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The Empowered Parent with Dana Baltutis
Welcome to The Empowered Parent Podcast.
This podcast is a space for parents to learn, reflect, and grow.
Each week, we explore topics that help parents understand themselves and their children more deeply - from communication and connection, to supporting neurodivergent development at home and in the community.
We’ve had wonderful conversations with experts, parents, and professionals - including speakers from the Neurodivergence Wellbeing Conference, and a special series following one mum’s journey in unschooling her child.
Every episode is here to inspire curiosity, compassion, and confidence in your parenting journey.
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You can connect with me at danabaltutis.com or mytherapyhouse.com.au.
Let’s celebrate neurodivergence.
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The Empowered Parent with Dana Baltutis
Episode 44: Michele Ricamato (DIR Floortime Speech Pathologist) - Transforming Child Development Through Holistic Speech Pathology and Collaboration
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Renowned developmental speech pathologist Michele Ricamato shares her inspiring journey in the field of speech pathology, sparked by her aunt's influence and solidified through her education at Northwestern University. She introduces us to the DIR model, a holistic approach that seamlessly integrates into speech pathology, emphasizing the developmental nature of language acquisition and the importance of family involvement. The episode is rich with insights into Michele's collaboration with Deanna Tyrpak and Linda Cervenka, which led to the creation of Soaring Eagle Academy, a state-funded school dedicated to children with special needs.
The journey of establishing Soaring Eagle Academy is a testament to perseverance and commitment to accessibility. From its humble beginnings with just five students, the academy now serves nearly 90 children, providing a nurturing environment with extensive support systems including one-to-one teaching assistants, speech and language pathologists, and mental health providers. Michele candidly discusses the challenges of staffing, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how the academy has navigated these hurdles to continue offering high-quality education and support to its students.
https://soaringeagleacademy.org/founding-of-sea/
danabaltutis.com, mytherapyhouse.com.au, https://mytherapyhouse.com.au/your-childs-therapy-journey/ https://www.danabaltutis.com/services
Hi, michelle Ricamato. Thank you so much for being a guest on my podcast, the Empowered Parent. You've been a huge role model to me and many, many others, not only in Adelaide, australia, but all over the world, and inspired me to become the speech pathologist I am today and set up my therapy house. Michelle, you are a developmental speech pathologist, dir, floor time trainer and practitioner and a cornerstone in shaping the way we understand communication and children who are neurodivergent. Today you have set up a school, soaring Eagle Academy, in Chicago, with another two speech language pathologists. I visited the school many, many years ago and thought it was a beacon of hope for children who did not fit into the mainstream schooling system, which included special education government programs. So, first of all, across our time zones, of all, across our time zones, thank you so much for chatting to me from Chicago. I always feel close to you, regardless how far we may be physically. So welcome, michelle.
Speaker 2Thank you Donna, for having me.
Speaker 1Would you please start by telling the listeners a little bit about yourself and why you chose speech pathology as a profession.
Speaker 2I'm happy to be with you today, and, likewise, I always feel very close to you, despite us being across many oceans. My name is Michelle Riccamato. I'm a speech and language pathologist. I'm currently in the Chicagoland area and have been for many years. I was born and raised in California, though, and my aunt is a speech and language pathologist and my aunt is about 16 years older than I am, and she lived in the San Diego area, still does and when she was practicing and I was a young girl of maybe 10, 11, I would go to her communicative disorders class that she ran in the summers, and I would help out with the children, and I fell in love with what she did, and I thought, someday I want to do what she does, and so speech and language was always something that was a passion and something that I had wanted to pursue, even as a young girl.
Speaker 1What a beautiful story across the generations. I love it. Why did you become a DIR floor time speech pathologist and how did this approach embellish your work?
