We are discussing the biggest challenges that are currently holding back the field of speech language pathology.
We present the issues with facts and invite you to be part of joining our movement to make things better one conversation at a time.
Let's fix SLP
All right. Hey, Megan. Welcome back. Yeah, face, I enjoyed seeing you in person. But now we're back to like regularly scheduled programming. So we have a lot to talk about today. We have both listened to the q&a, live chat from Asha, we have some things to say about all of it. But we're going to try to rein that in a little bit and just talk about maybe two major points. So we can talk about other things that we think are important. I know people have been waiting to hear from us on that. So we are going to address some of that. And, um, man, we have a long list of things. So this is good. Either we have no balance here. We're like 20 minutes, 900 minutes. Like, let's just get into it, I guess.
Yeah, absolutely. A lot has happened. I feel like I've said from the beginning that this is a very messy process. And there's a lot of learning going on. And for me, I've, I've been wanting to engage with ASHA and try to have a conversation. And I think, more and more, I'm realizing that like, it's not so much that Asha isn't listening, it's that we continue to be surprised when they don't listen to what we have to say. So yeah, let's talk about those two segments from the ASHA CEO live chat, and then we'll move on to oh, sorry,
before we do that, do we want to talk about that meeting?
Well, that's what I was gonna say is we'll move on to the, to the response from the board meeting, or the summary from the board meeting that just happened. And sorry, everybody, I'm sick. I'm going to try to mute myself when I'm coughing in Sorry about my voice. But let's start with the first segment from the ASHA CEO live chat. And this was a question about the C's, right? And like, what value they bring, and I'll let you play the questions.
Why do we need our seeds certification? If you want to start us off with that?
Okay, so that was the first question that came up. We did get a shout out there. As they began to answer that question. There was it specifically said there's been a lot of talk on social media about this as of late Hey, guys, that's us. But the Megan and I have listened to this a couple times, and the answer goes on for minutes at you can go listen to that very specifically, the time was five minutes, 58 seconds. If you want to queue that up yourself. You can go listen, you can go listen to the entire answer in full. I don't get offended pretty often. Um, you know, everybody has their own opinion. People make mistakes when they say things like, we're all humans. But when I listened to this, the first time I was doing my dishes, and I got real, real angry, real bothered, because we see continued gaslighting from this association and whether this was Vicki's intention or not. It was right in line with that pattern. So here is the answer that I had a problem with
ASHA members who wants to pursue their CCC and do so because they're committed to lifelong learning. They're committed to that ongoing pursuit of of information and knowledge that makes them better at what they do. So the knowledge and the skills for practicing the professions.
What, oh, keep going. Megan said keep going.
It also. To me, it ensures that they're keeping up with all of the changes that we see in the professions within the scopes of practice, across both professions. So these are people who are professionals and in lawyers in third party payers who want to make sure that these individuals are proactive in seeking out the competence to provide qualified qualified services. So it's one of those things that we do. And I say we because I am actually a certified professional. So that's what
I mean, again, I think this comes back to what we're saying is that the C's do not demonstrate competence competency. They're a one time milestone that's related to training. So when you have the CS, it means that you've passed the practice. And you've completed nine months of supervised work. But again, like there's no evidence behind that nine months. Like is that too much? Is that too little? It's a time based measurement that doesn't actually represent the competencies are being met necessarily. And then taking CPUs also does not guarantee competency across the entire scope of speech language pathology, which is what this certification promises to third party payers and consumers and employers and SLPs.
And I, I know you're going to share one of your personal stories later, but this I think, this is why this really bumped me. I started out as I started out in private pediatrics, I wasn't prepared, but I at least had, you know, my hair's not great yet. But you know, I'm old enough that there, the website, or the website, the internet wasn't really a place, you could go for a ton of resources, but I had the skills at least and the textbooks at least, to do a halfway decent job for the kids that I was serving. Then I moved to the schools and we all know that's a whole different ballgame. But again, you
try c hallenging.
