we need to do is hear where it’s at in the words to identify it,” Case told the students, as they worked on articulation.
Articulation has become almost the poster child for speech programs, but people working with students in local schools say “speech” encompasses a whole host of communication disorders.
“The whole social communication and being able to express themselves so others can understand you — it’s not just, do you lisp, can you make you’re ‘Rs’,” Amelie Delzer said.
Case and Delzer are two of the 14 full-time speech and language pathologists for the Douglas Education Service District, which serves students in 13 of the 14 school districts in Douglas County. The Reedsport School District belongs to another ESD.
In addition to helping students with articulation, speech pathologists work with students on the oral motor skills involved in speaking. They also work on understanding elements of language, such as words with multiple meanings, as well as practicing social skills involved in communication, such as understanding greetings or sarcasm.
“We use figurative language all the time,” said Kym Lawrence, a speech pathologist assistant. “And if you use it with someone who takes everything literally, what are they going to walk away from that conversation with?”
Case said the profession had just begun expanding speech and language therapy to include those receptive, expressive and pragmatic aspects of communication beyond articulation when she was doing her schooling about 30 years ago.
Students served by Case, Delzer and their colleagues include those with cerebral palsy, autism, Down syndrome, stutters and lisps, as well as students who have trouble organizing their thoughts or problems with memory and vocabulary.
And though “speech” takes the marquee title position, the goal is communication. That means giving students a battery of tools to carry their skills out of therapy sessions and into class and life so they can express themselves.
Sometimes reaching that goal involves speaking, or signing or other non-verbal augmentative tools such as computer programs or picture-book like aides.
“All these kids just want to fit in,” Case said of the many students with whom she works. “And that’s what we do. We give them the words, the language, the skills to do that.”
The rest of the speech pathology staff at the ESD includes two part-time positions, one part-time on-call position and one part-time contracted position and six assistants.
Last year, the department had contact with 959 students through screenings and tests, but the speech pathology staff’s student case load is about 700, said Debby Reed, ESD coordinator for the program.
“Contact is higher than the case load,” Reed said. “But that doesn’t make the work load easier.”
Reed said the ideal situation would be to have one speech pathologist per building, but her realistic hope is to see the program funded for 18 full-time pathologists.
Currently, the program is funded with $1.8 million of the ESD’s $15 million annual budget. The expectation is that all programs will be receiving the same funding if not less in the next biennium.
Even without the state’s funding issues, there’s a nationwide shortage of speech pathologists being graduated into the job market. Reed said the local ESD is always recruiting.
Reed said the job security for the profession that serves all ages, from cradle to grave, is high. She said there’s even a waiting list at universities, but programs simply can’t graduate enough.
“We’re fortunate to have as many SLPs as we do,” she said.
Aside from direct therapy, speech pathologists in the local school districts are also responsible for testing students, paperwork and reporting on progress, meeting with parents, teachers and administrators and helping develop students’ Individual Education Plans.
Among other schools, Case works at Roseburg High School, Hucrest and even meets a student at the Boys and Girls Club. In her 25 years with the ESD, Case has worked all over the county, but now spends most of her time in the Roseburg district.
Delzer juggles her caseload of 57 student in three districts in North County — Sutherlin, Elkton and North Douglas. Delzer says those in the program take work home, as well as coming in early and staying late — much like teachers.
Lawrence said her caseload involves seeing 55 kids a week at five different sites, under five different programs. But each year is different.
“It’s like having five different jobs,” Lawrence laughed, explaining that though the work is similar, each area has its own nuances.
Speech pathology assistants are to the therapists what nurses are to doctors.
“They set up the programs and do their diagnostics and I follow that program,” Lawrence said of her job.
Therapy sessions differ from child to child. In addition to the word lists the Hucrest third-graders receive, speech pathologists have an armory of tools. In her small office at Hucrest, Case has tape recorders, mirrors, a PVC-pipe ‘C’ instrument that students speak into to hear the sounds they’re producing, vocabulary picture cards, straws to work the fine muscles of the lips and tongue, and cherry flavored tongue depressors, which she says kids like so much she has to mete them out.
The tools in combination with exercises can work wonders, but it takes time, and students sometime spend several years or all of their school-age years working with speech pathologists.
But professionals say the successes are a big deal and keep kids from withdrawing from their surroundings.
“You see kids have these lightbulb moments,” Lawrence said, adding that students’ improving communication will naturally improve self-esteem.
At Hucrest, one of Case’s students has Down syndrome. When that boy first came to Case, he didn’t speak. He crawled under the table or just refused to work. And some days he still has stubborn moments where he doesn’t want to work. But he’s speaking and loves to sing.
“When I see him start to use words and say something to someone else — that’s why I do this,” Case said.
In her small classroom in January, Case used one of those special cherry-flavored tongue depressors to gently scrape the edges of Wilson’s tongue and then the roof of her mouth, sending an oral stimulus to the brain as to where the muscle needed to touch to make an ‘R’ sound.
“I think I can hear your tongue,” Case told the girl as they listened to a recording of her saying R-words.
“That’s my tough one, too,” Campman told his compatriot as Wilson worked to say “car.”
Wilson continued reading words from her list, then stopped and repeated “tractor.”
“That’s called self-correction,” Case congratulated her. “At first you said, ‘tracto,’ and then you corrected it.”
• You can reach reporter DD Bixby at 957-4211 or by e-mail at dbixby@nrtoday.com.
Debbie Case read these words aloud with two students in one of the modular units tucked behind the main building at Hucrest Elementary in mid-January.
