Tackling Burnout in the School Setting: Get Ahead of the Dread
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Kate Grandbois: Hello, everyone. Welcome to SLP Nerdcast. Today, we are really excited to talk about burnout in schools, and we are here with our expert guest, Dr. Lisa Morante. Welcome, Lisa. Hi,
Leesa Marante: thank you for having me.
Amy Wonkka: Now, Lisa, you are here to discuss ways to tackle burnout as an SLP in the school setting. And before we get started, can you please tell us a little bit about
Leesa Marante: yourself?
Of course. Um, I'm a speech therapist. I'm a speech language pathologist, um, communication advocate. Sometimes I like to call myself, um, a consultant for school based SLPs. I have a, a business where I provide solutions for school SLPs who are stressed out and for school districts who want. retaining SLPs in their schools.
Um, I've spent most of my career so far in the school setting. I'm on [00:03:00] year eight of my career. Um, but for most of my journey, I felt like I've worn two hats, a clinician hat and that my research academic hat. So I went back To school after my clinical fellowship ended where I was feeling extremely burnt out.
Um, that was, I was in two schools my first year out. But then I went back and got my PhD with a focus on language and literacy at Florida State a couple years ago, I just finished it. Um, and for the most part of my research interests, then sent surrounded or centered around increasing the language outcomes of students with developmental language disorders.
So that's where most of my program of study focused on. Um, but then the pandemic hit and I realized that. We may need a different avenue for targeting these outcomes, like what's impacting our SLPs from providing these evidence based practices that we, you know, know and love and have learned so much about, but it's still not [00:04:00] working.
Something's still not working. So, an avenue for, for helping those language outcomes for me was figuring out how to help those SLPs in the schools. And if you spend any time in schools, you know, that there are plenty of kids who are not getting the services that they want or that they need, um, because we're understaffed or overloaded.
So essentially my work from the last couple of years, last three years or so has been an attempt at increasing retention of school based SLPs, helping provide effective interventions and just figuring out. What's the cause of burnout? What, what can we do as clinicians in this field that's so overstretched?
Kate Grandbois: We've talked about burnout on this podcast before, but never specifically as it relates to individuals working in the schools. We actually were introduced to you through one of your colleagues, Dr. Kelly Farquharson, who we have interviewed before, and she referenced an article that you co authored together called Tackling [00:05:00] Burnout in the School Setting.
Practical tips for school based speech language pathologists. And I know a lot of what we're going to talk about today is rooted or derived from that article. So we will link it in the show notes and we will likely be referencing it throughout the interview. Um, and before we get into all of that, I do need to read our learning objectives and our disclosures.
So I will try to get through that as quickly as I can
learning objective number one, define burnout as it relates to speech language pathology. Learning objective number two, list two reasons why the school based SLP is susceptible to burnout. And learning objective number three, list three strategies to mitigate burnout when working in a school setting.
Lisa's financial disclosures. Lisa is the owner of a consulting service called school SLP solutions that provides consulting services to school based SLPs who experienced burnout and to school districts who want support in retaining their school SLPs. Lisa also received an honorarium for participating in this course.
Lisa's [00:06:00] non financial disclosures. Lisa is a member of ASHA SIG 16, a member of FLASHA and TISHA. Kate, that's me. I am the owner and founder of Grand Bois Therapy Consulting LLC and co founder of SLP Nerdcast. My non financial disclosures, I'm a member of ASHA SIG 12 and serve on the AAC Advisory Group for Massachusetts Advocates for Children.
I'm also a member of the Berkshire Association for Behavior Analysis and Therapy.
Amy Wonkka: Amy, that's me. My financial disclosures are that I'm an employee of a public school system and co founder of SLP Nerdcast, and my non financial disclosures are that I am a member of ASHA Special Interest Group 12, which is AAC, and I participate in the AAC Advisory Group for Massachusetts Advocates for Children.
All right. Now on to the good stuff. Lisa, why don't you start us off by telling us a bit about that first learning objective? In your paper that you co authored with Dr. Farquharson, you guys talked a lot about just defining burnout and what that is and what that looks like in the school, and I think [00:07:00] it'd be a great place to start and just give people some background on,
Leesa Marante: on that term.
Yeah, of course. So I think the pandemic sort of highlighted the nuances of everyone's job, not just in our field, but you know, in every field at that time. So, you know, in turn, that made the term burnout sort of a buzzword kind of lost its definition, its meaning across, you know, in society, everyone's burnt out, which is true, it can be, it can be true, but burnout is something that we all heard about.
And it Defined specifically on increased feelings of depersonalization. So the not feeling connected to what you're doing, um, increasing feelings of emotional exhaustion, feeling exhausted with, with your job. You feel like you're not able to give it your all because you're not, no longer connected. You know, no longer feeling personalized to, um, to what you are doing and then decreased feelings of personal accomplishment.
So you have, [00:08:00] you don't feel like anything you're doing is working or you feel like you're working hard, but it's not effective and it's kind of this cycle. So With burnout, there can be physical symptoms, um, and they can also be psychological symptoms. So sometimes there's an increase in headaches, lethargy, so you are really tired all the time, nothing seems to be working, um, you're irritable, you're unable to solve problems, where you feel like everything is harder to do than, um, you're used to, and you know, the far end of the spectrum is exhaustion and dread.
You dread to come into work, you dread and dread to accomplish. Tasks that you usually don't feel that dread, but burnout is often, you know, described as a form of emotional exhaustion. And, you know, as a result of like that fatigue that you get after extending yourself, overextending yourself at work, when you have these job stressors that are continuous and ongoing and really no end in sight, and you've [00:09:00] exhausted all of your support, all of your time, your effort, and those are called resources.