Yeah, I had a, you know, I, I had some friends, my my director wasn't that great, but I had friends in that district and in that county, who helped me through and mentored me, and I did again, the best job No, but as a new clinician, I at least helped kids. It was at that time in year, two, that I started doing PRN in a nursing home at night, I would pass this nursing home on my way home from the schools. And after a lot of like driving by every day, I'm like, I wonder if they need help. I wonder if I need help. I finally called they needed help. They had coverage from two other SLPs who did not want to be driving to that nursing home, they were full time at other nursing homes. And they it was in the middle of nowhere. They didn't want to be there. So I started out one day a week, and then two days a week. And then I ended up as their full time three to five day speech language pathologist and I loved it. But I had zero business being there. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea how to treat dysphasia, which at the time was the entire caseload. And I always honest with this story about what I did, just to demonstrate like these are the things that happen. And there's no shame in admitting mistakes and admitting when you were wrong. I used to I was so unknowledgeable I used to copy the notes of the other practicing SLPs and change the percentages in such a way that it wouldn't hurt or harm those people. Because I didn't even know what the word AP transfer meant. And that's a problem. And, and I didn't allow that to go on. For long before I had a come to Jesus with myself. And I said to myself, you cannot do this. This is fraud. It's a problem. You're not serving these people well, and you need to get your butt educated in order to do this. And that had nothing to do with me paying for my CCC or being an ASHA member or not. And that is why I was so bumped by this because I am a lifelong learner that come to Jesus that I had with myself led to me going to get a PhD in dementia and swallowing. And that again, had nothing to do with ASHA had nothing to do with the CCC. It had everything to do with me recognizing that I was ill prepared. And I wanted to serve my patients well, and you telling me that in order to be committed, I need to pay $225 a year. Oh, hell no. And I am sure there are a lot of people listening to this. That would agree. None of us are pursuing education because Asha thinks we need to do it. to show a commitment, I get I win earn whatever we want to call it that Ash ace award every year. And it is not because I want the ash ace award, it's because I want to do better for my patients. And now, I want to do better for my students. So don't say like, gaslighting is done, I'm so over the gas lady. And I'm sure that wasn't her intent. But it is this pattern that we see over and over and over again, coming from this organization that makes us think we need to pay for this product, to show our support and show our dedication and show how committed we are. I'm over it.
Right The CCC is not good enough for SLPs it's not a good enough standard. And the gaslighting starts very early like when you when you sell a full scope certification. The implication there is that an SLP can operate across the scope of SLP with just that one certification. And that is just not true. And that is what we are saying over and over. So for people who are continuing to defend the CS as some sort of regulatory thing that's single handedly holding this field together. It's not and it's doing damage, because we are all graduating with this full scope certification. And we're all moving around to different scenarios. And there's zero structure and zero help from this organization to help us figure out where our competencies actually are. And that falls on new grads who are just trying to survive and just trying to keep their head above water in the system that has been built up around us that is not tolerable anymore. It's not a safe space for SLPs. When you look at workload, and productivity and the expectations and the way that we are being told how to do our jobs, and we are being told what a speech therapist is, and we do not have any sort of empowerment or energy within all of us to be telling the world who we are. And that's the shift that I would like to see happen is that, you know, we as SLPs move away from like watching this Asha CEO live chat and just getting frustrated with it and being like, they're not listening to being like, like, that's Asha, I get to choose whether or not I listened to them, I can still be an SLP without Asha. And I think this is again, where it gets so convoluted in our field, like, most other professions do not live and die by their national association. There's the profession, and there's the professionals in it. And they're working every day in the field. And they're, you know, shaping and defining how that goes through their state associations through their, the way they conduct themselves in their jobs. You know, there might be some interaction with the National Association. But generally, they get to choose if they're a part of that or not. They don't. They're not beholden to a national association, their jobs and their identity are not defined by a national association. The National Association is there to serve them, it's there to listen to them, it's there to earn the trust and the respect of members. By truly again, listening to them and advocating for them and what they need. We have a very strange situation with Asha. And I think there's we've talked about the historical context of why Asha is the way it is. It's an organization deeply, you know, systemically run by academic SLPs. And so there's this culture there of sort of a hierarchy of people up above, quote, working SLPs, telling them who they are telling them, what they should be defining their jobs, defining their careers defining the certification that controls everything. And I think the conversation just needs to start shifting to like Asha can do what Asha wants to do. Like, we're not here to stop them. We're not here to burn it down. We're not here to change them. We're just here to say that we have a right to be an SLP without them.
I would love to burn something down just for fun. Doesn't have to be Asha. But let's burn something as part of this movement.
We can burn our certification.
Yeah. Do you want me to skip to the jump to the next one? Yeah, sorry. Okay. I'm less about this one. But um, yeah, here's the next question. This one has to do with quote, dues.