Though seemingly unrelated, those three words carry a challenge for third-graders Gunnar Campman and Crystal Wilson.
The letter “R” is in a different position in each word — the beginning, middle and end — and changes where the sound falls and how it’s made.
“The first thing we need to do is hear where it’s at in the words to identify it,” Case told the students, as they worked on articulation.
Articulation has become almost the poster child for speech programs, but people working with students in local schools say “speech” encompasses a whole host of communication disorders.
“The whole social communication and being able to express themselves so others can understand you — it’s not just, do you lisp, can you make you’re ‘Rs’,” Amelie Delzer said.
Case and Delzer are two of the 14 full-time speech and language pathologists for the Douglas Education Service District, which serves students in 13 of the 14 school districts in Douglas County. The Reedsport School District belongs to another ESD.
In addition to helping students with articulation, speech pathologists work with students on the oral motor skills involved in speaking. They also work on understanding elements of language, such as words with multiple meanings, as well as practicing social skills involved in communication, such as understanding greetings or sarcasm.
“We use figurative language all the time,” said Kym Lawrence, a speech pathologist assistant. “And if you use it with someone who takes everything literally, what are they going to walk away from that conversation with?”
Case said the profession had just begun expanding speech and language therapy to include those receptive, expressive and pragmatic aspects of communication beyond articulation when she was doing her schooling about 30 years ago.
Students served by Case, Delzer and their colleagues include those with cerebral palsy, autism, Down syndrome, stutters and lisps, as well as students who have trouble organizing their thoughts or problems with memory and vocabulary.
And though “speech” takes the marquee title position, the goal is communication. That means giving students a battery of tools to carry their skills out of therapy sessions and into class and life so they can express themselves.
Sometimes reaching that goal involves speaking, or signing or other non-verbal augmentative tools such as computer programs or picture-book like aides.
“All these kids just want to fit in,” Case said of the many students with whom she works. “And that’s what we do. We give them the words, the language, the skills to do that.”
The rest of the speech pathology staff at the ESD includes two part-time positions, one part-time on-call position and one part-time contracted position and six assistants.
Last year, the department had contact with 959 students through screenings and tests, but the speech pathology staff’s student case load is about 700, said Debby Reed, ESD coordinator for the program.
“Contact is higher than the case load,” Reed said. “But that doesn’t make the work load easier.”
Reed said the ideal situation would be to have one speech pathologist per building, but her realistic hope is to see the program funded for 18 full-time pathologists.
Currently, the program is funded with $1.8 million of the ESD’s $15 million annual budget. The expectation is that all programs will be receiving the same funding if not less in the next biennium.
Even without the state’s funding issues, there’s a nationwide shortage of speech pathologists being graduated into the job market. Reed said the local ESD is always recruiting.
Reed said the job security for the profession that serves all ages, from cradle to grave, is high. She said there’s even a waiting list at universities, but programs simply can’t graduate enough.
“We’re fortunate to have as many SLPs as we do,” she said.
Aside from direct therapy, speech pathologists in the local school districts are also responsible for testing students, paperwork and reporting on progress, meeting with parents, teachers and administrators and helping develop students’ Individual Education Plans.
Among other schools, Case works at Roseburg High School, Hucrest and even meets a student at the Boys and Girls Club. In her 25 years with the ESD, Case has worked all over the county, but now spends most of her time in the Roseburg district.
Delzer juggles her caseload of 57 student in three districts in North County — Sutherlin, Elkton and North Douglas. Delzer says those in the program take work home, as well as coming in early and staying late — much like teachers.
Lawrence said her caseload involves seeing 55 kids a week at five different sites, under five different programs. But each year is different.
“It’s like having five different jobs,” Lawrence laughed, explaining that though the work is similar, each area has its own nuances.
Speech pathology assistants are to the therapists what nurses are to doctors.
“They set up the programs and do their diagnostics and I follow that program,” Lawrence said of her job.
Therapy sessions differ from child to child. In addition to the word lists the Hucrest third-graders receive, speech pathologists have an armory of tools. In her small office at Hucrest, Case has tape recorders, mirrors, a PVC-pipe ‘C’ instrument that students speak into to hear the sounds they’re producing, vocabulary picture cards, straws to work the fine muscles of the lips and tongue, and cherry flavored tongue depressors, which she says kids like so much she has to mete them out.
The tools in combination with exercises can work wonders, but it takes time, and students sometime spend several years or all of their school-age years working with speech pathologists.
But professionals say the successes are a big deal and keep kids from withdrawing from their surroundings.
“You see kids have these lightbulb moments,” Lawrence said, adding that students’ improving communication will naturally improve self-esteem.
At Hucrest, one of Case’s students has Down syndrome. When that boy first came to Case, he didn’t speak. He crawled under the table or just refused to work. And some days he still has stubborn moments where he doesn’t want to work. But he’s speaking and loves to sing.
“When I see him start to use words and say something to someone else — that’s why I do this,” Case said.
In her small classroom in January, Case used one of those special cherry-flavored tongue depressors to gently scrape the edges of Wilson’s tongue and then the roof of her mouth, sending an oral stimulus to the brain as to where the muscle needed to touch to make an ‘R’ sound.
“I think I can hear your tongue,” Case told the girl as they listened to a recording of her saying R-words.
“That’s my tough one, too,” Campman told his compatriot as Wilson worked to say “car.”
Wilson continued reading words from her list, then stopped and repeated “tractor.”
“That’s called self-correction,” Case congratulated her. “At first you said, ‘tracto,’ and then you corrected it.”
• You can reach reporter DD Bixby at 957-4211 or by e-mail at dbixby@nrtoday.com.