Those are the resources that we use. In our day to day life, time, effort, money. Those are the main ones that we kind of as humans use. And when you're overextended those, get diminished. And that's what causes those symptoms of burnout. So the World Health Organization, it classifies burnout as an occupational and not an medical condition.
It's not a medical condition. Considering but it does have medical outcomes where you are potentially if you let it on, let it go if you let the burnout symptoms go you will start feeling some medical impacts and that's that's important to catch before you get there. You don't want it to be. More severe, we get anxiety and depression and it's all related in the cyclical ongoing circle of dread.
Amy Wonkka: Well, I think there are many of us school based practitioners, particularly people who work through the pandemic, who can relate to all [00:10:00] or part of those symptoms that you just described. And I think You know, making the point that it's sort of a continuum and you can experience some of those feelings and I thought you guys did a really nice job with that in your paper to just talking about how, you know, you can have some of the pieces of burnout before it sort of becomes full on burnout.
And then the idea that If you sit in that place of burnout for a really long time, it can have even farther reaching repercussions. I think it's important for all of us to identify, um, as SLPs who are potentially experiencing some of these some of these symptoms. Um, I. I was wondering in reading the article, one of the pieces that I liked a lot, and this might be an abrupt jump, so feel free to stick with burnout for a little bit if you want.
Um, but I really liked the idea about these possible stressors that SLPs have the control to change. So the idea that when you're operating within a system, there [00:11:00] are some things, and I, and I, I have these conversations with my colleagues all the time, like there are some things we really can't change, but there are some things we can change.
So I didn't know if you wanted to talk just a little bit about helping SLPs identify the difference between those two.
Leesa Marante: Yeah. And a little bit more about burnout. Burnout isn't in a dichotomous variable. So the, you know, it's not a yes or no type of thing. You're not either burnt out or you're, you are burnt out.
You're feeling a little bit more stressed this month in, in work because you have 20 IEPs due and you have to update, but maybe next month you're not feeling as burnt out because you have a bunch of fun things happening. You know, it's um, holiday season where you have a lot of parties and you get to have fun with your kids.
So the burnout symptoms or the feelings of burnout definitely. I've been flow as your school year goes on to those three pillars that I mentioned earlier to depersonalization emotional exhaustion and personal [00:12:00] accomplishment, definitely very and they could have varying levels just depending on your experience depending on your, your situation, your school caseload.
And there's just so many factors and that's why it's very hard to address because everyone's situation is completely different from. Even in, within the school setting within the school district, even on campus, you may have multiple SLPs on campus, and my caseload might be very different from the other speech therapists on campus and I might not be feeling any of those increasing personalization with my caseload, but she may hate it, she may have just a lot of Issues with her with her new kiddos that she does not familiar with and she might have those increased levels of depersonalization where she's like, I know, I know nothing about my kids.
So, to address your second question. Yeah, there is a point where you have to kind of have a lot of self awareness [00:13:00] and say okay what is it that I have control over we don't have control over legislation, things that happen like paperwork stuff that are school district or state are requiring now because of A due process that we had no idea three districts over, um, that we have a new form we have to do because of that.
Um, however, what we do have control is when we complete that form, what we do to incorporate more paperwork time in our schedule and who we need, who we can delegate these things to, um, there's, there's many things that we can control versus things that are, um, just out of our control. I mean, I kind of redundant there, but just.
There's a, there's a lot, there's a lot of things that we cannot control in the school setting and then a lot of it is our, is, you know, money, our time, and all the things that we have to do on our roles and responsibilities, but we have to remember as a speech therapist, our main goals to increase our kids [00:14:00] Communication skills and have fun.
I always tell my clients, like, have fun with what you do. You came into this field for a reason. And if you feel like not doing therapy today because you have just spent two hours doing paperwork before the session, then play a game. You're still targeting your goals some way or another. Um, so Yeah, the first thing is identifying what is it that you can't change and then it's like this locus of control.
What is it that you can control and then you can tackle that first.
Kate Grandbois: So
Leesa Marante: the, the things that we can control, um, might look differently across your years. That you're still working on that thing. You're still working on, okay, this is my schedule. It causes me a lot of stress and anxiety, but This year, I'm going to take control over it and not let my paperwork time go by the wayside.
I'm going to make sure that my paperwork time saves my paperwork time and be really stern about it with my co [00:15:00] workers, make sure that they can't spring meetings on, make sure that I do all, use all my strategies to make sure no one comes into my room while I'm writing my reports, um, is that I've also had to do that.
My door is not open. I'm not going to get up to open it. I'm putting a do not disturb sign so that I can write.
Kate Grandbois: I love the idea of signage on your office door to sort of set that boundary. I have so many colleagues who often complain that they have so much paperwork to do, but can't do their paperwork at work because they have a shared office or because. It's they're always someone's always in the hallway asking them a question or they get up doing X, Y, or Z.
Um, and I, I really appreciate the gentle reminder that we do have the control and capacity to set boundaries and we can do that kindly without. Creating a lot of discomfort. And I think a visual sign is a great way to, you know, some hanging a sign on the office door or [00:16:00] putting in your ear pods.
Sometimes I would put in ear pods without even playing music just because it looks like I'm not available. Um, so thinking about how to establish some of those boundaries is a great idea. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about why burnout in the schools is. It's own unique thing. You mentioned a lot of barriers or contributing factors to burnout that are out of our control, like legislation.