Speaker 2Well, I was very fortunate because I kind of fell into the DIR model. I came out to the Chicagoland area to get my master's degree at Northwestern and while I was there they had just started a specialty program for birth to three. You could specialize in a tract, if you will, or birth to three. You could specialize in a tract, if you will. And I wanted to specialize in birth to three and one of the courses that was required if you were taking that tract was infant mental health. And that infant mental health class happened to be taught by somebody who worked with Dr Greenspan and Dr Weider and was involved in ICDL at the time and was very developmental and very DIR minded. At that time they really didn't call it DIR, they just were calling it floor time and kind of a new way to engage with children who have challenges with relating and communicating. So I took that course and I fell in love with the idea of being developmental and holistic, looking beyond just the speech and language of a child. And in my clinical work at the Northwestern Clinic for birth to three I worked under two amazing speech and language pathologists who were also very developmental and were utilizing the DIR thinking in their work with families and children, so I naturally fell into it.
Speaker 2Then I decided that I was going to head back to California and I had a job in San Francisco and right before I was set to leave, I met my husband-to-be and he was getting his doctorate at the time and I decided that I couldn't leave. I needed to stay. I didn't know how long, but I needed to stay until he finished and I scrambled to find a job and the job I found happened to be in a school district working with three to five-year-old children, and I hadn't my caseload given to me and I sat down in my apartment and I started going through making phone calls to introduce myself to the parents and the first parent that I called was a woman, who is a woman named Deanna Turpak, who ended up becoming one of my co-founders at Soaring Eagle Academy. She's our executive director and I introduced myself to her and she said oh, I'm a speech and language pathologist as well. And she said we're working using this special model called Floortime and we're working with this woman who happened to be my professor at Northwestern and I said I know this model. I said this is amazing.
Speaker 2I didn't know anyone would know this and so that gave me sort of a further nudge at utilizing DIR within my work, even in a school setting that really wasn't exposed to this model at all. And really what it brought me I think the biggest thing it brought me at that time was a holistic lens going beyond you just go to the waiting area, take the child, bring the child in, do the therapy, deliver the child back. It gave me a perspective of that. Families are critical in anything we do with children, whether the, whether the child is two or whether the child is 20. And I think that that was really what DIR gave me initially. That made me as a speech and language pathologist more robust as a speech and language pathologist more robust.
Speaker 1Could you tell the listeners a little bit like how DIR floor time weaves into speech pathology. So DIR is developmental individual differences relationship. How does that weave into speech pathology?
Speaker 2Well, I think that kind of dovetails into a bigger question around what is developmental language? Because when you understand how language is a developmental process, it's easy to know how it fits into the D, the I and the R, but in a nutshell, into the D, the I and the R, but in a nutshell, because development of language is a developmental process in and of itself, it's very easy to weave it into a broader holistic developmental model, because when you know how things are acquired in the right trajectory, you can fit it into a broader trajectory of development. So I think that's why it's easy, when you're using developmental language models, to weave into DIR. The I piece is the individual differences and, from a language perspective, understanding how children process information, how they visually make sense of their world, how they motor, plan and sequence ideas in their play right. All of these elements of the eye support our thinking in language. Because we have to know that in order to know how to intervene correctly. Because we have to know that in order to know how to intervene correctly, we can't just look only from a language lens. We have to understand that children are also developing vision, motor capacities, emotional capacities within the context of language.
Speaker 2Language doesn't happen in a vacuum, right? So there's the I and, of course, from the perspective of the R. Well, the R is everything, right, it is everything. And language is about the R. It's how we make ourselves known to another human. And so, of course, developmental language and language is woven with D-I-R in the R, because how can we make ourselves known to someone if we don't have relationships with them?
Speaker 1Some people might be listening and saying well, I do developmental language. I start with looking at the milestones of a child and what is the difference between normal language development and developmental like? What is the difference between normal language development and developmental like? What is the difference between a speech pathologist that is doing traditional speech pathology and a developmental speech pathologist? How are they different?