The second part, so I should use wife renewal required annually rather than every two years. Yeah, and this is a fairly common model for a membership association. As they have annual dues renewal, first of all, the member engagement that it promotes involvement accountability. Most many of our members only engage with us to pay their dues. We want to make sure that we need to provide them some questions, some information. So the real estate on the Deuce invoice has shrunk over the years that used to be that way that many of you who have pairs, right as mine will remember that was in the past, the way we got a lot of information from members. There is some information on there that we asked members to update on an annual basis. And that helps us to to track a lot of information about the membership
allows them to sell our information. Yeah, absolutely.
Let's keep making money. Do you want me to keep going? That's where I had marked to stop.
No, that's good. i Yeah. I mean, my biggest beef with this is that certification fees are not dues.
Yeah. And also like my, when I first heard it, I, the thought then immediately went through my head was, we aren't engaging, because we don't want to clearly we find no value. Now, let me back up. I do use the ASHA website from time to time. I'm also an educator, I send my students there to see the scope of practice and read about the different position statements we have. And we do need that we need that and Megan and I are not the journals are great. Yeah, yeah, we're not saying Asha needs to go away. And all of that stuff needs to go away. What we're more talking about is the certification versus membership. But again, if people found value in what they were doing, they would go, they wouldn't have to be coerced to hit that website. And then are they even getting value in paying that to 20? But no, they're being coerced to go to engage to pay to 25? To give their information, that Asha then turns around and sells.
Yeah. And when she said that we hear from members, they're hearing from members that are saying, why why do we continue to have to pay for this certification? And, and then they're just like, they think that my perception is that they perceive working as LPS who are upset about the certification as like too dumb to understand why the certification is, quote, needed. And they're, they're not. And again, because Asha is widely made up of academic SLPs who are not working every day, eight, five or whatever, in the current system, they're not seeing the problems with the CS.
Yeah. I think I, I'm equally as frustrated as the treating clinicians out there, and I'm not anymore. I'm not treating every day I am treating every week in some capacity, whether I'm in the acute care, or passing a scope with mobile fees, or doing PRN in the nursing homes, I am still in it weekly, but not daily. And, and I, you know, I was in that place where I was it almost daily, I, I did PRN only for 15 years where I would do permanent coverage and buildings that couldn't find NSLP, or these long term play like coverage for people with having babies and all for the same one or two companies. And I would get so frustrated with with what I'm seeing, you know, the same things are treating clinicians in the medical setting are seeing over and over and over again. And I know that it is still very fresh. It was only in the last year when I started working full time again in academia that I had to make an active choice to step away. Invest in my business a little bit. You know, obviously I'm working full time in academia invest in my students and into the job I was hired to do. But I haven't been out of it long. And it even last night. This blew my mind. I got a new contract for my fees business and the administrator wrote back to me and said the signed contract is attached I will need to resign it for every patient that needs assessed. This is a case by case basis. If that was like, and these are the problems, why don't why doesn't your SLP just have access to instrumentals? Why do you as the uneducated administrator need to approve this and resign every time? And I just wrote back and said, Okay, thank you. I noted, it doesn't need to resign every time. I like these are issues. Yes.