Are there components of that that make burnout in the schools
Leesa Marante: more unique when compared
Kate Grandbois: to other settings? So
Leesa Marante: burnout can happen with any job. It's an occupational hazard because occupational stress is a very, it's a caveat of our working, you know, something that's high, high. stakes, you know, we need our job, we need to keep our job, we need to do our job well so that we can meet our, make our payments, do our pay our bills, it's a livelihood type thing.
Um, so [00:17:00] burnout can happen in any situation. It can also happen in other aspects of our life, like motherhood, it can happen in parenthood, when you do something that's high stressful, that's I stress for a prolonged period of time, um, in the schools and I, the literature shows, you know, any helping profession, any profession that you are with others, you have contact with people, you're doing things with, you're managing a lot of human capabilities, right?
You're managing what you say to someone else. You are dealing with other people's expectations, emotions. So, the, the burnout literature in the education setting. It's similar to the education or similar to the literature in a medical field so nurses also burn out really easily because they're also in high stress situations where there's prolonged for a long period of work.
The stress happens over a long period of time. Um, so in schools, we are, there's high stakes, we are [00:18:00] teaching young minds, and we are making sure that what we teach our young, young youth, when we teach our youth, um, and we're working with kids who have language disorders or communication disorders, there's a lot at stake.
There's a lot of factors that are at play and a lot of those factors impact how we do our job well.
And we, I wish, I wish we didn't have those things, you know, I wish we didn't have, um, an issue with place. Like where do we get therapy? That's a, that's a big thing because our schools. Not even for speech therapy, but our schools are under are understaffed there or there's way more kids that need to be in the schools right now there's not enough schools to have small classroom sizes, so they need all the space they can get.
So that's not something that is in our control like Amy was saying like it's not in our control. It needs to be of where we, it's not, it's not in our control of where we provide therapy. [00:19:00] If you have a huge classroom to write therapy that's a very good thing. That's a, that's a great thing. So that's probably not one of your stressors.
That, where am I going to provide therapy today? It's not one of the things that happen that come across your mind. So that's not one of your stressors. That's not going to impact your burnout. But, you know, not getting paid enough. That's also not in our control. That's going to be a stressor. Because you're doing all this hard work and then you're not, at the end of the month, you're not getting enough money to make your, your bills, make ends meet.
Because that's also happening right now, across Not just for school therapists, but for everybody in the education system, I know many teachers who have multiple jobs and kids that they have to hang out with after school to, you know, they spend their whole day hanging out with kids and then they have to go home and still stay on and, you know, do things at home with their family and then go to multiple jobs.
So it's, it's an ongoing thing of just being on [00:20:00] constantly. That's why we see a lot of burnout in the schools. There's just so much time in the day. There's not enough time in the day to get all the things that we need to do done well. And one of my, I think it was Kelly actually, who, um, she said something really insightful for me while I was doing my PhD.
You're, right now, you're juggling a lot of, a lot of balls. Right? You're juggling a lot. You have to decide which balls are rubber and which balls are glass. Some of them can be dropped. The rubber ones can be dropped because they can bounce right back up and you'll pick them up. The glass ones can't get dropped.
So getting good grades in your PhD probably is one of those rubber balls that you don't need because you're at the end of your education. You're still needing to learn, right? Making sure you still want to do things well, but making sure that you are still writing, that your dissertation completed. Those are the glass balls that you can't drop.
So you don't want to be in your PhD for seven years. You need to make sure that you figure that out. [00:21:00] Same with proof. The clients that I see that work with burnout, it's what are some things that can get dropped in your, in your situation right now? Yeah, you can, you don't have to do RTI right now for that, for those students.
You can delegate that task. You don't have to see them yourself. You can teach your, collaborate with your teachers, provide the strategies, um, that you will be doing to your teachers who see them more often than you can. Maybe if RTI is one of those stressors for you, that can be a rubber ball. Right now, the glass ball for you might be paperwork.
Paperwork shouldn't go by the wayside because that is the one that is going to get us, that's probably the The one that's going to be the most litigious if we drop it. Therapy might not need to be pretty. The therapy can be very spontaneous. It can be reading a book with your, with your students. You don't need to have the fanciest, prettiest laminated materials.
had to [00:22:00] do good therapy. Um, so that might be one of those rubber balls that might get dropped for this month or however that season you're feeling the burnout. Um, so I'm not sure if I answered your question.
Kate Grandbois: I love this analogy so much. I'm already doing mental inventory of my rubber balls and glass balls.
It's not looking good over here. That's a, that's a separate conversation.
Leesa Marante: I
Kate Grandbois: was just going to say, I, I, the analogy is so, it's very true, but really helps us compartmentalize. And acknowledge that we can't do everything. We are not bottomless wells of emotional bandwidth. Um, it also makes me think about the pressure that maybe I put on myself to be the perfect therapist, or to make sure that my laminate, my laminated materials are cut beautifully and I'm prepared and polished.[00:23:00]
Um, all of that is fake. All of that is in my mind and it's making me just reflect on that personally. I'm thinking about my colleagues and other people I know out there who bring a lot of that internalized pressure to the table, um, and feel that, you know, we have, we, that all of the balls are glass, that we can't mess up in any capacity.
I, I really
Leesa Marante: appreciated all of that. Yeah. And you said something that, you know, resonated to you. We feel like we need to do everything, but we shouldn't need to do everything. You know, we are the expert in the building for speech and language and literacy, but we can delegate our tasks. We can collaborate.
Collaboration is also one of those buzzwords, but if you do it well, and it does take some time, I think I was in my last school for four years, and the third and fourth year were the years that collaboration was perfect. It did take me a good chunk to get it going, um, but it saved me so much time those third and fourth years because the teachers [00:24:00] already knew, okay, yep, these are the things that I have to look out for.
