Speech Land was 7-year-old Malachi’s spin on the Candy Land board game to illustrate his successful journey with speech teacher Jessica McGee at PS 76 in the Bronx.

On his Speech Land board, Malachi drew a colorful pathway that took him through Speech Beach, Story City, Grammar Land, Verb Forest and Question Mountains to the finish line, which McGee said he reached in February after 18 months of mastering all the areas of speech.

Lorane Hall, his mother, said Malachi’s doctors believed his hearing loss in one ear would hold him back. “With the help of his speech teacher, he proved the doctors are wrong,” she said.

McGee and Malachi’s project earned them one of 31 awards given out by the UFT Speech Improvement Chapter at its 19th annual Better Speech and Hearing Month Celebration on May 27 at UFT headquarters in Manhattan. Award-winning topics and projects, which attendees could browse in colorful displays, included raising awareness about stuttering, communicating with devices, using a school snack shop to expand communication skills and bringing speech therapy into the classroom. Fifteen other projects received honorable mentions.

UFT Speech Improvement Chapter Leader Caroline Murphy expressed her gratitude to the assembled speech teachers, supervisors, students and families. “Thank you for your dedication, your patience and creativity, whether you are helping a child say their first word or supporting a teen with social skills, you work to change their lives,” she said.

Murphy presented the Friend of the Chapter Award to UFT Contract Empowerment Department Director Debra Poulos for being “a fierce advocate, a tireless worker and a steadfast supporter.”

Speech teacher Rachel Bases and Alston, a 1st-grader she began working with in the 2024–25 school year at PS 250 in Brooklyn, received an award for the story he wrote and illustrated about Lunar New Year. Alston included words related to the holiday and colored letters in red that he needed to practice pronouncing. “He has come such a long way with his sounds,” Bases said.

Speech teacher Krystal Toles and librarian Ashley Hawkins at PS 137 in Brooklyn received an award for the schoolwide comic book convention they organized. They wanted to share comic books created by Toles’ students, and the two colleagues came up with Kid Con.

They shared their unit at the annual New York Comic Con convention and with librarians around the world.

The project, said Hawkins, “has been an excellent way that librarians and speech providers can work together to have an impact on the whole school.”