Speaker 2Well, developmental language models. What it really means is that we're taking from all of the giants in our field that have a developmental language process and we are pulling on that knowledge. So when we say developmental language models, it means that we're looking at what is the typical developmental trajectory of how children comprehend, what is the typical trajectory of how children develop ideas and then code language to share those ideas. We're looking at the developmental process of how someone develops intentionality in the world. We're looking at the developmental process of play. So all of our giants Carol Westby, blumen, leahy Miller and Paul Tomasello we're pulling from all of this knowledge in developmental language work to create a trajectory that is not about ages but about where, in developmental stages, the child is. And when we know where they are, we then say what would be their next step? Right, what is their zone of proximal development, of where they could go next? We're not saying therefore, they don't have these skills in language. Therefore, we're going to target these skills in language. We say wait a minute. Developmentally, they're showing us that in play they're falling at around 20 months. In comprehension they're falling at around 12 months. In production they're falling at about maybe two and a half years and then, based on that, we're developing the goals with which we can move them along.
Speaker 2We're making sure that there aren't any holes in this developmental process that would impact higher level development in language right. So an example might be that if it is that at an early level you have challenges reading the intentions of your partner right intentions around gestures, intentions around facial expressions, intentions around intonation you will then, of course, struggle at higher levels of intentionality. That would require that you would understand sarcasm or a joke or that someone's not really being sincere, like if I said to you are you hungry? And you said is the sky blue? Right, I have to be able to interpret those intentions at higher levels. But if I am struggling even at the foundations, it will be challenging for me to be there. So a traditional speech and language pathologist might choose to teach a rule around that higher capacity and the developmental person will say wait, we really need to work at the bottom around how we read intentions in everyday interactions.
Speaker 1So that's really the difference in a quick nutshell, right? And I guess for children that have got specific interests and passions, we're always teaching around those. So that's the I piece, isn't it, michelle? The individual differences, because it's no use teaching baby play if the child is not interested in baby play.
Support and Funding for Specialized Schools
Speaker 2Absolutely, absolutely. And you know I always am reminding people that I'm working with that. It's the contents of the child's mind that must be forefront on our mind, right? If we really want to make an impact and we really want to make progress in a real way, we must first think about the contents of the child's mind. What are their interests? What is relevant to them based on their needs, their history, right, their experiences?
Speaker 1you're right, if, if a baby play, if baby play is not what's on the child's mind, then we must start with what is on the child's mind and the more meaningful it is for the child, the more it glues into their mind right and it becomes like intricate, it's integrated into their schema, into their mind.
Speaker 2That's right. That's right. There are several principles that we think of in language acquisition, and one of them is the principle of relevance, which is exactly what you're talking about, that when what we work on and join the child around is what is on the child's mind, language is propelled, development is moved language is propelled, development is moved.
Speaker 1I love it. I love it. Okay, michelle, let's talk about your school, right? So I just love your school and I'm sure it's changed a lot since I've been there. How long did it take to establish and how many children attended and at what age ranges?
Speaker 2Yes, so Soaring Eagle Academy opened in 2010 and it took us seven years to open, and the reason why is because my co-founders, deanna Terpak and Linda Cervanka, we really did not want this to be a program that only could be attended by families that were wealthy enough to afford it. We wanted to make sure that it was a state-funded program so that school districts in our area could tuition children to our program and families would not have to private pay. And that is really what took the large chunk of time. I'm sure if we had just started privately, we probably could have started much sooner, but to go through all of the requirements of Illinois State, it took a long time and it required many, many steps. And then we also had to raise the funds in order to be able to meet the gap of what wouldn't be covered by the tuition from the state.
Speaker 2We opened with five students, uh, and we now have close to 90 students and we have children that range in age from five. Our youngest is five at this time, although we can take three to five-year-olds Uh, we don't have any right now Um, so our youngest is five and we can go all the way up through age 22. The students can stay through the school year of their 22nd year. So if they were to turn 22 in October, they could stay through till May. If they turn in March, they stay through May. If they turn in March, they stay through May. And we have students then in. We have multiple levels. We have an early learning level and then we have our primary intermediate high school and our transition program.