Oh, that's, she's not going to get qualified with one speech sound. Let's work on that in the classroom. I'm not even going to bother Mrs. Morante with, with a referral for that. Sounds that sounds not appropriate or the sound is appropriate. It's age related. So giving that information and collaborating and working with teachers takes time, but it's also one of those that can save you a lot of time.
And we shouldn't have to do everything because we're not trained to do everything for trying to be the speech and language expert in the, in the building and therapy can look different for everybody. And I think that's part of what I mentioned in mentioned this in the, in the article, setting boundaries for others and ourselves is really important.
And like you said earlier, it looks, it doesn't have to be mean. Boundaries are only mean when the person you're talking to, [00:25:00] where you're putting the boundary for, is surprised by that boundary, where they were using you for that information, right? So if you put a boundary, you say no to that person, and that person gets offended, that person was using that space before that boundary was put in place.
Um, so it shouldn't bother anybody. If you put boundaries, you say, Hey, I can't can't do that this week. We're not going to do another evaluation. Let's give them two more weeks of intervention. See where we go from there to allow some more flexibility on my schedule. And some of these examples I'm using might not always Farewell and some school districts right some school districts are very particular about processes.
So just take my examples as a, it's just what they are examples might not be really specific for your setting. But if you are in any way resonating with some of these examples, it can be done, putting boundaries saying no to the IP meeting that you can't make like [00:26:00] no I'm not going to do a four o'clock meeting that's after my.
Contract hours. I am not available. If you say that and you continue to say that, they are not going to schedule you another time. You're going to find another time that works for everyone. Other people get accommodated. I'm not a speech therapist. We give an example in that paper where we spontaneous IEP meetings is also very happens often where like, oh, we had an IEP meeting, we forgot this person had speech.
Sorry, legally, you had to give me seven days notice. And knowing, that's another thing, we didn't mention this in the article, knowing your legislation is really important and it will give you a lot of power to, like knowledge is power. If you know the rules, if you know legally what you are requesting, like you, you, I can't just show up and update your IP.
I have, I need time to do that, to be effective and to be well, well done. I need time. So putting that boundary. And alleviate that stress of [00:27:00] all of a sudden, so many things, so many,
Kate Grandbois: I'm sitting here watching Amy's wheels turn. I knew, I know that there's going to be something good coming. Amy,
Leesa Marante: I want to know what your stressors are so I can,
Amy Wonkka: I think that you, so there are so many things.
I think that for myself, at least, and I'm sure that there are other SLPs out there part of. What we're doing in the field is we're trying to help people, but we're also sort of people pleasers. And so the idea of setting boundaries can be super challenging. And I think that's an important point of self reflection as the SLP to recognize if that's something that's hard for you.
Um, but also recognize that that's a challenge you probably need to step up to the plate for if you're also experiencing feelings of burnout because without. Setting those boundaries in place. It's going to be awfully hard. I mean, we'll talk more about some of the strategies that you mentioned in the article, um, about [00:28:00] addressing burnout, but a lot of those involve like setting boundaries and spinning up for yourself.
So we also may need to do some work ourselves to get more comfortable with setting those boundaries. Um, and there are, I think the idea of the sign on the door is such a nice, such a nice, like. Not scary or not as scary thing to do compared to, you know, some of the crucial conversations. I'll ask you about that later.
You guys talk about that in the paper. Um, but at the end of the day, by setting these limits and setting these boundaries, we're also, we're not only advocating for what's best for us. We're advocating for what's best for our students because when we're burnt out and when we're experiencing. Um, all of those like cluster of symptoms that you described earlier, we're not able to do our best work for our clients either.
So it's like a win, win, win. Um, I also was like dancing around when you were saying no, no, the laws and legislation because that's where
Kate Grandbois: you were going. I'm waiting for it. I knew it, but
Amy Wonkka: it's true. It might not be the [00:29:00] most exciting stuff to learn about, but when you do learn about it, it can also. It can also.
Help you feel a little less nervous about putting those boundaries in place because it's not just you, Amy or Lisa or Kate, like being the person who's being the squeaky wheel, you're, you're just sharing the rules that were in place, hopefully.
Leesa Marante: Part of that is, we're usually the only ones that know the law well enough special education usually is the one that knows the law well enough.
I do spend, I, my last school district, I did spend a lot of time telling even admin, like, no, we legally can't do this, or we can't provide that service because of X, Y, and Z. We had to really explain a lot of our decision making. And that's what kind of also adds to our stressors, explaining our job, explaining that we do have knowledge.
Explaining why we are not make why we're making this decision, you know, if you had to just imagine doing a therapy session. I'm in a private practice now, so I can't I have a lot of parents who [00:30:00] sit in in the session. And I find myself kind of explaining what I'm doing or why I'm doing it this way. So just imagine having someone, second guess, every decision you're making, like, not just your self doubt, right, but just someone, a real person, outside person, third person, talking to you saying, Oh, you, you made, you changed that, uh, That dosage of therapy, why, why'd you do that?
And that's how IEP meetings feel to some, some people where like all my decisions are being questioned, not because they're doubting you, but they also don't have that knowledge that, oh, we don't need to be seen 30 minutes. And I'll talk about that too later, but for one of the strategies, like you don't have to be seen 30 minutes twice a week.
That's just an arbitrary dose that we've kind of got used to writing, but it's, that's where it comes from. Like explaining yourself is tedious. But if you do that enough, and you work at the same place long enough, which is [00:31:00] also an issue, we don't have many people staying in place, staying put long enough, um, those stressors kind of go away as, as persistent as you get.
