Help Me Empower and Inspire My Special Education Students
I need funding to attend an advanced live-streamed evidence-based training that will help me become a more effective and empowering facilitator when providing therapy to my special education and BIPOC teen students.
$629 goal
This project expired on March 15, 2024.
This project expired on March 15, 2024.
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
My Project
I work full time as a speech therapist, serving high school and transition (18-21 year old) students with communication needs (and often additional concomitant learning and/or health-related needs such as learning disabilities, ADHD, Autism, etc.). The majority of my students are BIPOC, from lower SES backgrounds, and primarily multilingual, with English being only one of the languages spoken at home. Needless to say, this population is at the intersection of special needs and racial inequalities, and it has been traditionally disempowered and marginalized.
Working with this student population, over the past few years I began training in and using Motivational Interviewing (an evidence-based communication technique) in my speech therapy sessions.
This form of communication supports treating students like equal partners, increasing student engagement, and facilitating greater student ownership over their own change process. It also highlights students' innate strengths and values. As such this process helps students feel more seen and heard, and as a result - more empowered. I have used this technique to create treatment goals in partnership with my students that are more student-centered (rather than dictated by me), making treatment more relevant to their lives, and as such - more impactful.
Motivational interviewing is a skill that needs yearly maintenance, practice, and feedback, and I would love to continue my professional development in this area for the benefit of my students.
More than three‑quarters of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
45 students impacted
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