Amy (pseudonym) is a first grade student with Down Syndrome who loves dentists and doctors. When planning speech therapy instruction for Amy, I created customized game boards with doctor and dentist themes, found books on Get Epic! about doctors and dentists, song videos about visiting the dentist, and Ryan’s World videos that enabled me to address her personal interests while focusing on her goals.

Spending a few sessions to gather observations about how Amy responded to various types of activities, topics, and routines was an important use of therapeutic minutes. …

Many students receiving Related Services this school year are getting their speech therapy via teletherapy. Diana Martin, SLP, became an E-Therapy teletherapist 4 years ago, after spending most of her 32-year speech pathology career providing speech services to children attending brick and mortar schools. We asked her to share her experience as an SLP with students receiving speech therapy online vs. in-person.

Diana, you were a Speech Therapist in schools for 28 years, and a teletherapist for the past 4 years. What is a challenge that you faced as a school-based clinician that you hoped teletherapy would solve?

When I…

Here are 5 tested ways to break the monotony of online learning while promoting collaboration and growth during your remote classes. If you adopt some of these ideas, you will notice that your students are happier and more engaged!

1. Collaborate with other classrooms

Know another teacher in your school district or another district? Plan to meet online with your classes to do a joint lesson! Pair up students in groups of 2 or 4 and use zoom waiting rooms. The students that are in the small rooms work together to complete their lesson, assignment, or even a get-to-know-you session.

Incorporating these fun days into…

By Diana Parafiniuk, founder of E-Therapy

Establishing rapport and building relationships with your students during online therapy sessions can be challenging when you are at a distance. Since many of you are searching for the “Cliff’s Notes” version of the art of teletherapy, I have compiled a list of five key relationship-building strategies for those new to the online therapy delivery model.

1. Be natural and bring positive interpersonal habits into your online therapy sessions

Check in with your student using casual conversation at the beginning of your teletherapy session, just as you would if you were onsite. Things like:

• Praise them for being on time and being present
• Notice their energy and…

By Diana Parafiniuk, M.S., CCC-SLP, Co-Founder/Chief Marketing Officer

As a Special Education Teacher, it is mandatory to set appropriate goals on your Individualized Education Program (IEP for short) annually. Appropriately setting well thought out goals on the IEP allows students with any disability to achieve success, growth, and increase positive behaviors. By tracking progress accurately, you can make sure success is happening.

Overall, we know that this can be a daunting task; you have to know the student’s baseline, make sure to understand how the student learns and processes new information, accurately progress and monitor the goals over time, and…

During the initial school closures due to Covid-19, school-based therapists became teletherapists with little or no preparation — and with no choice as to how it would affect their lives. This quick transition exposed cracks in the educational system — which we can read about online ad nauseum. This June, at E-Therapy, we are staying on the positive side by reflecting on what went right, what we learned about ourselves, and what we want to do more of in the future.

Here are a few of the things that rose to the surface:

1. My students, at all disability levels, respond well to technology

Using technology with special education students has…

E-Therapy’s designed a free on-demand webinar, Telepractice: What Therapists Need to Know to Get Started!, for school speech language pathologists, physical therapists, and occupational therapists. It’s also perfect for therapists considering leaving the school system to work exclusively online, for example if you want to become a therapist with E-Therapy.

E-Therapy’s founder, Diana Parafiniuk, presents a free on-demand webinar that answers many of your questions about telepractice and how to provide teletherapy services. Telepractice: What Therapists Need to Know to Get Started! will show you how to structure and implement a telepractice model, including several real life, practical examples for…

One of the things that we often get asked about, especially now from our school partners, is what types of assessments, evaluations, and testing diagnostics E-Therapy supports digitally. As schools take special education services online, they naturally need to ensure that they can also do testing and evaluations to serve their student needs in a safe environment.

E-Therapy has an extensive library of assessments to help ensure that your testing needs can be achieved. Our nationwide team of clinical therapists and school psychologists utilize evidence-based assessment measures to evaluate students’ strengths and needs. …