Do you ever feel like you should be doing more push-in services?
Push-in services and co-teaching seem to be the rage these days.
Many of us are getting pressured to get in to classrooms rather than pulling kids out; which means leaves us scrambling to figure out how to make it work.
Some of this pressure is coming from our administrators. It’s also coming from ASHA, who lists classroom-based therapy as a service-delivery model in our scope of practice in this online resource for school-based SLPs (ASHA, 2018).
We’re also hearing about it from experts in our field in the ASHA journals, such as this article by Marilyn Nippold (2010) where she shares how SLPs have the expertise to give students the lexical and syntactic skills students will need for the workforce.
The concept of co-teaching isn’t that new; there’s also this article by Sharon Wadle (1991) from back in the 90s, where she takes the stance that “lack of training” and feeling uncomfortable isn’t a valid excuse for not getting in to classrooms.
When I read these articles, I feel a little bit empowered (since they’re saying we have to skills to make a huge impact on students). But I have this other gut reaction…and it’s not quite as positive.
Sometimes, no matter how helpful the information in the ASHA journals is, those of us working in the trenches feel like we’re being told we “MUST” adopt certain practices…but then it stops there. We don’t feel supported in actually implementing those practices. We’re left with a million unanswered questions about how to make it work it real life.
We think, “Great…another thing I HAVE to do that I’m not doing…where do I even start?”
Once we get in to the classroom, many of us feel like a fish out of water.
We’re left thinking…”Okay, I’m doing push-in services…now what am I supposed to be doing in here?”
Here’s the next question: How do I know that “push-in” services are better than the “pull-out” model?
Is there research that shows us that one service-delivery model is better than another? As it turns out, the findings are slim at best.
In this systematic review of research on service-delivery models conducted over the past 30 years, Cirrin et al. (2010) found that there’s not significant evidence that shows one model is superior to another.
What’s even more disheartening is that only 5 studies met the criteria for the author’s analysis. This fact tells us that we haven’t done enough research on this topic; and a lot of the research that has been done has lacked rigor.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t know anything.
Here’s what we do know: It’s not just about “pushing-in” and “co-teaching”. Nor is it about simply being in the classroom.
It’s about effective collaboration with teachers.
Take Throneburg et al.’s (2000) study. This is one of the 5 studies that made the cut in Cirrin et al.’s (2010) systematic review. Throneburg et al., (2000) compared three models:
1) A traditional pull-out model, 2) A classroom-based model with no collaboration, 3) A classroom-based model WITH collaboration.
They found that the classroom-based delivery model WITH collaboration between the SLP and teachers resulted in more vocabulary growth in participants than simply going in to the classroom alone.
What do these findings tell us?
Number one: A co-teaching model can result in improved language gains.
Number two: Whatever service-delivery model you’re using is going to be more effective if you’re working together with teachers.
So where do we start with collaboration? How does that look?
And does it have to be push-in services?
Well…that depends.
Since we know there isn’t a lot of evidence to support one mode over another we don’t have to rigidly stick to just one; but it is to our students’ benefit to test different models; including push-in services.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had my fair share of challenges getting co-teaching to work consistently, which is why I reached out to someone who did it successfully for years.
In the video below, you’ll be able to watch my interview with my colleague, Joann Briggs, who taught special education for over 30 years. I was fortunate enough to collaborate with her for over 10 of those years.
There’s no doubt that co-teaching and collaboration practices are different for a special education teacher than for a speech-language pathologist. They have a different schedule than we do and different caseload requirements.
But the best way to learn how to do something is to model our practices after someone already doing it well; which is why Joann is my go-to expert for co-teaching advice.
I’m thrilled to share this 30-minute interview with Joann Briggs, where talk about effective collaboration between teachers and SLPs, the SLP’s role in building language in the schools, and how to take that first step toward effective push-in services.
You can watch the entire video below. This interview flows like a podcast…which means you can play it during your morning/afternoon commute and just listen to the audio.
One of the big topics that came up in the interview I shared above is successful collaboration, and one of the key pieces to successful collaboration is being 100% confident in how to help your students make massive improvements in their ability to comprehend language.
One of the key secrets to doing that effectively is focusing on the right skills, which I show you how to do in this free guide.
This free guide is called The Ultimate Guide to Sentence Structure.
Inside you’ll learn exactly how to focus your language therapy. Including:
- The hidden culprit behind unexplained “processing problems” that’s often overlooked.
- The deceptively simple way to write language goals; so you’re not spending hours on paperwork (goal bank included).
- The 4 sentence types often behind comprehension and expression issues and why they’re so difficult.
- An easy-to-implement “low-prep” strategy proven to boost sentence structure, comprehension, and written language (conjunctions flashcards included).
References
American Speech-Language and Hearing Association (March, 2018). School-based service delivery in speech-language pathology. Retrieved from: https://www.asha.org/SLP/schools/School-Based-Service-Delivery-in-Speech-Language-Pathology/
*All these links come from the ASHA journals or website. If you’re an ASHA member, you can log in to the website and view the full-text of all the articles in the ASHA journals.
