Student Teaching Practicum

The purpose of the off-campus clinical experience is to extend to graduate students the opportunity of providing clinical services in an educational setting. Off-campus sites include early childhood programs, elementary and junior high school, high school, and special schools, in Chicago and suburban settings. Numerous specialized programs within these facilities are available, and are assigned according to interest, preparation, experience, and proficiency, and include programs for students with autism, feeding and swallowing disorders, language/learning disabilities, users of augmentative communication, hearing impairment, birth - three, and severe/profound populations. Student populations also represent all the categories defined in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): autism, developmental delay, deaf-blind, emotional/behavior, hearing impairment, mental impairment, multiple impairment, orthopedic impairment, other health impaired, specific learning disability, traumatic brain injury, and visual impairmenVblindness.

Schools incorporate a full range of service delivery models from pull-out to inclusion, collaboration, and classroom based. Some schools also employ Speech-Language Aides and Assistants, allowing practicum students the unique situation of being a student, a SpeechLanguage teacher, and a supervisor of support persons.

All schools are multi-lingual and multicultural, incorporating diversity in all aspects of teaching and learning. Languages of students represented in schools include: Arabic, Spanish, Korean, Russian, Urdu, Thai, Polish, German, Italian, Yugoslavian, Korean, French, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Romanian, Filipino, Asyrian, Albanian, Armenian, Gujarti, Tagalong, Farsi, Hindi and Greek. Some of the schools have a student population speaking over 30 different languages.

Students in the school practicum work with general and special education teachers, occupational therapists, physical therapists, social workers, psychologists, support personnel, administrators, and parents. They provide screening and diagnosis, develop goals and benchmarks based on identified Speech-Language needs in synchrony with the classroom curriculum, provide treatment to individuals, groups, and classrooms, collaborate with teachers, participate in IEP and multidisciplinary staffings, provide inservice training, select and develop materials and activities including computer programs, program augmentative communication equipment, and participate in feeding/swallowing programs.

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