Blog 14 - Third Interview Preparation

1.  Who do you plan to interview?  What is this person's area of expertise?

• I plan to interview Alejandra Miranda. She is a speech therapist that works under Sara Romo. This means that Alejandra is an SLPA, Speech-Language Pathologist Assistant, and is working on receiving her Master's Degree in Sciences and Communicative Disorders. 

2.  Verify that you have called your interviewee to schedule an interview.  What is the date and time of the interview? 

• The date of my interview if 3 Feb. 2016. The time is still to be determined. 

3.  Phrase an open-ended question that will help you find research resources that would help to answer the EQ.

• While receiving your education to become a speech therapist, what kind of reading material did you, and have you, encounter that really spoke to you and have helped you make decisions you believe to be in the best interest of the patient? 

4.  Phrase an open-ended question that will help you think about other useful activities you might do to help you answer the EQ (IC2, possible experts to talk to, etc).

• While you've been a practicing SLPA, and even before while you were getting your primary education, did you have any mentors or professors or people of that sort that really helped you move along? Do you still keep in contact with these people? 

5.  Phrase two open-ended questions that help you to understand your interviewee's perspective on an aspect of your EQ. 

• How much of a patients progress in therapy do you believe falls fully on the therapist's shoulders? 
• Do you think that there is a difference of importance in goals for the patient or, you believe that each goal deserves the same amount of time and effort?

Blog 13 - 10 Hour Mentorship Check-in

(2 therapist with sibling clients)

1.   Where are you doing your mentorship?

• I am doing my mentorship at My World Speech Therapy in West Covina. 

2.   Who is your contact?  What makes this person an expert?

• My contact is my mentor Sara Romo. What makes her an expert is that she is a licensed  speech therapist with a Masters Degree in the Sciences and Communicative Disorders.

3.   How many  hours have you done during the school year? (Summer Mentorship Hours and Mentorship Hours should be reflected separately in your Senior Project Hours log located on the right hand side of your blog).

• I've done 45 hours of mentorship. I don't have them reflected in my log though, because I've been taking notes and just haven't been updating the log. 

4.   Succinctly summarize what you did, how well you and your mentor worked together, and how you plan to complete the remaining hours.

• For the most part, I've been sitting in on sessions and observing the therapist work with their clients. Occasionally the therapist will ask me to interact with the client, tell me to ask the client a question or play a game with the client. Ive also been made to put together files for incoming clients and to pull apart and store files for clients that have finished their sessions. I also answer phone calls, well, I've practiced answering phone calls about 4 times but my voice changes and gets weird so I told them I preferred not to do that anymore. My mentor and I have a very good relationship. We can communicate well and we make sure that we alway know what is going on with each other. I have observed many other therapist and my relationship with them is a very good one as well. I plan to complete the remaining hours by continuing what I have been doing, observing, taking notes, filing, and doing whatever else will be asked of me at my mentorship. 

Blog 12 - Holiday Project Update

(Alejandra Miranda and a client)

1.  It is important to consistently work on your senior project, whether it is break or we are in school.  What did you do over the break with your senior project?

• Over break I did mentorship hours at my mentors clinic. I observed a plethora of  therapist and got to see many different approaches to giving therapy. 

2.  What was the most important thing you learned from what you did, and why?  What was the source of what you learned?

• The most important thing that I learned from the mentorship hours that I did is that, every case is different. Although you can prepare materials a little based on age and diagnosis, you can't call what kind of teaching approach a client will need until you've met them. The source of what I learned was watching the therapist interact with their patients. 

3.  Your third interview will be a 10 question interview related to possible answers for your EQ. Who do you plan to talk to and why?

• I plan to interview Speech Pathologist Alejandra Miranda because she works very closely under my mentor and has been in the speech game for quite some time now.