Thanks for joining us for our podcast series, talking about speech-language pathology graduate school. Join Robert Serianni, MS, CCC-SLP, FNAP, the chair and program director of the department of Speech-Language Pathology at Salus University, as he speaks with a recent alum and her externship supervisor, also an alum.
Allison Stern:
I'm Allie and I'm from Philly. I was the class of 2021, so I just graduated. One of the main reasons that I chose Salus was because of the clinic experiences that are offered. I really liked the idea of being in the clinic right away and getting that hands-on experience. I know the way that I learn, and I definitely learn better hands-on and being able to actually do what I'm learning. So, being able to start in the clinic right away and starting to see and work with clients was something that was really important to me and something that I was super excited about. And I think I got some of the best experiences that I've had doing that.
Bob Serianni:
Thinking about sort of those clinic experiences as the precursor to externship, how did those experiences prepare you for being out in the real world?
Allison Stern:
It definitely prepared me because I was able to use what I was learning in class and apply it to what I was doing at my externship in working with the students of different language backgrounds. I also used my clinic experiences working with school age children and kind of learning how to build rapport with them and just trying to think back on what I did with some of my clients and use that when I was working with my students. So, pulling from my experiences from class and from clinic was very helpful.
Bob Serianni:
I'd like to sort of switch gears and move over to Lauren, your supervisor.
Lauren Bevan:
My name is Lauren and I graduated in the inaugural class at Salus. I'm currently a speech therapist working for Philadelphia School District. I work in one school that has regular ed classrooms and autistic support, life support, learning support. So, there's a lot in my school.
Bob Serianni:
You had a lot of transition this year from completely virtual to a hybrid mix to even squeaking in some face-to-face time towards the end of the school year.
Lauren Bevan:
Yeah, me and Allie were both learning as we went with the schedule changes and the hybrid and the changes that came along with that. And the change in therapy and the change in me supervising her across different types of therapy. That was definitely a learning curve for both of us.
Bob Serianni:
You're a new to the profession professional and I'm wondering if you can take a moment and reflect back to when you were a student, what it was like to be on externship?
Lauren Bevan:
I was very lucky. Both of my externship supervisors were amazing. They definitely understood my learning style. I responded well to their teaching style. They definitely made me want to be a supervisor because I would want someone to have a similar experience that I had. But overall externship is a great learning experience because when you're in the classroom, things you're learning are so abstract. I feel like once you get on externship, everything becomes so much more concrete and you can really see, that's what I learned and here's how to put it into practice across documentation, therapy, communicating with other professionals, all of those things are things that you learn about, but really don't make full sense until you are thrown into it. I think that externship was a great experience for that.
Bob Serianni:
What are some of the strengths of a Salus extern?
Lauren Bevan:
I would say that Allie was great at building rapport with students, it became very easy. When she left, every kid was like, where's Ms. Allie? Or like, where's that other girl? And I'm like, am I not good enough anymore for you guys or what? So, it was great. They loved her. It was great to see her build those relationships. One of her biggest strengths was her ability to take constructive criticism and implement it in the next session. I always saw her trying to really take what I said and implement it and get better and try to do it the next session. Even if it wasn't fixed, if it didn't go perfectly, I saw her taking that experience and trying to use it to grow.
Bob Serianni:
Let's move back to Allie. You're a recent grad, what are your plans now?
Allison Stern:
So I'm relaxing for a little, I'm currently in the process of looking for a CF. I'm going on interviews and sending in applications. So, just trying to navigate that and figure out what I'm doing next. But I will say that this program was very, very helpful in helping me to prepare for interviews. We were given a lot of practice questions and just different tips for how to prepare and getting everything ready for our censure and everything like that. So, just trying to follow the steps and figure out what's next for me.