So consistency is really, really important for a lot of the things we're mentioning today. It won't happen in just one year. Your first year is going to be the roughest. But second year when you already get used to all the changes you make, your work habits adjust and your work habits. Become more efficient.
And
Kate Grandbois: for anyone who does want to learn more about dosage and frequency, we do have an episode on that with Dr. Mary Beth Schmidt, who wrote one of the papers related to this. So, and our minds were completely blown. It's not 2 times 30 or 3 times 15 or whatever it is that you're, you know, your, your professional norm or what your professional culture, your workplace culture dictates.
Um, so in addition to learning about the laws and regulations. Reeducating yourself on effective dose, dosage and frequency. What we learned was that it [00:32:00] can have a positive impact on things like caseload and workload. Um, and I will, we will link that episode in the show notes for anyone who wants to listen.
I was wondering if you could. Maybe list a few resources for us. If someone is listening and they don't, if they are new in the field or if they don't have access to, um, knowledge related to rules, regulations, policies, where might someone go to learn that information I'm thinking of union reps or anyone in is, or is there typically a position or a resource that someone can go to, to get better versed in that kind of thing?
Leesa Marante: Absolutely. You can go online and look for information on IDEA. The education website provides a lot of resources for parents and that's actually very helpful to understand all the jargon of legislation, um, using those parent handouts and even for your state.
So your state, website, state education website should have a clear [00:33:00] definitions of your, the disabilities that we diagnose, the disabilities that are provided for special education. Also ask your special education directors. They should have resources as well. Um, if you're new to, to the field, um, or you're in your clinical fellowship here, In the schools, it's very important to reach out to the special education director that if your district has a lead speech therapist, they should have all that information for you, because it also varies by state states.
I worked, I worked in Georgia, Florida and Texas and yes the communication disorder stay the same but the regulations are very different, even the diagnostic. determination. In Florida, it's not as stringent as Texas. Texas, I have to have below seven percentile and they have different definitions. So always look to see what definitions they have for what considered, what is considered a disorder.
It's
Amy Wonkka: also interesting working [00:34:00] across other states just to recognize I was chatting with an SLP in New Jersey the other day and they have, I think it's 90 days to complete an evaluation, whereas in Massachusetts, I have 30. So just being aware of differences from state to state and how that might affect you if you're an SLP who's school based and might be.
Moving from one state to another. Also kind of rereading all of that information for your new state, uh, just to be aware of what changes. Maybe in place in your new location. Um, I wonder if we could talk a little bit about the idea of a time audit. I read this in your article and I loved it because I thought it was super action oriented and just a way to like, okay, I'm feeling burnt out.
Where do I start? Um, I think it's like a nice way to wrap your head around some places that you
Leesa Marante: might start. Cool. Yeah. Have you ever felt. [00:35:00] At the end of the day, you're like, wow, where did my day go? And you had a list of things you wanted to do, but probably the day went by, but you got maybe two out of the 10 things that were on that list.
Um, doing a time audit kind of centers you and kind of, you know, makes you Slow down and become very intentional with what you're doing. So if you just pick one day, pick one day that you feel like you have a lot of stuff to do, a lot of deadlines, a lot of clients to see, and you figure out, okay, I have this many breaks throughout the day.
I'm going to put a timer to see how long it takes me to do whatever I sit down to do on my computer. So if you get to your school, some, some people get to say your start time is. I would get or 720 if you're in elementary school, depending on what setting you're in, you sit down, you open your computer and you start a timer.
[00:36:00] Okay, for that 20 minutes I answered emails, and then my first session started. It also might be, you took 20 minutes to answer emails but in that 20 minutes you also check your phone you also got up to get coffee, you also went and got the materials out. So, so time audit. We'll kind of bring that to light if you're actually paying attention to what it is you're spending your time on, and this is not in any way like you're not supposed to have any fun, you're not supposed to pause and talk to anyone.
What you do by time auditing, what you do is really focus. Okay, it only takes me 10 minutes to update three goals. If I have no interruptions. So in your mind, you should say, okay, this shouldn't be that time consuming. If I have, I can do it in 10 minutes. So the next time you have a 10 minute free block, I can update an IP really quick.
Um, [00:37:00] so that's the, the gist of it, where, where is my time going? What am I really doing during that time that I've set aside for this? And how long does it really take me to do a task?
Amy Wonkka: I love it because it's, it's such like I, I've done versions of this myself and I found that I have no idea that like I had my, my mental idea of how much I could get done in a, in a set period of time was, was way off base in a lot of cases.
Yeah, and like a
Leesa Marante: really good thing that I like to do is I write a list of the top three things I need to get done. I don't make a list of 10 things. I make a list of these are the top three things I need to get done by the end of today. And that helps me feel a little bit more empowered of what I, I got these three things accomplished.
I'm happy. Uh, on, on Twitter, a lot of academics call it the bare minimums. And then they put What actual bear icons like these are the three bare minimums of the day to feel accomplished and feel good about myself. And that's, that's half the battle, feeling good about what you do. Because that also [00:38:00] helps with the personal accomplishment.
We want to keep that high. So whatever you need to do to get your personal accomplishment. Pillar filled personal accomplishment cup filled. Um, but another thing that I like to do is if I'm doing tasks and I'm like, Oh, I got to do this one thing. And I go off and do another task. I write that task down on my list and cross it off.
