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. 

Blog 11 - Lesson 1 Reflection

1. What are you most proud of in your lesson, and why?

• What I'm most proud of in my lesson is my hook activity, with my phonology cards.  I had a very hard time finding one and the one that I ended up  using engaged the audience a lot more than I had expected. 

2. What assessment would you give yourself on your lesson? Explain why you earned that grade using evidence from the component contract.

• I would give myself a P. I believe I earned a P because I made time, I spoke clearly and loudly, I cited 3 different articles, I used quotes from my mentor from interview 2, I believe my content flowed nicely with each other, and I spoke out to the class , making eye contact and making a connection with my audience for a majority of the time. 

3. If you could go back, what would you change about your lesson?  How can you use that knowledge to give a better Lesson 2?

• If I could go back I would make sure to have practiced presenting a lot more than I had. So that I didn't have to refer to my notes so often and so that I could stay making a connection with my audience more than I had. Also, I would be prepared with more props. I will use this knowledge for lesson 2 by practicing my presentation so many more times. Also, I will use  props, like charts or toys, so that the audience stays more interested and can be a little more involved. Like if I were to pass around the  toys and they could hold them in their hands or I had them do an activity with the toys. 

Blog 10 - Interview 2 Reflection

1. Please explain how you are spending your mentorship time (Is it at a workplace or somewhere else?  Are you shadowing?  Are you able to do tasks that are meaningfully related to the topic?  If so, what?  Are there other people who are experts in the location?  Etc...)

• I have been shadowing and occasionally playing with the kids. I task I do is passed them a toy that a therapist than asks them to name. Recently I have been holding up flash cards so that the kids can read off too. I plan to me more interactive with the kids in the future once my mentor and I start setting milestones for ourselves. 

2. How did you find your mentor?  How did you convince this person to help you?   

• My mentor is my grandma and I live with her. She was definitely very accessible. She was open to mentoring me since in her eyes she'd love if I was a part of the family business too.

3. How would you rate your comfort level with your mentor at this point in your relationship?  How does this relate to the time you've spent so far at mentorship/with this person?

• I feel very comfortable with my mentor. She knows who I am and I know who she is so we're not expecting anything out of the ordinary from each other.

4. What went well in this interview?  Why do you think so?  What do you still need to improve?  How do you know?  How will you go about it?

• My mentor didn't feel weird about the fact she was being interviewed and recorded, she just talked. The answers felt real and something she would always say, instead of them being strained and awkward. I still need to improve on finding more questions to ask. I have to think of more specific questions that are geared in whatever area I want to start concentrating on in Speech-Therapy. 

Blog 9 - Advisory Prep 3

1. State whether or not you currently have a mentor, and what the status of your interview is with that person (I have completed the interview, I have scheduled the interview, I have not scheduled the interview, etc).

• I currently have a mentor, her name is Sara Romo Miranda. My mentor interview is scheduled for 26 October 2015. 

2. At this point, your research is probably guiding your studies toward more specific areas within your topic.  Name the area or two you find most promising and explain your reasons.   

• The area I find most promising would probably have to be speech-language pathology with toddlers ages 0 - 3. Mainly because thats the age range my mentor works with, but also because I'm finding a lot more research on toddler specific therapy. Also, with toddlers there is a more prominent parent involvement aspect that provides me with more information for my research checks and final presentation.  

3. What kinds of sources do you think will help you in the next month to gain more research depth?  Where will you go to get them?

• My 2 main sources for the next month would most likely be ASHA, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and the database on the Cal Poly Pomona Library website. Both of the sources I can access online and since my mentor has an account on the ASHA website, there aren't many restrictions on the articles and inflammation that I can obtain. 

4. Write down a possible EQ.  Please don't worry about wording other than ensuring that it provides the option for multiple correct answers.  At this point, the senior team is most interested in understanding your thought process.

• What is the most effective way to provide speech-language pathology to a toddler to ensure that they are achieving the goals that were set at the beginning of the, before the start of the therapy sessions?

Blog 8 - Independent Component 1 Proposal

1.  Describe in detail what you plan to do for your 30 hours.

• I didn't know what I was going to do but I've decided to do 30 extra hours of mentorship. 

2.  Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence.

• I will be taking notes and typing out those notes into my log. I will also take pictures and videos. 

3.  Explain how what you will be doing will help you explore your topic in more depth.

• This will help me watch speech therapist in action and experience real sessions with clients of all ages. 

4.  Update your Senior Project Hours log.

Blog 7 - Second Interview Preparation

1.  Who is your mentor and where do they work?  If their workplace does not reflect their expertise, what makes them an expert?

• My mentor is Sara Romo Miranda. She is a speech therapist with her own private practice. She is a SLPA, a speech-language pathologist, not an SLPA , speech-language pathologist assistant. Since she's a SLP, it means thats she has her Masters degree in her field. In my grandma's case, its her Masters degree in Sciences and Communicative disorders. 

1. What college did you go to , and for how many years?

1. Do you have your undergraduate degree in anything? 

1. How long was he process to open you own speech clonic?

1. Did you need another degree to open the clinic?

1. How long has your clinic been open and what kind of struggles have you encountered that you weren't expecting? 

2. What five questions will you ask them about their background?