Speaker 1Wow, that's incredible. So you've said that you do get a little bit of government funding and you raise funds, and so how are the children supported, is it?
Speaker 2difficult to get staff, the children. I think at Soaring Eagle. When you walk in the door you're at maximum support. From the time you get off the bus until the time you get back onto the bus. It's maximum support. So we have a one-to-one for every single student. So there's a teacher and there are 10 children in any given class, and so one teacher for 10 students, and then each student has a one-to-one teaching assistant with them In each pod, and the pods contain two classrooms.
Speaker 2Each pod has its own speech and language pathologist, occupational therapist, mental health provider, a DIR provider, a responder, which is somebody who deals with crisis and challenge, so that the people that are the clinicians and the teachers don't have to manage those things.
Speaker 2They can keep things going in terms of the kids that are on their schedule or ready to learn or in a group, and then we also have some students who actually have two teaching assistants if necessary, and then each classroom also has what's called a classroom assistant, an extra body in there to support the work that's being done with the students.
Speaker 2Then there are also people that are across staff. So there's a whole regulation to learning team that supports children who are needing more support to be better organized and regulated to access their learning, and I think there are about three people on that team and then there's also a whole curriculum team that develops all of the curriculum and adapts and accommodates. So the children receive a tremendous amount of staff support and that is a challenge, especially in regards to the teaching assistants. To the teaching assistants we don't have as much difficulty with our support staff and our teachers in terms of hiring and keeping, but our teaching assistants especially since COVID, there's been quite a bit of turnover and it's harder to find workers and we're always searching, we're always searching. We have gone through periods of being fully staffed and then we've gone through periods where we are needing to hire, perhaps at any given time, maybe eight to ten people, so it can really vary.
Speaker 1So the teaching assistants are the people that are with the students one-to-one. Is that right? Right, so okay, a student comes to your school, is there already the teaching assistant there for the child, or do you hire on the profile of the child?
Speaker 2So generally the way it is now, in the beginning we hired more on the profile of the child. Now we have a big enough pool that we will sometimes make matches or switches within what we already have and we might hire new TAs that potentially we might put with students who have already been with us for a while that we know a little bit better. So it really varies and our intake process is so elaborate and we usually only have a certain amount of spots open at any given time across the age ranges that we can be selective in those matches by saying you know what, here's this new profile coming in. We need to find a good TA. Let's think about who we might switch within our system, who might be ready for a change, you know. So we just look at many, many variables.
Speaker 1It's generally not we need to hire now for the student that's coming in, right, right and so is it a very busy classroom, like if you've got 10 students, 10 TAs, you've got the speech and OT and the classroom assistant and the responder. Is it busy, is it overwhelming for the kids or can they move around the school area?
Speaker 2So I would call it organized chaos in that it is. It's dynamic, it's multi-sensory. I would say your early learning and primary pods are going to look much more dynamic than intermediate, high school and transition. Those are kids we've had a lot longer. They're kids who have made a tremendous amount of growth and progress within the model and they're much more of your learners. They're ready to learn, they're activated in their learning.
Speaker 2Yes, it is busy, but I think the staff do a beautiful job of managing the spaces. We have quite a bit of space. So the way it works in the pods is that there are two classrooms. The classrooms are quite large, and off of those classrooms there are two smaller group rooms off of every large main classroom. So for 10 children there's one large classroom, two small group rooms. Then there's also an outer pod area and in the outer pod area off of that, there are two quiet rooms like sensory quiet rooms, as well as a speech and language room and a mental health room and then there's an OT gym.
Speaker 2So there's many spaces within each pod and each pod has like a door that kind of contains all of this that allow for flexibility for the children to not all be on top of each other and if there are, let's say, too many staff at any given time in a group room, the teacher will just say you know what you guys can go and do this? Or I think you know you know what you guys can go and do this. Or I think you know can you run this errand for me? You know she'll reduce the she or he will reduce the amount of busyness should they find that it's necessary to make some changes there. So it is just, it's a dance always.