Like I, that wasn't on my list, but it's something I did today. And that's something you can put on your list so that you feel like, Oh, I did. I did things. Um, because that way you feel like you actually got your list done, may have added a few things here and there, but you still have this sense of accomplishment towards the end of the day.
Amy Wonkka: Yeah, I love it. And I love that when you're, when you're doing the timer setting and you're like encompassing all the things you do in the task. I also like that a lot because like you said, like we aren't robots, like we aren't like I, I can't be [00:39:00] 100 percent on task. for eight hours straight. Like I just physically can't do that.
Um, so I think it's nice too, to incorporate those other things. Like sometimes you need to go pee. And sometimes you chat with your office mate for a few seconds, you know, like I think that incorporating that into the time that it takes to do a task is really helpful. And it makes me think about your.
Your analogy about like the rubber balls and the glass balls, because if you're doing something like a time study and you get a better idea of how long it takes you to do those glass ball things, like one aspect of working in a school. And I've worked in a, in a bunch of different schools in Massachusetts and Ohio, and in, in all of those settings, like the way that you usually have your day structured is that you have your time with students.
And then you have some amount of like discretionary time preparation time, whatever they call it, but that's. Really, the only time you have in your day to get all of those non student facing tasks done. Um, so if you can better fill that with your [00:40:00] like glass ball activities and you have a realistic idea about how long those glass ball activities take like that right there.
Can be very de stressing just to have that organization in place. Don't you think
Kate Grandbois: It really makes me also think about previous conversations we've had related to self advocacy and negotiating in your workplace, because if you have that data, you've done that timing analysis and you know, that an evaluation.
Takes you X amount of time, but your administrators thinks it takes you 30 minutes because they don't understand your job or they don't really understand, you know, what it is you do in the building, which unfortunately is the case. You can take that data to advocate for different caseload allocations or more prep time or a lower evaluation rates or whatever it is you think will improve your, your workplace culture or your, your amount of bandwidth
Leesa Marante: for, for work tasks.
Yeah, and the [00:41:00] thing about providing data to your administration, so your admin, they have some control over what you do. It also depends. So I'm going to say this, but it really depends on the district that you're in. So some school districts have SLP's have autonomy, if you have multiple You're welcome.
Sites, they don't necessarily pick on you that much, but if you're at your one school and your supervisor is your admin, your admin, um, it makes it really hard to, to say, this is why I have Fridays completely free. I need to do all of this paperwork, including write evaluations, including doing completing those evaluations.
It's not that I'm not busy during that time. So writing that data also shows a reason for not doing extra duty. Not having to be in the hallways for for teacher duty when you're, you know, if you're in a middle school, you have to monitor the hall during switching times but or after school drop off those types of things where you [00:42:00] necessarily have that extra time, because you have all these other responsibilities that you want to get done within contract time.
Showing that time audit is going to help your case for that. I haven't had to do duty because of that.
Amy Wonkka: And I feel like you're, you're talking about another question that we had, which was getting burnout before it becomes burnout. So if I feel like. I'm feeling stressed. I'm feeling extra stressed. And it's, it's not just this month.
It was last month and every month I think next month will be better. And it's not, what are some strategies we can try and utilize to, to mitigate burnout before it's becoming a big problem. And I feel like the time study is like a great. Starting point. You already mentioned advocating, you know, things like duties.
I think that that's, that's another really big piece. Like if you're a building based person and you're doing bus duty or, you know, you're out at recess, [00:43:00] um, maybe having that conversation, are there other things that, that other suggestions that might help.
Leesa Marante: Yeah. Figuring out what the stressors Versus if they're temporary or if they're permanent if is it a cyclical cyclical problem or is it a temporary problem like I said a little bit earlier than making sure that you're that thing that's causing you stress if it's something that always happens every month at the same time, like we are having the same issue even though we fix it, we try to fix it.
What's going on. Um, you know, if you had keep having that IEP meeting spring up on you from the same case manager. Every, every time there's an IEP and it's causing you a lot of stress, this is where you can have those crucial, crucial conversations with, with this person saying, Hey, this is causing me a lot of stress.
Please give me enough notice so I can make sure that. Or let me know a month in advance that this IEP is happening so that I have adequate time to [00:44:00] prepare for the IEP. And that's a very specific problem to have. But having these crucial conversations with the individuals that might be causing that cyclical problem is important.
Um, if it's a temporary problem, you know, perhaps you have IEP meetings that are coming up that have lawyers in them or advocates that you are feeling this. initial stressor, like, Oh, I don't know what I'm going to say, what I'm going to do. What if they find out I'm a fraud, you know, that imposter syndrome that we feel all the time because we're in a helping profession.
Um, we know it's temporary. And a lot of the strategies we can do for those temporary problems is seek social support. That's where my, a lot of my, my dissertation was on providing social support SLPs, because that is a really Key feature of our community.
So it's really important to provide social support as a resource for SLPs school based therapists are often, [00:45:00] you know, by themselves in their classroom doing things isolated. And as soon as we provide support, we can continue talking about it like this is right now we're offering support to SLPs, it might not be social, but because we're not talking to them right now, but we are definitely providing them support in any in a certain way and I just remembered what I was going to say.
So if you were, if your issue, what's causing you stress is temporary and You have an IEP coming up that will have a few lawyers in it and you just feel this sense of dreading, you're dreading it, um, you don't feel confident, your imposter syndrome is coming up, seek other SLPs who have experienced what you're about to experience, this is your first IEP with a, with a lawyer, that's what's causing you, like, I don't know what I'm going to say, um, or I'm not, I don't know what to expect, seeking that information, seeking support, even if you need support to say, like, I know what I [00:46:00] need.
