This school year, I have spent a fair amount of intervention time with students who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). I have also spent a good amount of time with the communication partners (teachers, parents, paraprofessionals) of those students. Throughout this time, I focused my energy on modeling for the students to learn how to use their AAC system, but also for the communication partners to implement modeling. Now that we're months into the school year, I have noticed the communication partners doing some modeling, but it could be done more frequently and more effectively. My first thought on how to solve this problem was to provide the communication partners with a self-assessment form, which I think is a fairly nonintrusive way for people to make a change. So[...]

Throughout my 10 years as a speech-language pathologist (SLP), I have provided services via private practices, schools, and home visits. One of my favorite things about working in private practices and conducting home visits is the amount of direct parent contact (particularly for teaching how to implement augmentative and alternative communication [AAC]), which is typically 1 to 4 times per month. The parents are available at the end of the sessions for parent education that is built into the service time. Direct contact with parents in the schools, on the other hand, is typically limited to 1 to 4 times per year for the annual individualized education program (IEP) meeting and any observation time(s) parents specifically request. The reason for reduced parent contact could be due to scho[...]