SLP on the LOOSE: The actual journey

You’ve heard about my journey getting to the TPT conference in Vegas last week, now it’s time to learn a little more about what I learned at the conference.

The main reason I went to the TPT sellers conference was to meet some of the awesome TPT speech therapy seller/authors I’ve met online.  It’s fun to be able to meet other speech language pathologists in FB groups, on blogs etc-but I KNEW it would be way better to meet in person.  The second reason is that I really needed a break from my family.  I always say that it’s hard to know how much you miss someone when you see them everyday.  Plus, alone time in a giant luxury hotel suite?  Of course I had to go.  The third reason I went (and maybe this should have been the first) was to get some inspiration for the upcoming year and to get some tips and tricks how to manage social media, blogging, selling etc. while still enjoying my family and working full time.

Here’s the big take away:  I need to hire a cleaner.  Have you ever hired a cleaner?  I have had someone come in before our wedding or big events-but have never been able to commit to a regularly scheduled cleaner.  Primarily because I feel like I just don’t do the dusting or vacuum the stairs if I get busy.  I will binge clean if anyone is coming over.  Otherwise, I tend to let it go.  But this is not the purpose of my blog post today.

We got shirts. Mia from Putting Words in your Mouth designed them and Meredith from Peachie Speech sold them to us. We were pretty excited.  The conference had 1,000 teachers and 22 SLP teacher/authors. We thought shirts would help us stand out. We were right.

Do you feel appreciated as a speech language pathologist at your school? When you are at a school you are generally the only one or maybe one of 2. For most settings I’ve been at-I am the lone speech language pathologist-or I am one of 2.  It’s easy to feel a little isolated.   Heres’ the thing-we could’ve worn shirts with our own logos on them. That would have made sense-it was a sellers conference after all. But I think there was an unspoken thought that we wanted the other teacher sellers to know we (speech language pathologists) were there.

I get a little anxiety about social situations-will I find someone to talk too, will I have to sit by myself? will I get picked last for the team?  I think the last one was an old gym class memory.    The best thing about the t shirts is I was able to pick my fellow speech language pathologists out of the group quickly.  It was fun to put actual humans together with their profile pictures.  I’m sure you all expected me to come in with a giant cartoon head.  I’ve often pictured Kim from Activity Tailor as a young boy based on her logo.  For the record, she is quite lovely.  

Here was what was amazing-we were noticed. In addition to teachers-we were addressed at the beginning of the conference by Adam Freed the CEO of Teachers Pay Teachers.  We hunted down Paul-the original founder of TPT and got two pictures.  I’m pretty sure I have some food caught in my teeth in this picture-which is fabulous-but I still posted it.  

We brought some SLP love with us and we were not afraid to yell when we heard anyone mention SLPs.

SLP’s were brought up at many of the conferences I went to as a great example of sharing and promoting others. We were being held out as a high standard of community for other teachers to strive towards.

I even made it in the TPT newsletter-out of thousands of pictures-but ours was chosen.

I met with new to me sellers like Ashley R, Ashley B, Tami Pam and Sarah Wu.  Sorry that I showed some of you inappropriate yet hilarious child drawings so soon after we met.

I met established sellers like Natalie Synders, Maureen from the Speech Bubble, Lisette from Speech sprouts and Felice from the Dabbling Speechie-who has a fantastic wardrobe.   I met some of my online friends: LyndaSLP, Tracy from Gold County Speech and Mia from Putting Words in your Mouth. I laughed a lot.

22 of us went on a little vacation and ended up getting noticed at by 1,000 teachers and a the founders of a teacher’s pay teachers.  They are sending out personalized emails with recommendations for speech language pathologists-because they know that we support each other.

Here’s my other takeaway: If 22 of us could get together-wear some awesome t shirts and yell and end up getting recognized by a major publishing company, What would happen if we all started working together?   Nursing homes, schools, acute care settings, private practice and outpatient settings. Do you think we could start to make a difference in patient or student care? Smaller caseloads, paperwork reduction, more awareness at the school-all resulting in this: better care and better outcomes for our patients and students.   Here’s my wish for 2015-that all children or adults who need speech therapy-get speech therapy.  It seems daunting to do it when you are just one person at the school or just one little blogger. But together we can (AND WILL) make a difference. We are Speech Language Pathologists.

If you made it to Vegas-You can Link up with All Y’all Need or Speech Sprouts and share your stories.

Have you met any of your online speech or blogger friends in person?  I’d love to hear who you met and what you did!