Speaker 1And who funds the teacher assistance, the one-on-one for the children? Is it the government?
Speaker 2Yes, so the state sets what's called a per diem rate for every specialized school like ours and that per diem rate is the daily rate that we get funded from the state and it pretty much covers and we work within our budget to cover all of the services that the child receives, including the one-to-one. Now, whatever is not covered is then fundraised and you know it's an ongoing. You know, throughout the year, multiple different kinds of facets of fundraising that include things like, you know, a gala. There's also we have a day of giving, where we do like an online fundraiser. We just had a casino night recently outside on the premises at the building. So we have a range of different kinds of fundraisers that go on through the year to help us cover the gap.
Speaker 1Wow, you guys are very busy, very busy. Yes, what is the eligibility of children attending Like, do you get more inquiries than you can cater for? Absolutely.
Speaker 2I think the I'm not on the intake team, but I believe the intake team gets you know approximately at least one to two per week of inquiries from the districts around. I think we serve as something like 45 districts from around our area, so some of the kids are on buses for an hour right to get to us and so we have many, many districts around that are sending the kids in and the intake process is quite lengthy. Most of the kids that we do the initial paperwork on they don't even make it to the next step. They might not be a fit for us right away. And then, when they do, if they do make it, then there's a whole series of things, including us going out and viewing them in their current placement, them coming and doing a visit, conversations with the parents to find out if it's a fit for them.
Speaker 2Initially, soaring Eagle used to be that the parents that wanted our model DIR and developmental language model. They would seek us out. Now most of the families that come to us don't even know anything about DIR. They've just been put in. The district knows about us, the district has a good relationship with us or they feel the student might be a good fit for us and they're not able to service them. So we have to do a little bit more probing and conversations with parents to find out if it's a good fit for them, because they might not even know about the model and the way we work.
Speaker 1So when you say district, that's like the education district, right the education people.
Speaker 2Correct. So, for example, if you have a, let's say, a large city, like we're in the city of Lombard, soaring Eagle, so Lombard is its own district I don't know they all have numbers right and that district is tasked with serving any child that has challenges or has been diagnosed with challenges in their local area. But some of the districts don't have the proper classrooms or options for some of these children, and so then they will seek outside placement, which is what we're considered, and so then they will seek outside placement, which is what we're considered. We're considered like a not for profit funded by the state. You know, like that they can get the tuition that they would get for that child in their district would just go directly to us. So it's just like they're the middleman they service the child, but they can't service the child, so they would send them then to us if we would accept.
Parent Involvement in Speech Therapy
Speaker 1Wow, Okay, Now I also know you're so busy, Michelle, with everything. You've also got a new assessment coming out soon. You co-wrote it with the amazing Sima Gerber, also a speech language pathologist developmental speech language pathologist your mentor. Could you tell us a little bit about it? How long does it take to develop an assessment like this, and how will it be different to other speech pathology assessments?
Speaker 2Oh gosh. Well, I am very excited about the DALI. It is called the.
Speaker 1Developmental Observation of Language.
Speaker 2Links to Intervention. And Sima and I created this um tool. We started working on it back in, I think, 2009 or 10, and it's been a labor of love Um largely, I mean. I guess I would say it probably could have been done in a much shorter timeframe if not for all the things that we were both doing and you know where it takes you in life. But the Dolly is now ready to be published. It is copyrighted and we are starting our first class through Perfectum on November 4th and for those who do the class, we are giving them all of the Dolly for free and we are hoping that people will go and try it and test it out.
Speaker 2It is different than other assessments in that it is a checklist. It is different than other assessments in that it is a checklist and really the reason why we wanted this was because we were finding in our work that traditional speech and language pathologists, and even some speech and language pathologists who wanted to be more developmental, were working on goals that were far above where it was that the work really needed to be done, and so we wanted to create something that would allow clinicians to look and see wait, are there things that we should be focused on prior to working on production of language expressive language, right, Because I think in speech and language pathology especially, traditionally everyone wants to get kids talking, so let's work on talking. And we thought, but what about the children that have challenges that are before talking? So things like regulation and shared engagement, and can you read the intentions of the partner and do you have ideas about the world and do you understand language before you would get to production? And what we did was we pulled all of the amazing work of the developmental giants that came before us and we put a checklist together in various sections across four age ranges. So it starts at eight months and it goes all the way through 36 months. That's developmentally, though not chronologically.