And like, we've been getting a lot of pushback, from my perspective, a lot of pushback from academic SLPs. And there's a lot of anger, like kind of resentful reactions when we put them in the academic category, because there's this reaction of like, but I'm a practicing SLP. I still see patients. I did practice full time before I went into academia and like we are not discounting that. Yeah, well, we are saying is, like an either Jeanette or like, the reason we have time to sit here and record this podcast is because Jenna is an academia and because I'm a business owner, like neither one of us. Like though we have perspective and experience and what it's like to be working every day as an SLP. We're not doing it right now. And, and that perspective is the perspective that's needed. That's not at the table. And the answer over and over from academic SLPs is either like, you need to volunteer for Asha, or you need to like volunteer all this time to get into the ashes system to change things from the inside. And it's like, first of all, people are paying money money to be members of this association, they have a right to say, what's working for them and what's not working for them whether or not they have the time to spend volunteering for Asha. And we could get into like how the volunteering system works for Asha and how it really isn't set up for feedback. Like I know, there was a story shared from somebody on one of the SIG boards or whatever they call them, the people that run the cigs. And they wanted to do a learning pass giveaway for the SIG. And Asha would only give them one learning pass to give away. And the committee wanted to give away to learning passes. And they had a whole hour meeting about trying to convince Asha to let them give away to learning passes. Like that's what it looks like to volunteer for Asha is to spend a whole hour arguing about some stupid point about how many things they can give away that actually doesn't cost them anything to give away. Like, that's not how Jeanette or I want to spend our time. It's not how we want to tell SLPs to spend their time. And this gets at like, is it possible to be an SLP without Asha and just like not again, not burning it down? not hating on them, not pushing against them, but just leaving that, like not resisting it. But just what does it look like to be an SLP without Asha, and I think I think this requires a lot of imagination for SLPs. Because again, we're so used to being told what to do and how to do our jobs. And I would just encourage everyone listening to this to just like spend some time thinking about this, like if Asha didn't exist? How would you go about making change in the profession? And just there's no right or wrong answer there. And we don't have an agenda for this. But it's like, clearly there are issues and over and over in the live chat. The response was Asha doesn't have the power. Asha doesn't have the power to define workload caps, Asha doesn't have the power to define reimbursement cuts or increases, like that was over and over and over. And it's like, we have the power, like, we can go to our state associations, we can enact legislation, we can talk to lawmakers, we can talk to lobbyists, we can figure out what we can do in our own communities. And I think, again, that's what I want to encourage SLPs to do is like, we could either spend a lot of time resisting Asha and being really upset and really angry and like trying to get them to listen and banging our fists and bang in her head against the walls, but it's like, or we could take all of that energy. And really think through what it would look like to change things just in our own little communities, whether it's just in our own facility with one colleague at our state association level and a legislative level at a school district level, like whatever it is, I think we have a lot more power than we think which is what Asha continues to tell us over and over. And I agree with them. And I think that we don't need to pay them money to be an SLP and we don't need to pay them money and expect them to fix everything. We we can be the ones to fix it.
And I think we keep saying this that's that's where we're headed. We said we want to offer viable so Lucians for speech language pathologist to engage in, in an attempt to fix some of these problems. I want to pause here, just to remind everyone, we are at like the one month anniversary of this, right? We said at the beginning, we jumped into this without a plan just because we saw that it was needed. And we needed to start and it didn't need to be perfect when we started it. And so there, there are a lot of things we have so many phone calls scheduled in the next two weeks, people who are in the in positions of power have reached out and power by I mean, like more influence than us bigger reach than us. We had someone with almost 200,000 followers, not associated with speech language pathology reached out to us for a meeting who's involved in legislative activity. So we have a ton of meetings scheduled, we have plans for calls to action and viable things that SLPs can easily get involved with. And so all of that is coming, I don't, I don't want people to think that we're just here to like, bash Asha, or, or not offer solutions, or just complain, this is going to be a place of solutions. We've only been doing it for four weeks. And it's coming, we're working on it. And I'm hopeful that in the next week, maybe the next time we record, even if we can get all of the coordination together that we will be hearing directly from state associations, we have reached out to every single one, we're starting to hear back, it's good, you know, we've got time zones to deal with, but we have podcasts coming up, where we will be talking to, hopefully your state about what your state is doing, what your membership could mean to them, and how you can get involved to start making change at your local level. So feel that to me, because I did listen to that whole q&a. And they did they they continuously said we can't do that, that has to be at the state level, we don't have that power that's at the state level. So we need to invest in our states in order to start making those changes. So that's, that's coming. And, and we, we get to define then who we are in our state or local level. And I
