National Speech-Language-Hearing Month Celebration

For the 4th-graders in speech teacher Kirsten Taylor’s social development intervention group at PS 396 in the Bronx, Robot Hamburger Peanut Blueberry Barbie is more than a game. The students’ customized version of the turn-taking card game Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza also supports the development of their social skills.

“It’s not the playing of the game that’s important, it was the creating of the game,” Taylor explained. Her students, who struggle with social interactions, learned to collaborate and cheer one another on while designing their customized cards. One student’s skill at social awareness so improved that “he would say to a classmate, ‘It would look really cool on your card if you used pink instead of purple, like the color that you usually wear,’” Taylor said. The moment was a huge breakthrough for a student who had struggled with considering other points of view prior to the exercise.

The project earned Taylor and her five 4th-graders one of 28 awards given by the UFT Speech Improvement Chapter at its 20th annual celebration of National Speech-Language-Hearing Month (formerly known as Better Hearing and Speech Month).

The 200 members and guests who gathered at UFT headquarters on May 5 were treated to colorful displays of award-winning topics and projects, including those that raised awareness about cerebral palsy, documented the use of augmentative and alternative communication devices and described strategies to address selective mutism at the secondary level.

UFT Speech Improvement Chapter Leader Caroline Murphy expressed her gratitude to the assembled speech teachers, supervisors, students and families. “I am inspired by all your creativity, your care and commitment to all the work you’ve done today, and I’m so happy to be here to celebrate you,” she said.

Murphy presented UFT special education project manager Gary Mehra with the Friend of the Chapter Award “for being a tireless supporter of the chapter and fierce advocate for speech providers and students.”

Speech teacher Joanna Deossa-Molina of PS 458 (Samara Community School) in the Bronx and her student Raul received an award for “Gears,” Raul’s visual representation of his thought processes when he’s trying to express himself. “We were discussing how his speech feels,” said Deossa-Molina, and “he came up with the concept of gears and how they can get stuck sometimes.”

Speech teacher Connie Cai of PS 42 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and four of her students were recognized for “Lunch from Home,” a project that was inspired by reading they had done in class. The students researched and presented lunches from four cultures, said Cai, as a way of helping them understand that a meal is more than just the food: “What we eat is a reflection of our culture, our identity and the love from the people who prepared it,” she said.

Speech teacher Mary Ruby of Lyons Community School in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, assembled a binder on her work with a secondary student with selective mutism, a disorder that is relatively rare in high school students. While working with the student, Ruby found it valuable to collaborate and discuss the case with other speech teachers who were confronting the same issues, she said. “Nobody does speech therapy by themselves.”