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I read with relief the letter from Mary Alice Gonzales titled "Caseloads Affect Our Health" in the Sept. 25 issue of The ASHA Leader.
I, too, have found the speech-language pathologist's role in the schools very high-paced and stressful. I often worked overtime, and the workload seemed never-ending. With the high caseloads, parent and staff meetings, and, of course, the heavy paperwork load, it was often difficult to feel that I was doing my job with the needed physical and mental energy and motivation.
I left my school position for these reasons. I am now considering doing contract work to allow a more flexible schedule and hopefully provide for more self-care. I am guessing many SLP colleagues will do contract therapy also in order to keep themselves healthy—physically and mentally.
It's up to SLPs and their representing organizations, such as ASHA, to seriously advocate for ways to make work in the school setting more tolerable. What comes to mind is doing more collaboration with teachers, utilizing service delivery options (i.e., monitoring), and sending written input for ARDs in lieu of attending every ARD. Instructional assistants can also be very helpful in relieving some of the necessary paperwork.
Until we address the issue of overload and stress, we will continue to see high turnover and "burned out" SLPs. More importantly, those who leave our profession due to stress will hopefully show the schools that ignoring the issue of the SLPs' heavy workload will only cause the loss of many talented, caring professionals!
Name withheld by request
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