would also say for people listening, like, just be aware of the energy of your thoughts. Like if you have historically kind of looked at ASHA, you know, positively or negatively, but you see them as a source of solutions. And you're seeing that, you know, they're not offering the solutions you want. And then you're shifting your energy to me and Jeanette, and you're expecting us to solve the problem single handedly, I would say that's that's not going to get us anywhere, because it's keeping us in this box of we as SLPs are looking externally for someone else to fix the problems. And I just think that everyone listening like you're smart, you're creative, you got into this field for a reason you're here at this moment for a reason you're at your job in your city, with your colleagues at this moment for a particular reason. And we're all fighting each other to give each other energy and to bounce ideas off of each other and to encourage each other. But I think that all SLP is like we have the power inside of us. And so as we continue to have these conversations, just be aware like, and I do this all the time, where I'm expecting an external force to fix it for me. And it really is going to take all of us in tiny ways and medium ways and big ways to like change things and shift things over time. So that we can eventually free us from this CCC requirement, and really give us the power to be autonomous in our profession. And I think the other thing that I wanted to talk about is how throughout the ASHA CEO live chat, and whenever Asha kind of talks about these issues, they conflate a lot of things. So like they're conflating the membership with the certification. They're conflating ca the Council for academic accreditation standards with the CCC standards, both of which are based on this practice analysis survey. So the practice analysis survey, which I know they've just asked people to complete, and it takes an hour to complete, but basically that gives them really good information because they're asking people who are in the trenches like what are you actually needing what knowledge do you need to to actually do your job And then they take that survey, they summarize it. And then those, that summary gets used to create the curriculum standards for grad school programs. But it also gets used to create the standards for the clinical or the CCC. So then it's like, Well, why do we have both things? If they're pretty much both the same thing, and Jeanette is looking at me like she really
I would just like to ask, but I try. I try really hard with my ADHD brain not to interrupt. But if I don't interrupt, I forget. So I gave you a little signal. Megan, if someone were to participate in that survey with an hour of their time, do they get paid? No. If they want to see the results of the survey, how much money do they have to pay? To see their answers? Summarize summarized in an article. If they're
an actual member, they pay $44. And if they're not an actual member, they pay $54.
Yeah. And typically, if you pay for an article through a paywall, you then get a PDF that you can, you know, save on your computer or print out or like, do whatever you want with because it's yours, and you paid for it. Would that be the case? If you were to spend the $44 to read this summary?
You know, it's an ebook format. So you can
Yeah, yeah. So they're sent. So today is October 25 2023, those emails started to roll out yesterday. And if you choose to spend an hour plus of your time filling it out, go for it. But should you want to see the results, just realize that once again, Asha is charging money? And $44? We we did reach out to Asha to ask why such an article would cost $44. And we received zero response. But we did thank you to everyone who got in, we did crowd fund the 44 to get the last one that was published, only one of us gets to read it. Because it's tied up into an account. So it's just just, again, all these insane things that Asha does, but yeah, that sorry, that was my interjection there.
But yeah, and I think so, we keep having this conversation about like, is the CCC evidence based. And this was one of the pieces of research, I guess, I mean, it's a survey. But it's, it's one of the publications that Asha continues to tell people is the foundation for the evidence base based behind the CCC. Think it's important for SLPs to understand that it's also the evidence base for the CA standards. And so again, it's redundant. And what we're saying is that there's no evidence base to show that paying $225 or $199 Every year, and completing 10 hours of professional development every year, guarantees competency across the full scope of SLP, across the lifespan of a career. In in, that's the evidence base that's missing. And again, this isn't fair to anybody. It's not fair to SLPs. It's not fair to consumers, it's not fair to the field. And again, I'm just gonna share more of my personal story where I applied for a job that was in inpatient rehab, which I had had experience in that type of setting. And I got the job. And at no point in the interview was acute care mentioned. Nobody asked me if I had acute care experience. And then I had like a four week sort of training period, before I started this inpatient rehab job. And like, at the very tail end of the last week, they were like, oh, yeah, also, like, we need you to cover acute care upstairs. And I was like, okay, and they said there would be training. But the SLP during the training was not being compensated, it was sort of added on top of their daily workload. And so you can imagine that it wasn't like a cohesive, comprehensive training program that was really checking off competencies adequately. And eventually, the SLP who was training me made a very valid point of she she was like, I don't understand why they continue to hire people without any acute care experience. And so then it became on me to go to the employer and say that I don't, I can't do this part of the job. And that's where I really have a problem with the seeds, because the person hiring me could look and see that I have that certification. And again, because it's a full scope certification, the assumption is that I have the competency across the full scope. And so being able to throw acute care at me at the last minute without, you know, comprehensive training, that should be what an employer is able to do, based on the promise and in what Asha cells with the certification, which is competency. And so I think it's really unfair to SLPs, because it puts us in a position where we're being marketed by ASHA, as these full scope clinicians with 100%. competency for entry level positions. And that's just not true. So we have a situation where SLPs are having to hold themselves accountable. And again, when you're a new grad, and you don't know what's normal, and what's not normal, and how to go to an employer, and like, nobody wants to go to their employer and say, I can't do this. And there's also like, for me, it's a lot of like, but can I like, like, there's just a lot of confusion about like, what does competency mean? And do I define that? Does Asha define that? Does my employer define that? Does this colleague define that, like, it's just so confusing, and it's so overwhelming, and it can be really humiliating for SLPs. And again, it's not fair to consumers, because we're not consistently measuring that competency, within different settings. And in the scope of SLP is so broad, it continues to get broader. And so selling this full scope certification under the guise of competency is, it should not, we, I personally don't want any part of that.
