#155: Dreading Back to School? A Strategy for SLPs

Hey there! It's Marisha, and I am so excited to be starting up the podcast again. We are kicking off an epic series with tons of back to school tips to help make the school year just a little bit easier. Today we're starting things off with a little chat about mindset. I don't know about you, but I know a lot of SLPs struggle to head back to school. Just the change in the routine and also knowing that there will be challenges that we inevitably will come across and getting ready to navigate those because being a school-based SLP is not an easy job. So I'm really excited to kick things off with just an itty-bitty talk about mindset and then we'll talk about tips to navigate the first few weeks of school, scheduling, paperwork, data collection, all of the good things. Building up your resources to navigate your school year with as much confidence and calm as possible. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive right in.

We want to talk about your why.

This is what will keep us going when we are drowning in paperwork or we're getting spit on, or dealing with other accidents, and navigating all of the challenges that inevitably come our way as speech language pathologists.

If we have a really strong why behind why we're doing the things that we do and why we decided to become an SLP in the first place, why we decided to work in the schools, it'll make it that much more doable and a lot less stressful if we know what we're working towards and what we want to make happen. We can choose to feel overwhelmed or we can choose to tackle things with a positive mindset.

I wrote a blog post when I was feeling a little bit hesitant to head back to work and feeling in a little bit of a rutt.

But there's actually research around creating some statements for yourself. And if you want a fancy name for it, you can call it a manifesto. Some of the statements that I put together, just in case you're looking for some inspiration, are that *I make a difference in the lives of my students.*

When I talk to pretty much any SLP, that's why they do what they do. They do it for the students. And we can hone in and get a little bit more specific. We can say that *we help students find their voice.* *We enable students to communicate when they otherwise might not be able to.*

And we play such an important role in the schools. We can empower students to communicate when they might not otherwise be able to.

*I'm a voice for students with disabilities and will speak up.* Some of our students don't have a voice yet and we need to speak up for them, and sometimes it's scary to do that advocacy and jump into that role.

That's one thing that I had in my personal manifesto, and we won't go through all of the different things. A lot of it is about what I do for my students and how I see myself as an SLP. *I'm constantly learning and improving. I'm a problem solver. *

The last statement is the one that I wanted to end off with before we dive into all the nitty gritty strategies.

But the last one is, *I am exactly who I need to be.* So it's easy to compare yourself to the other SLPs out there. You might be looking at what other SLPs are sharing on Instagram or other speech therapists in your district. You might see what they're doing and think, "oh, I'm not as good as Sally. Or I don't have this like she does." And it's easy to fall into that comparison trap. "Oh, maybe I'm not the SLP that I need to be to serve this student." But we are there for a reason. There's a reason why we get those students. There's a reason why we're at the school that we're at, and we can play a very important role. You have everything that you need to make that happen. And it's just a matter of continuing to work at it and be a problem solver and work through those challenges. But you have exactly what you need to solve those problems, and we get really good at problem solving.

And that's a wrap. Be sure to head to SLPnow.com/155 to check out the show notes for this episode, which will include a link to a blog post that goes into even more detail on all things mindset. And also make sure that you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can hear all of the other episodes in this series. We're going to be talking about tips to navigate the first few weeks of school, therapy planning tips, data collection, paperwork, parent and teacher communication, all of the things. I cannot wait to see you in the next episode!