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 2 - Summer Mentorship

(me and mentor/grandma/sara romo miranda)

1. List the contact name, phone number, and organization of the person with whom you volunteered.

      

Name: Sara Romo Miranda Phone Number: (626)419-8627 Organization: My World Speech Therapy 

2. What qualified this person as an expert in your topic choice?     

• What qualifies Mrs. Miranda as an expert in my topic choice is the fact that she went to college for 7 years and has a Masters Degree in science in the field of Speech and Language Pathology. She also owns a speech therapy business,  My World Speech Therapy, that she's run for 8 years. 

• The most important thing I learned from this experience is that every speech therapist has their own way of being with the client and making sure the client is progressing. There is no "correct" way to help a client hit their mile stones. I also realized that while all these children have speech problems, their is still a wide range of struggle they could be going through.  No two children are alike as well as the treatment they are receiving. I think it's the most important because it shows me that if I did ever decide to pursue speech therapy, when I get to working with clients it is still possible to put my own twist into it. I can still make relationships with the children in my own way and I get to decide what I think will help them the most. I think the freedom to make your own choice is important when choosing a career. 

• My senior project is going to be speech and language pathology. Mentorship didn't really help decide my senior project though. I chose this topic because my grandma and my mom are both speech therapist and my grandma owns her own speed therapy business so it's a very important part of my life that iv'e never really given to much attention. I decided that devoting a school year of my life to it would help show my appreciation for the craft as well as help me decide if I wanted to join the business eventually. What summer mentorship did help with was show me that speech therapy is not completely boring and that there are a lot of things to learn , so I would be okay dedicating my senior year to it. 

3. List three questions for further exploration now that you've completed your summer hours.   

Question 1: Is it much different, more complicated maybe,  working with a 3-4 year old compared to working with a 12-14 year old?

Question 2: Do you think being a speech therapist makes it more stressful being a parent because there is a constant need to make sure your child is meeting the standard that you've been taught your child, at whatever age they are,  must be meeting?

Question 3: Is it more comfortable working at a child's home, the main office, or at a school/hospital? 

4. What is the most important thing you gained from this experience? Why?

5. What is your senior project topic going to be?  How did mentorship help you make your decision?  Please explain.