Yeah. And I think this also adds to something that many of us struggle with, we've been seeing this phrase more and more on social media over the last year or two. But that is the issue of imposter syndrome. And man, do I have it bad? And the I see this a lot. The more educated you get, and the more you know, the worse the imposter syndrome gets? Because you realize how much you don't know. And so I think that that full scope, just really, you know, brings to light that we're stuck in this position, like you said, Megan, of like, what should I know, to do my job, what is enough to know. And then if you're self critical, I am so hard on myself as that like anagram one with these, like high expectations for myself, where then I just get hard on myself, like you don't know enough, you shouldn't be doing this. You don't have any right to be here or be part of this conversation. And that's not true, like, but it's hard for the voice on the right to tell the voice on the left, that that's not true. And then we all feel crappy about ourselves. And darn it, you know, if you a master's degree is not achieved by everyone. You know, the master's degree is a small portion of the US population, our master's degree holders, we are smart, we are able we got through that system, and we shouldn't be feeling like that. And that's a you know, a story I have to wear when I was in the schools. My second year, I was it was like the week before school started, we were the all the teachers were there. And in the hallway, the principal pulls me aside and says, we have 10 ESL students entering the school this year, and you will need to add them all to your caseload. I'm like 300, in some days, now, I guess this was second year, okay. I'm like 700. And some days out of school, you know, with my master's degree, like, fresh off my CS. And I'm like, in my head and like, I didn't learn anything about ESL in school. And this was a long time ago for folks. Okay, things have changed. But I was like, I don't think it's ethical for me to treat that. And I also don't think it's ethical for them to have speech pathology services, if they don't actually have an issue, just because they're ESL doesn't mean they need speech. And I had I was young, right? Like, what you're 24 Maybe I was maybe 25. And I had to like, look at this principal who was decades older than me and make a decision about what am I going to say to this man who just demanded I add 10 people to my already 75 Kid caseload before the school even started, and I spoke up, and I said, you know, that's not in my scope of practice. And I have some concerns about automatically enrolling 10 students on the caseload, who perhaps don't need the service, and he looked me straight in the eye. And he said, well, our superintendent said, If you can't handle it, we'll just get rid of the contract and go with another company. That's what I called by administrator to let her know, because this was through our Educational Service Center, which is in Ohio, you know, is, is an organization that serves many school districts. I know different states have different things like that, and some states don't have it at all. And thankfully, she stepped in, and I did not have to take those students. But I could see some people not being you know, I can be confrontational. So I had to speak up in that situation, but there's probably plenty of brand new SLPs, who would just take the 10 students and quote, fake it till we make it and we shouldn't have to do that. Yeah.
Yeah. And to be clear, private companies selling certifications for 1000s of dollars is not the answer. Again, SLPs are very used to people coming in swooping in telling SLPs what to do with their superhero costumes. And the reality is that we are the superheroes, we get to decide what this field looks like. Clearly, a full scope certification is not working. Clearly having no expectations of what competencies are based on settings is not working. Jeanette and I don't have a solution for that, we would love to continue talking about it. There's lots of different ideas and ways to approach it. But sitting around waiting for somebody else to fix this problem isn't gonna get us anywhere. And the other thing I want to mention is, and I'll put a link in the show notes about this podcast episode from Brene. Brown on her dare to lead podcast, she interviews two amazing women who wrote one of the Harvard Business reviews top 100 most read articles in history called stop telling women, they have impostor syndrome. And it's all about this concept that we create systems where people don't feel like they belong, like their systemic issues, where they are not valued or seen or heard. And then we turn around and be like, Oh, you just have imposter syndrome, when it's like, the actual solution is not getting rid of the imposter syndrome. It's creating an environment where people are valued and seen and heard. And so like I said, I'll put a show or a link in the show notes to that episode, because I did.