Speaker 2So if you're working with a child that has language that's anywhere below the three-year mark, you could utilize this checklist in an assessment. It has a full manual, it has appendixes that explain every single definition of everything, and Serene Eagle has been using it for years. Our speech and language pathologists use it for every IEP, for every annual review, and every week we take a certain student across the board at our school and we do the dolly, and we then use the dolly, which the beautiful part about the dolly is that once you find out where the little first hole is, you have your goal. It's not like a standard assessment where you have to wonder, well, what do I work on? Right, as soon as you see on the dolly where the hole is, there's your goal, and so I'm hoping that it will be a tool that gets people excited about this work and lends itself to more meaningful goals for children who have challenges in communicating goals for children who have challenges in communicating.
Speaker 1Well, I'm definitely excited about this assessment and I'm thinking, oh boy, we need this assessment so badly. So, michelle, when looking for speech pathologists for their children, what would be? Five things you would recommend parents ask the speech pathologist before engaging them.
Speaker 2This was a hard one for me, I have to admit, because there's so many things that I was thinking that would be important, but I tried to narrow it down to five things that I think are the critical ones. The first one is I would find out what is the type of approach in your therapy. What's your vehicle? I'd want to know is it through play, is it through following the child's ideas and contents of mind, or is it tabletop? Is it flashcard work? Is it drill work? So I think that's the first important question that would help us understand what you might be getting into as you embark in this relationship with the speech and language pathologist. The second thing I would want to know is what is the assessment process like? Because when you find out what the assessment is like, it tells you a lot about what the goals are going to be. If it's only traditional assessment, you're going to get very traditional goals. If the assessment is more play-based, more open-ended, more child-directed, you're going to get goals that are going to lend themselves to that kind of an approach. I'd also like to find out what it is, how it is that you develop the goals that guide your sessions right. Are you only observing? Are you only using standardized testing? Are you talking to the parents, too? Are you finding out what's meaningful for them, what they think? The priorities are right? The goal setting needs to be a collaborative process. It's not just about the speech and language pathologist, right? So that's, I think, another important question Do you include parents in your session?
Speaker 2Very important question. If the clinician says no, I never include parents in my session, that's a red flag for me. I think that our work is not about one hour, two hours a week and sending the child back out into the real world. The work is about us being the coach around the quarterback who really holds the ball in the football game, and that's the parent. So the parent needs to be involved. They need to be a critical part of the team, right? They are the expert of their child.
Speaker 2If you get into a relationship with the speech and language pathologist who doesn't see you as the expert of your child, that is a problem. Right, we might be experts in an area of development, but we don't know that child in the way that the parent does. So that's the fourth question. And the fifth one would be do you work with other disciplines, right? Do you collaborate in a multi-disciplinary, transdisciplinary way, a real deep way, where you understand that your lens is not the only lens and that you need a village too, right? And would you be willing to talk to the teachers? Would you be willing to talk to the coach of the soccer team? And would you be willing to talk to the swimming teacher? It has to be a village. If you're just the speech pathologist and you're in your tiny room and you don't see beyond those walls, that's probably a red flag that if you're looking for something more holistic and developmental, you're not going to find it.
Speaker 1Oh, those five things excite me so much because, as you were going through them, I was thinking of my therapy house and I thought, tick, tick, tick. So I'm very, very excited and I'm really happy. And again, michelle, you have um, you were the, the beacon that supported me in establishing um, the amazing space that we have now for children, and it's not a soaring Eagle Academy, but you know, we do try and give something back in this holistic way. So I love that. I love that. What is the involvement of parents in the USA in rallying the government for more supports?
