As some seniors begin preparing to head to college or into a career, it is a good time to ask adults about their paths. Some students have met people of all types of occupations through Ms. Daisy’s Senior Seminar class. The invited speakers explain what their work consists of and give insight into their daily lives.

A career path that might interest some is as a speech and language therapist.

A speech and language therapist assists with structural language impairments, literacy impairments, voice difficulties, social communication difficulties and more. At Abington Public Schools, the Speech and Language Therapist is Mrs.Goodman. She has served as the Speech and Language therapist for seventeen years and has worked in the field for forty-five years.

Goodman studied at Lehman College in New York and attended graduate school at the University of Colorado. She then started her career in the medical field “under an experienced therapist who supervised and trained me to work with children.” Her preceding experience has been mainly with adults.

Goodman began her first job at Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center. When asked about the position she stated that she “developed a program there due to the absence in speech therapy services.” She worked with paraplegics, stroke rehab patients, and with other rehab services.

Following this she taught a speech and language course at Binghamton University for two years. She also worked in home care and in a private practice.

When she came to APS, Goodman worked at the Frolio [Abington Middle School] for two days a week, helping students with language based learning disabilities. She then began at the high school where she worked in the special education program until “an academic support teacher approached me with the opportunity to work with more students who struggled with communicative disorders.” She then extended her services.

As a speech language therapist, Goodman describes the environment as “working one-on-one or in a small group setting to target specific struggles and difficulties a student is experiencing.” She focuses not only on speech, but also on listening, reading, writing, and organizational skills. She spends one day a week in the classroom with English, history, science, and math classes to guide students in their academic success.

At AHS Goodman states that she “loves working with the teaching staff and specifically the English department” to address a student’s language impediment and create growth within their academics. Goodman describes her job as “rewarding.” She loves all that comes with the speech and language therapy field.

This year Mrs. Goodman will be retiring. She will be sincerely missed for all of her hard work and help provided to the students in the Abington Public Schools.

NOTE: The author Marissa Golden will be pursuing a degree from UMASS Amherst this fall in the field of speech pathology.