My I did a talk at my state convention last year about consumerism in speech pathology. And I pulled in a little clip, which we can't play on the podcast because there's laws against that and I'm all for breaking the rules, but I also don't want to go to jail or whatever happens when you break that kind of role. But I did pull in a clip of Taylor Swift's it's me. Hi, the problem. It's me. And I did. I did some research. I'm not a Swifty, I do enjoy her. But I did some research on that song and things that she has said in the past related to that song. And I've read I just I went into a deep rabbit hole. And it does appear that she wrote that song because of imposter syndrome, which is crazy. I mean, look, she's got this era's tour right now, like, the woman is killing it. But even someone like her struggles with this, and so it's me. Hi, I'm the problem. I'm not the problem. I just said I have to you have to tell yourself that all the time. So obviously, it is rampant. We aren't the problem. We also aren't Asha. What are we Megan?
Yeah, we are not Asha. We are SLPs. We are SLPs. That's what like I was telling you like architects don't go around parroting that we are AIA. Science. Teachers don't go around saying we are NSTA like their architects, their science teachers like, again, professional organizations exist to serve members. And they do that by earning trust and respect. Professional organizations do not exist to sell a certification to control and coerce members. Everybody has an option. And again, Ash keeps saying this over and over. So let's listen to them. It's 100% optional. Obviously, there's work that we need to do at the legislative level at each state to truly make that a reality. But it is optional. And that's what we are here to work towards is to continue to empower SLPs to see that it's optional. To shift the those rules and regulations so that it's much more clear that it's optional. And that we are the ones that get to decide what these solutions are. And we're not waiting around for a national association that really doesn't understand they're very out of touch with reality. So why would we want them to fix it anyway. And Jeanette and I are here to fix it for everybody. That's not our agenda, we are here to continue to have the conversations and come up with solutions and talk to state associations about what they're doing. They have a lot of, you know, organizational power within legislation to get things changed. And so I'm gonna, we're not.
We're not bulldozers, we can't bulldoze into your state and start telling them what to do. But we can certainly be a conduit through which we start helping make people helping people to connect, and keep putting ideas out there and keep hearing from you, you know, we have a list going have, have you thought about talking about this, have you you know, there's people we've been hearing from so many of you, which is so wonderful that we can be that voice, we can keep organizing it through this platform, we can keep talking to you through this microphone. Ultimately, we need to keep growing. So when we have these calls to action, at the state level, or at the national level, I say this every podcast, we need more people to be more effective in doing that. But we're going to be asking you to do things at your state level. And ultimately, the change will happen or not based on how many people get involved in each state. And I think that's where we're going to start to see the changes first, because there's active clinicians, not that there aren't active clinicians volunteering for Asha. But there are active clinicians at the state level who are in this every day who know what's going on. And, you know, we are SLPs we are I am an SLP in the state of Ohio. I am an SLP in the state of Pennsylvania. You know, that's
that's where I but not Michigan to be clear, not Michigan,
not Michigan? I haven't. I have a state license in Michigan, but I am not. Don't do that to me. My Ohio and my shirt. I'm a go back.
Yeah. And like people also keep asking us like, are you going to create an alternative Association? And like, again, like we don't need, we don't need a national association at all. Like, we don't need a larger entity. Nobody needs to be paying us money to fix this way. We all have the power inside of ourselves. And we are SLPs we also aren't a union. No unions. Yeah, stop. Yeah, we're
getting a lot of feedback and suggestions about creating a union. And that just, you know, puts up more barriers financially for people unions are expensive, just so many other barriers. You know, unions are great. We're not bashing unions, unions are great for what they do for certain professions, but there's just not enough of us in, in the areas, you know, they're very hyper localized it, it wouldn't serve us well, to be headed in that direction. And and you might disagree with us totally fine, you're still welcome here, we could still say, you know, have those differing opinions, but still move towards the same end goal, which is addressing all of these issues that keep coming up that you know, especially this time of year, like between now. And the next two months, people are going to get more and more vocal online about why am I paying these dues. It happens every year. So this is a great opportunity for us to be like, Hey, have you fixed SLP is starting to throw out some solutions. They have great information, be part of the conversation, come on in. You can want a union, you can want an alternative. Also, there's nothing stopping you from starting those movements. Yes,
we can start a union locally. That's how unions work. We're
not the authority. We're not telling you don't make change. We want everyone to make change. And if you feel strongly enough that that is the solution. Shoot, start the movement. Go for it. Like we're you don't need our permission. No, no, not at all. And Megan and I disagree every day it was just talked about that yesterday. I mean, Megan and I could not be more different if Megan likes white. I like black if Megan wants you know, candy corn, I want a chocolate fondue fountain like there's just so me and this is why we work because we have different perspectives and we agree to respect each other's opinion and and meet in the middle and just keep moving forward. And you know, that's what we're doing. And so we you and I can help you and the listener as I can have different opinions and we can still be friends and we can still move towards the same end goal. And it can be in different ways. And that's what we need, we need more people moving towards this end goal of fixing these problems that we've identified in a healthy way that benefits SLPs. Yeah.