Speaker 2Well, this is the tricky one because in the United States it is very state-centric, so there's a lot of, I would say, parent advocacy advocacy and parent support for these types of pieces within each localized state. On a grand scale, at the federal government level, it tends to be more agencies that are driving this process of change and seeking of services. For example, within our work around DIR, there's a big push for multiple agencies that support a developmental way of thinking, to get insurance companies to cover developmental work as much as they cover more ABA or behavioral types of work, more ABA or behavioral types of work. So it is parents are definitely involved, I would say, more at the state level than at the federal government level, but I think on both ends people are finding their way both parents and clinicians to be able to push for better services, more comprehensive services, more equitable services, not just in one realm, one place.
Speaker 1And in the US, is there funding for parent training and parent coaching, or do parents need to find their own way to get that?
Speaker 2I can't think of anything off the top of my head that is globally funded there for parents around coaching. I think it tends to be more you know, you've got to advocate for yourself and get what it is that you need, and it seems to me to be more individually provided by clinicians than it is by state agencies or schools. We do have at Soaring Eagle quite a lot of parent involvement and we promote parent involvement in many, many different ways, including coming on site being a part of the actual process, especially if there is a specific challenge that we want to join the parents around. But I don't think that it's a common practice in the United States for parents to receive the coaching that they really need.
Speaker 1So it's like in Canada. They've got the Hannon Parent Training Program for children that are at risk when they're young, and I think the Canadian government does fund some of that. So at the moment there's nothing like that in the US that you can think of.
Inspirational Mentor in Child Development
Speaker 2I can't really. I know there are again state-specific things that are supporting, like you know, with a birth to three, you know, children that are at risk, families that are at risk for a range of reasons, but it's not systematic, it's not, it's not a blanket thing. It's very individualized in the States.
Speaker 1Okay, thanks for that. Now we tried to get you out to Australia and had everything planned and even had the tickets bought, and then COVID hit. Are there any future plans, Michelle, in visiting us and perhaps facilitating some staff development in our area and in your area of expertise and maybe even having an evening with parents?
Speaker 2Oh, donna, this would be my dream. It was truly devastating when we had to cancel our trip.
Speaker 1It was the 11th hour, wasn't it? It was the 11th hour, wasn't it? It was the 11th hour?
Speaker 2Everything was planned, was so excited, and then yeah is now a senior in high school and he'll be launching off to college in the fall and this leaves me a lot of time and a lot of, I think, flexibility. My husband and I would love, love, love, to come and visit with you and Craig and my therapy house, and you know, honestly, it would be just the most amazing experience and I would love to do it. So we must plan it, we must plan. I'm ready, I'm ready.
Speaker 1I think it was. It must have been what 12, 13 years ago that you were here, maybe more what 12, 13 years ago that you were here maybe more 14 years ago. Yeah, it was what?
Speaker 22009, maybe 2009 2009 yeah, 15 years ago, michelle, such a long time. But even then, even then, before you had my therapy house, you have always done what is right for children and families. It's been a pleasure to work with you all these years, my dear colleague, and friend.
Speaker 1Yes, you are too, my dear colleague and friend and my just my inspiration and my mentor, and I think of you, like I say every day, and I think, oh, what would Michelle do in this situation or what is Michelle doing? And you definitely have guided my knowledge and my skills and my motivation in this area and I know that that has been carried down to the generations going forward in speech-language pathologists, but not only in speech-language pathologists, but also the OTs that I work with and the early childhood educator and the play therapist and the community worker and even our admin is DIR floor time. So thank you so much, Michelle, for taking the time out of your precious schedule to speak with me today. I miss you so much and, like I say, think about you every day. Definitely a positive influence on me and my vision for making this a better place for children and their families, and I'm sure that many people listening today would say the same. So thank you for being on my podcast.
Speaker 2Thank you for having me. From the bottom of my heart, it's been a pleasure and I can't wait to see what you do next. I can't wait.
