What do you do if your school administrator doesn’t fully understand your role and your expertise? What if you have the information and knowledge they need to drive important decisions for your school? How can you get them to listen to your input? If you’re a therapist, educator, or aspiring school leader, these questions may…
Category: Advance your career
EP 109: Can my principal evaluate me if they’ve never done my job? (with Eric Makelky)
If you’re a therapist or educator working in the schools, there’s a high probability that the administrator who does your employee evaluation isn’t a subject-matter expert in your discipline. If they are, you’re certainly in the minority. This is because it’s impossible to find a school administrator who’s held every single job in the school…
EP 95: Creating therapy materials to serve your caseload and build a business (with Hallie Sherman)
In episode 95 of the “De Facto Leaders” podcast I sat down with Hallie Sherman, a school speech-language pathologist, blogger, and business owner from SpeechTimeFun. When Hallie started working as a school SLP, she had a difficult time finding materials for middle school and high school students. After a lot of trial and error, she…
EP 94: Using YouTube to support clients and foster innovation (with Clay Hadden)
In episode 94 of the “De Facto Leaders” podcast I sat down with Clay Hadden (a.k.a. Mister Clay), a private practice SLP and YouTuber from South Carolina. We had a fantastic conversation about how to come up with creative ways to serve your caseload and play a part in advocacy issues relating to health care…
EP 91: How to help students generalize skills (even if you only see them once a week)
Generalization is one of the most common complaints I hear from school therapists, regardless of the discipline. If you’re a clinician, you know how frustrating it is when a student seems to grasp a skill in your sessions, but doesn’t ever apply it outside your room. In episode 91, I wanted to talk about why…
EP 80: Career “test-runs” and calming your inner critic (with Stephanie Hayes)
In this episode, I’m sharing a special conversation with my mentor, friend, and business consultant, Stephanie Hayes. Stephanie specializes in building businesses from the ground up by focusing on creating assets that allow small business owners to earn income and serve in a way that feels aligned and fulfilling to them. Even though she is…
EP 79: The low-risk way to explore career pivots (for therapists)
There’s often a typical expected career path for pediatric clinicians, regardless of the discipline. It can often feel a bit constraining, especially if it doesn’t fully align with your strengths; or if the system you’re working in limits the way you serve your caseload. But what if you weren’t limited to the typical model, or…
EP 78: The Levels of Clinical Leadership
A lot of the clinicians I work with feel very “boxed in” when it comes to the typical career path for therapists. They’re boxed in by the way they have to provide services within the system, which often dictates how, when, and how often they see students/clients. They may feel boxed in by their schedule,…
EP 77: Don’t avoid problems. Plan for them.
There are a lot of challenges that we face as therapists; but not all of them need to prevent us from delivering quality services. By facing our problems head on, often we can mitigate them or eliminate them completely. This doesn’t happen from avoiding or ignoring them. Instead, we need to get them all out…
EP 76: Creating assets and leverage to amplify the impact of your services
When people talk about assets, they’re often thinking about personal finance. They’re talking about things like real estate, index funds, crypto and other things aimed at giving you some kind of return on your investment. But I want to talk about how therapists can apply this concept to what they do, because it’s the key…