Like I've, I've asked Kate and Amy for a lot of support throughout this presentation and throughout this conversation we're having, um, just to get like, Hey, you're doing great. That does wonders for for someone and then know that that stressor is temporary. So, a really big thing is to decide what are your stressors, what is temporary what is cyclical cyclical problems usually need the most work.
And those are the ones you either want to target. Over time, you target it using those crucial conversations, perhaps you need to have those crucial conversations with your administrators, with your, um, other case managers, other speech therapists. Maybe it's your supervisor, if you need, if that cyclical problem is that you are getting two or three new referrals every week, and you don't have enough time to evaluate them, like you're really out of time.
Maybe your supervisor can help, but you have to ask. You're not going to get, this is something I also [00:47:00] tell a lot of my clients, you can't get an answer that you want if you don't ask. You're going to get no either way if you don't ask. Right? Um, it's such
Amy Wonkka: a good point because and I think I think in some ways it goes back to that like uncomfortable feeling about setting boundaries, right?
Like if you're uncomfortable setting boundaries, you're probably also uncomfortable asking for things that you need, which is like setting boundaries is just a flavor within that continuum of getting what you need, right? Um, I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit more about the crucial conversations because in the paper, um, The examples, um, that were in there.
I was like, Oh, these are just like the yucky, like uncomfortable, stressful conversations that get like your palms sweating before you even have the conversation, but they're crucial. You can tell us a little bit about why they're so important for us to like have
Leesa Marante: them. Yeah. Any conversation that is high stakes.
So [00:48:00] your high stakes situations is your wellbeing. Your high stakes is your job. Your job might be impacted. Um, You might not even like confrontation that might be considered a high stakes because it's something that you're out of your comfort zone. Um, so those conversations that have those senses that make those senses kind of heightened are going to be crucial.
You wouldn't want to have the, or you wouldn't have the idea to have a conversation if it wasn't going to help you. Um, so what we, we really have to realize that, and you can, you don't have to put this if you want. I might be a little bit controversial, but we're in a shortage right now for speech therapy.
Speech therapists are needed. Use that to your advantage. You are not going to get fired. You are needed. They need you to be covered. They need you to, um, they need you there. There's no way that what you as long as you are not [00:49:00] providing, um, you know, the worst on evidence based therapy, you are actually, you know, trying to attempt to see your kids, you're doing your best at providing therapy, you're doing your best to get all your paperwork done.
You're doing your best. They're not going to fire you for having a conversation that you are trying to help get support for yourself. However, there are situations where your superior might not be. A person that you feel comfortable doing so find someone who you feel comfortable having this conversation with.
It may not even be someone who, who has power to change, it might be your coworker. Like, hey, I need to talk to you about this I'm going to pretend you're my, my superior. Let me, let me have this conversation with you and see what. Give me some feedback. I know not everyone is blessed to have a superior who might be easygoing who might not have a lot of repercussions.
So that fear of there might be repercussions [00:50:00] and there's there's systems in place. To allow for this kind of these kind of conversations to happen in the workplace. And if there isn't, you need to move districts, you need to get out of that situation because that is, it's not okay you should feel comfortable having conversations with people who are higher up than you on the, on the ladder, because those people are there to serve you.
Does that make sense? Like they're higher up, but they are here to make sure that we are having a really good culture in our campus. That's a, that's an admin duty. They need to make sure that the culture of their campus is positive. They need to make sure that their culture or that their, their staff feel safe on campus.
So if you're already feeling like you're not feeling safe on campus to talk to your administrators with complete ease and complete Conversationality then there might be there's an issue a bigger issue at play. So I like to tell my students. I know my clients. I'm sorry. [00:51:00] I know my whole purpose is to keep SLP's in the in the setting where they are in, but there's a lot of situations where that is not feasible and I'm not recommended.
Kate Grandbois: All of what you're saying is making me think about something you said earlier related to how this is more difficult for someone in their first year. I'm imagining trying to overcome all of these hurdles, my imposter syndrome, my, you know, being brand new in a job and wanting to keep my job. Everything for reasons related to health insurance and my salary, not wanting to.
Create waves, not wanting to create quote enemies and all of the fear that might come along with self advocating and having some of these critical conversations. I'm also thinking about how this might be particularly difficult for an SLP who is the only SLP in a district and doesn't necessarily have colleagues to corroborate, you know, the time analysis of no, it actually does take us [00:52:00] more than a half an hour to write a report or, or whatever it is.
Um, And how many other contextual variables might really make some of these strategies feel more difficult versus, let's say, a seasoned SLP who's in a district, who's in a department of 16 other SLPs, you know what I'm saying? Yeah,
Leesa Marante: and the, you're absolutely right. I remember my clinical fellowship year, I was.
Everything we were talking about was heightened. I didn't want to talk to my admin, even though I knew my admin was in the wrong like I was like no. Oh, that doesn't make me feel comfortable I'm staying in my room. I am not going to have that crucial conversation and that's that's okay. You know your first year.
You're going to have a lot of those barriers, and I'm hoping that you know that person stays in that setting and then just adjust for the second year, because we have to know going in that that your first year in any job is going to be hard. It's a transition, because it's new. [00:53:00] A lot of the time, you know, graduate students, being in the school, you know, not just being in school but your clinical fellowship years the first time you probably have a full time 12 hour a day job, depending on the setting.
And it's going to be a lot, no matter where you are. So just knowing that you have time to change, have time to adjust that first year is always, it's going to be like a year of adjustment, but absolutely. I wouldn't, I would not have said anything to any of my, I wouldn't have had crucial conversations that first year.