Yeah. And not I mean, my brains are, I'm wired to look for solutions. So I'm just gonna say one more thing where the other issue I have with unions, and this is the same issue with Asha. And I think it's one of the core issues of our field is that we treat the full scope of SLP as one entity, when in fact, we interact with a lot of different regulation bodies in different settings. And so what ends up happening is we tried to do a one size fits all solution for SLPs across the scope, and it just doesn't work. And so another solution could be, you know, pockets of national gatherings by setting whether that's a union or an association, or, or just a group of people that's exchanging ideas, like I think part of one of the pieces of the larger solution is going to be customized solutions based on settings, rather than trying to like, throw things at the entire scope and continuing to expect it to work for everybody across the board. And then just being surprised when it fails.
You know, that's something else I want to bring up. And I'm going to look this up. So I don't butcher what, what their, what their name is. So I said that we've reached out to the states, some of those emails have bounced back. And but there are also like Megan said, there are pockets. So there are membership associations in the states that are very specific to the setting. So in Ohio, there is the Ohio School speech pathology, educational audiology coalition, good thing, I looked that up, because I messed that up. It's Oh, speak, I was once a member of Oh, speak when I was in the schools, they are doing great things, they might need your membership, too. So if you are in a state that has these little, you know, these pockets of organizations that are doing great things, we would love to reach out to them as well and invite them on the podcast. And so that just reminded me that I didn't reach out to Oh, speak and I will be, but you can share that information with team at fixed slp.com. And we will go ahead and send them the same invitation that we have sent all of the state associations, just make sure the email is correct. So they don't bounce back. But yeah, that's kind of like Megan said, you know, there can be these pockets. You know, what if there is I know schools have different regulations in different states. But you know, if there's an O speak in Ohio and something else in Illinois in Indiana, it would also be interesting to to get those groups together. Yeah. And there is we again, we're learning there is a basically a, a President's Club. That's what I call, but all of the President of the State State Associations, the past presidents, the current president, the president elect, they have a group where they're communicating and talking, which I think is great. But we before we started this, we didn't know that it took someone reaching out to us and saying, like, Hey, this is a great opportunity for collab, can we talk, and we got to learn about some things behind the scenes with states that we had no idea and that aren't on the actual website or published anywhere. So we're continuing to learn to so if your state has stuff like that, let us know. So we can start learning and connecting and doing good things.
Yeah. All right. Did we say all the things for now,
how long have we been taught? I don't I don't have a timer on this end. I think we did,
I think over an hour. So yeah, I
was gonna say this, this feels like probably we should stop out. Save something for next time. But we hope you're enjoying this conversation. We, we hope you continue to share we and we truly coming from someone in academia, I hope my colleagues become a little less defensive. And take some time to listen to what what clinicians are saying, a little less passive aggressive, you know, and, and open your ears and listen, because the students that you're training are becoming the people who are screaming later on. And it doesn't mean we as people in academia are doing it wrong. And we just we need to be listening. So there's that invitation to like, really take some time to be a part of this conversation and In a way that isn't defensive and know that when Megan and I give our opinions, that's not us attacking either. You know, it's it's us giving our opinions you giving yours and we again can agree to disagree and that's okay. But we need that too. We need more people we need and I
think that's part of the, the healing of this conversation is, you know, so much of the field is very black and white thinking and either right or wrong. And I think part of shifting towards like, there's multiple solutions. There's multiple truths. There's multiple ways to look at things. And all of those things can exist at the same time. It only makes us stronger. Yeah.
All right. Anything else you want to say Megan? Nope. All right. Well, we're gonna all See you next week. And I'm gonna say thanks for fixing it. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.
