A speech and language pathologist
Hi, my name is Kathryn Rushton and I am___ years old from _____________. I have been interested in working with children for most of my life. Starting from a young age I invited my neighbors over to my house play school, continuing on through middle school where I joined the Junior Teachers Club where I taught lessons at a local pre-school. In high school, I taught CCD, coached soccer, and ran religious retreats for middle school students. In college, I babysat for the moms at the town's homeless shelter and did an internship at a supervised visitation center. Each summer I also work as a special needs inclusion camp teacher for children ages 5-18. Since graduating from Plymouth State University with me BS in Psychology, I have spent most of my time working with children with special needs. I worked for a year and a half as an Inclusion Specialist, working one on one with a child with disabilities at school. My days were spent making sure that the child I supported was included into the curriculum and felt like a member of his or her classroom. After that I took on the role of care provider to twin infants. The babies were born seven weeks premature and spent almost a month each in the NICU. On top of that, one of the twins, Jackson, was born with Downs Syndrome. I spent five months taking care of them and one of the most prominent portions of my job was maintaining Jackson's Early Intervention services. I took part each week in occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech therapy. Everything I learned during our sessions, I would share with Jackson's mom and dad. From the very first day of Jackson's life he struggled with eating. He started receiving speech services in the NICU when he was less than a week old. Every week he made strides with his feeding and swallowing.
Around the same time, my nephew was diagnosed with PDD-NOS. A year later it is absolutely amazing to see the progress that he has made after receiving speech services. Since graduating, I have also worked as a home based therapist and a P.A.S.S. worker for two boys with special needs. I worked with a seven year old with Autism and I currently work with a eleven year old with Angelmans. I have worked with the boy with Angelmans for the past year and a half and to everyone's amazement, he recently said his very first word "mama". This past school year I have been the head teacher in a four year old pre-k classroom. I developed a curriculum that focuses on the academic and social skills that the children will need for kindergarten next year. Many of our activities focus on communication and social growth. I have also found it very exciting to be a part of the early childhood screening process. The speech and language classes, including Introduction to Communication Disorders, Speech Science, and Introduction to Audiology, that I have taken in the past year have been an important resources for myself and the parents I am working with when indicating where the children in my class should be developmentally.
My classes have also played an important role in my personal life as well. I was able to give my sister-in-law and her husband advice when their son received his diagnosis and even more recently I played a major part in decision making about my grandmother. Several years ago my grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Over the past two years her quality of life has been diminishing. She frequently spent time in the hospital do to aspiration pneumonia. During her fourth hospital stay of the year, the hospital speech and language pathologist told my step-dad that she had serious concerns about my grandmothers swallowing and wanted to perform a swallow test. My step-dad called me and asked me to be there when the test was performed. This was important to me on many levels, one being that my step- father never considers anyone else's opinion about his mother's health and two, it made me feel great that he respected my opinion as a knowledgeable adult in the speech field. The hospital speech and language pathologist even let me help out with the swallow test, which my grandmother unfortunately did not pass. My step-father and I talked over her options and decided against a feeding tube. This past September my grandmother past away from another round of pneumonia. My step-father said he was happy that she was able to spend the last few months of her life with as much dignity as she could.
My ultimate goal as a Speech and Language Pathologist is to work in Early Intervention. In my personal and professional career I have seen what a difference speech services can do with children that young. I also love the idea of working with a child and their families in order to make progress. One or two hours a week with a speech and language pathologist is a lot more effective when parents follow through at home. I would also like to work with children school age children with communication disorders like Angelmans and Autism. It is absolutely amazing the things that these children have to share with the world and I would love the opportunity to help them share it.
I believe that I am more than capable of working with people that come from different backgrounds than my own. I feel like I have experienced many things in my life that give me the strength and the knowledge of understanding. When I was three years old my father passed away from a heart condition, I was raised by a single mother for most of my childhood. I was lucky enough to have a very supportive extended family to help raise my sister and myself. One of the most import things that I've learned from this experience was that unless you have lived through something yourself, you really don't know how it feels. The best thing you can do is offer support and try your best to understand, but never presume that you know how someone feels. I think that this will really help in working with families of children with communication disorders.
In closing, I'd like to say that becoming a speech and language pathologist is truly my ambition and purpose. I would be honored to be accepted in to your graduate program. Thank you so much for your time and consideration.
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