Workshop with English Montreal School Board: From Caseloads to Collaborative Classrooms
Are you an SLP striving for a more impactful and collaborative role in today's schools? You're not alone. On May 30, 2025, I had the privilege of presenting a workshop to 60 dedicated Speech-Language Pathologists in Montreal. It was truly inspiring to see how deeply the challenges we discussed resonated, highlighting a shared commitment to elevating SLP practice across Canada. This workshop was a pivotal experience for me, further shaping my vision for my consulting practice. The positive reception - such amazing enthusiasm -  underscored the critical need for continued innovation in our field. Let's explore the core shifts that can redefine your approach.

Morning Focus: Essential Shifts for Modern SLP Practice

Our morning session dived into key concepts revolutionizing how SLPs contribute to educational settings:
  • Embracing Inclusion & Neurodiversity: We explored how to foster truly inclusive environments where every student's potential is recognized and nurtured. This means adapting systems to meet diverse learning needs, moving towards a framework that champions human differences as strengths.
  • Integrating with Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS): Understanding how to effectively embed your expertise within school-wide tiered support models ensures your services reach and benefit a wider range of students, making you an integral part of the school's success.
  • Strategic Workload Management: Beyond simply counting students, we discussed a strategic approach to managing your entire professional workload. This ensures equitable service delivery, maximizes your impact, and allows for more effective decision-making regarding your role.

Afternoon Focus: Building Powerful School Partnerships

Our afternoon session shifted to the vital art of collaboration, helping SLPs become even stronger partners in the school community:
  • Elevating Collaborative Roles: We explored how to move beyond traditional consultation, fostering shared expertise where teachers and parents are recognized as key collaborators. This builds stronger relationships and leads to more sustainable outcomes.
  • Effective Teacher Collaboration: We looked at practical strategies for productive meetings and ongoing communication with individual teachers. The goal is to co-create solutions that seamlessly integrate into their teaching practices, enhancing student support without adding unnecessary burden.
  • Seamless School Integration: We explored how to become a more visible and integrated part of the entire school's fabric. This includes proactive relationship-building and aligning your services with broader school goals, ensuring your valuable contributions are recognized and utilized systemically.

Ready to Transform Your Practice?

The energy and insights shared throughout the day were truly remarkable! This workshop reinforced my belief in the power of strategic evolution within SLP practice. I am so grateful for the opportunity to present my ideas and to meet so many wonderful people!  If you're ready to explore how these concepts can empower your team and elevate your impact within your school or district, I invite you to connect.
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What are your biggest collaboration challenges in schools? Share in the comments below!

4 Comments

  1. I totally understand. There can be a few issues going on in these scenarios - a feeling that we don't know what their jobs are like, that we aren't really hands-on so we can't give good advice, that they are not getting clear supervision from the school, and maybe don't understand their role. I don't understand why, if we have stopped access to phones for students, why adults have them on them during school time. I'm afraid that I have seen that too.
    I eventually didn't supervise an EA without the resource or class teacher being present for at least part of the time. I debriefed to the teacher afterwards via email or in-person. I realised that i cannot supervise the EA - that is the schools' job. I didn't share anything with the EA unless already discussed with teachers before hand.
    Although there are serious numbers of students needing our help, we cannot do that without building capacity with our teachers. Sometimes, we have to slow down to speed up. We shouldn't feel that we are the only ones doing anything for these students.
    I obviously need to do another workshop for Surrey just about the workload approach!!
    I'm glad you are enjoying your summer :)
  2. Often it is with the IESWs which is what we now call our EAs. They say they don’t have time to do what I am asking. That I can’t possibly understand how difficult it is for the, when they have two students at completely different levels to look after. And the ones that totally frustrate me is when the IESW just sits back and lets the student do whatever they want while they are on their phones and it is not taking videos of their students. I am an SLP who specializes in AAC in Surrey SD. My role is primarily collaborating and sett8 g up the new AAC SLP goals. Years before I had a full time EA of my own that would come out with me and often EA to EA would work really well or I would have her take the student while I collaborated with the Integration support teacher and IESW. Now the caseloads are way too high and there are more of us. In those days there were two AAC SLPs and 2 EAs that supported us. In those days I had a caseload of 120 nonspeaking students. Now that I retired nd came back 3 days a week I have no individual EA time and a caseload of 152 students on 2 days and on my 3rd day I have a caseload of 15 Deaf blind students and work on a Deaf Blind team. I love my work and my students which is why I came back. I have been an SLP in Australia and Canada for almost 46 years. I have specialized in AAC for the past 20.
    THANKYOU for your presentation in Surrey by the way. Our supervisor said he watched it later but somehow he did not understand the workload concept and what he describes is certainly not what any of my colleagues heard!

    Enjoy the summer and don’t feel bad about not working in July! I find the only way to renew my energy is to get completely away from my daily life and relax. At the moment I am in Kimberley BC in a beautiful Airbnb on the Platz!!!

    Enjoy your summer!
  3. Often it is with the IESWs which is what we now call our EAs. They say they don’t have time to do what I am asking. That I can’t possibly understand how difficult it is for the, when they have two students at completely different levels to look after. And the ones that totally frustrate me is when the IESW just sits back and lets the student do whatever they want while they are on their phones and it is not taking videos of their students. I am an SLP who specializes in AAC in Surrey SD. My role is primarily collaborating and sett8 g up the new AAC SLP goals. Years before I had a full time EA of my own that would come out with me and often EA to EA would work really well or I would have her take the student while I collaborated with the Integration support teacher and IESW. Now the caseloads are way too high and there are more of us. In those days there were two AAC SLPs and 2 EAs that supported us. In those days I had a caseload of 120 nonspeaking students. Now that I retired nd came back 3 days a week I have no individual EA time and a caseload of 152 students on 2 days and on my 3rd day I have a caseload of 15 Deaf blind students and work on a Deaf Blind team. I love my work and my students which is why I came back. I have been an SLP in Australia and Canada for almost 46 years. I have specialized in AAC for the past 20.
    THANKYOU for your presentation in Surrey by the way. Our supervisor said he watched it later but somehow he did not understand the workload concept and what he describes is certainly not what any of my colleagues heard!

    Enjoy the summer and don’t feel bad about not working in July! I find the only way to renew my energy is to get completely away from my daily life and relax. At the moment I am in Kimberley BC in a beautiful Airbnb on the Platz!!!

    Enjoy your summer!
  4. I would love to hear about your collaboration challenges :)
    The in-person experience for me in Montreal was so exciting - and i felt so validated in putting myself 'out there' to you all with helping to transform the way we work in schools.

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