Chagrin Falls Exempted Village Schools’ Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) Tracie Guggenheim has been busy working to help other SLPs, as well as students with communication disorders, achieve academic success.
On June 8, Guggenheim hosted a workshop and professional development session for 53 area speech language pathologists. The focus of the workshop was on narrative language skills and strategies to help children improve these skills to succeed in school and life. These skills impact a person’s ability to retell a personal experience and/or retell a story. Without these skills, basic verbal communication, reading and writing are difficult.
Besides helping students and other SLPs in the area, Guggenheim sits on a committee for the American Speech Language and Hearing Association (ASHA). For the next two years, she will try to help solve issues that school based SLPs face while trying to help students with communication disorders succeed. She traveled to Washington D.C. this past month where she met with staff members from Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and Representative Marcia Fudge’s office. Accompanied by Neil Snyder, ASHA lobbyist and Erik Lazdins, ASHA Grassroots Coordinator, Guggenheim discussed Alternatives to Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy for students with autism, recruitment, and retention of SLPs in schools and paperwork requirements in special education.
“It was a very rewarding experience,” said Guggenheim. “I want to make sure these students are set up for success and I will continue to do what I can to ensure that.”