And I probably didn't. And that's
Kate Grandbois: probably why I left. Well, if anyone out there is listening and is feeling overly intimidated by these critical conversations, or if you are the only SLP in your district, or you are brand new to the field and feel some of these strategies are insurmountable, we happen to know someone who has a business who is just available to help you with just such a thing.
And I can, I can vouch for the fact that you're very [00:54:00] approachable, very friendly, very helpful and very reachable. So, we will make sure to put. Your, um, business information in the show notes for anybody who is just looking to have a little bit of support or extra nudge in one direction or another. If, um, you know, any of these barriers ring true.
Leesa Marante: Thank you.
Amy Wonkka: I wonder if we can talk just a little bit, I know we're getting short on time, but we've talked a little bit about things to do to mitigate burnout before it becomes a problem. I wonder if there's anything additional or different that you would do. If you haven't been able to mitigate, mitigate it.
And you get to the point where you're like, Oh no, I'm super burned out. What do I do?
Leesa Marante: And that happens. How many, I have had so many conversations with SLPs who've been in this field for 30 years and they're feeling it now, 30 years. I'm like, good job for making it so far without feeling these that way. Um, what I tell them is to start slow, [00:55:00] pick one thing and work at that because 30 years is a long time to make habits.
And it's going to take some time to make those changes. For my dissertation, I did support groups with SLPs across the country. And I did have a lot of SLPs who were seasoned. And they, 20 plus years, and they worked through lunch. They worked through lunch most of their, most of their career. And I, the six week support group that we had, I said, Okay, by the end of the support group, I really want you to not work through lunch.
When it took them a long time, a lot of effort to not turn on the computer, to not have to have 30 minutes of not working, eat your sandwich outside, eat your sandwich in the car, that's something I do. I go to my car and have my lunch in my car so that I have a break from talking to anybody. No one's going to talk to me in the lunchroom about anything work related, not going to answer my email I'm going to scroll social media, I'm going to watch a YouTube video while I'm eating something that is [00:56:00] not work related and have that that break.
But it does take time. So the more time you've practiced wrong, not wrong, I shouldn't say wrong, inefficient habits that have caused more stress, reduced your resources as a speech therapist, you're going to continue doing that because it's a habit. It's something that we do consistently. And I think the, you know, the saying is it takes 22 days to break a habit.
Um, so it really It's effortful. So definitely starting slow, picking one thing to change that's gonna, that you know will have positive impact on you. I know in the article we mentioned a lot of other things, but I think that's been the most effective way of mitigating that. It's like, pick one thing that's going to help you and adjust.
Moving forward.
Amy Wonkka: I love that lunch example for a lot. I'm also a car lunch person. I have received
Kate Grandbois: many
Amy Wonkka: Yeah, it's just like it's nice because you're [00:57:00] in a literally different physical space too So if you're already somebody who has trouble Like closing your door or if you're in a shared office like just being in a different physical space kind of I think helps promote that disconnect a little bit. And I find it really helps me be more engaged when I go back in too.
And I think that that is another piece that resonated for me in the conversation we've been having with you today in the paper that you wrote Dr. Farr Carson. I think, you know, these things that we're doing. are better for us as like human being people, but they're also making us better able to do the work we're there to do when we're at work.
Um, also lunch is super important. I, I, I love that example. I also love that it is something that happens every day. So thinking about. So if you can think of something like it as cheap, like framing it, like you're changing sort of a bad habit. I'm using air quotes. I don't have a better way to describe that.
But thinking about I'm trying to change my bad habits to [00:58:00] be, you know, mitigating my burnout. Doing something every single day is a nice way to practice changing that habit, too. So if you can think of something like lunch or maybe like reserving your planning time or prep time to get specific tasks done, and you're going to be able to practice that every day, I think is also really helpful.
So thanks for that.
Leesa Marante: Another really easy fun one, fun one I guess, yeah, um, is reducing your exposure to email throughout the day. Don't have your email open because the dings, it's evidence based, the dings will distract you from what the task that you're attending to. So have a specific time where you check email, make sure your phone email is turned off after the workday is over, those, those little things add up over time and you don't realize how much time you spent answering emails.
Take back your time. I feel like I'm
Kate Grandbois: leaving today with so many strategies and I'm so grateful. Do you have any final words of [00:59:00] wisdom or final recommendations for our listeners before we wrap up?
Leesa Marante: I do. I wish there was a wand I can wave to fix it all. You know, an easy answer for everyone. Um, like there's not just one solution that fits all, but the reality is that our experience is very, and like, it's gonna, we're gonna fix our situation.
It's gonna take time. Change is slow, but it's happening. Become a member of your state association. They're the ones that are going to help. Make those changes for your state, for your school level. Um, they all, they're the ones supporting your school legislature, but yeah, you're not alone ask for help.
It's hard to ask for help and it's, it's okay to, to ask for help, take a step back and it's okay also to say, this isn't working for me and change your setting, change your job, And get ahead of the Dread remember why you do this. Thank you so much, Lisa. Thank you.
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Outro
Kate Grandbois: Thank you so much for joining us in today's episode, as always, you can use this episode for ASHA CEUs. You can also potentially use this episode for other credits, depending on the regulations of your governing body. To determine if this episode will count towards professional development in your area of study.
Please check in with your governing bodies or you can go to our website, www.slpnerdcast.com all of the references and information listed throughout the course of the episode will be listed in the show notes. And as always, if you have any questions, please email us at info@slpnerdcast.com
thank you so much for [01:01:00] joining us and we hope to welcome you back here again soon.
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