Benefits of Collaboration between School Psychologists and Speech-Language Pathologists

Getting to know your school psychologist is one of those secret collaborative tools that can really save you while working in the school setting. School psychologists can provide insight into a child’s triggers and typical behavior patterns along with behavior plans to overcome those difficult moments. This has been incredibly helpful as a first-year Clinical Fellow Speech Language Pathologist. Behavior management is a difficult task to accomplish in your first independent year, but the school psychologist has been my saving grace.

Collaborating with the school psychologist has allowed me to learn about another profession’s perspective, develop new pragmatic language techniques, promote consistency between the settings of counseling and speech therapy, and understand how language and emotion impact one another. The two fields of psychology and speech-language pathology cover different portions of a child’s academic success and overall well-being.

There may be emotions and social patterns that are affecting a child’s communication and vice versa. If working together, we can collaborate on the same goals such as initiating conversation, maintaining a topic in conversation, and interacting with peers appropriately. Using the same strategies and language across both settings will help facilitate generalization and consistency for the child to carry over in all settings of the school.

My students love when my school psychologist does push-in sessions. We love these groups because we get to target speech and language while also targeting counseling in one block! It’s satisfying to get so much targeted within one session. Killing two birds with one stone is a huge accomplishment when scheduling can be overwhelming with large caseloads.

The bottom line is working with a school psychologist can deepen your relationship with your students, improve behavior management, and help them grow to be the best they can be. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

Author: Amanda McConway M.S. CF-SLP