Supporting a student as an NQP

Life comes at you fast! My experience of supporting a First Year Speech and Language Therapy student placement as a Newly Qualified Practitioner.

6 months after officially qualifying as an SLT, and 3 months into my first role at as a Newly Qualified Practitioner at Liverpool Speech Therapy, the fact that I would ‘have a student observing me for a couple of days in June’ was brought up casually from across the office. At first, I wanted to say to my colleague ‘are you sure?!’ Feeling as if I was almost still a student myself. But as the plan and process was explained to me and I had some time to reflect on what I was so unsure about, I began to feel excited to be given the opportunity to be a part of someone’s journey to becoming a Speech and Language Therapist so early on in my career.

When my student first made contact with me over email, the memories of doing that myself just over a year ago were so clear. The excitement, the worries and the uncertainty. Thinking about wording the email to sound professional, including all the important information but not too much, what the therapist would be like and the specificities of their role, what their expectations of me would be. With this so fresh in my mind, I thought about the response that I would have liked to receive when this was me – ensuring that I came across friendly, excited and interested in my student, their background and their goals for the placement.

I was lucky enough to have two full days working with my student in two different mainstream primary schools. I ensured that I had planned to see a range of children that both demonstrated the breadth of my role in terms of assessment and therapy as well as the planning and organisation required around a face-to-face session. I explained the structure of my day in each school and ran through the caseload each morning, explaining each child’s background and the intervention they were receiving from our Service. I made sure any questions were answered to the best of my ability before starting our sessions for the day. During each session, I made sure to give the student opportunities to join in as much as possible, whether this was having a go at completing a speech sound assessment score sheet or playing a game with the child at the end of the session. After each session, I spent time reviewing what we had done, answering any questions and giving my student the opportunity to see what information was included in my case notes and contact with parents.

Eve (right) together with her student Leah (left).

This experience really allowed me to reflect on myself and my journey as a practitioner and just how far I have really come in such a short space of time. It feels like just a few months ago that I was in my student’s position, beginning placement at the end of my first year of studying, feeling so unprepared to be a ‘real’ Speech and Language Therapist. Now I feel confident not just to carry out the core responsibilities of the role relating to assessment, intervention and administration but also explain why things are done a certain way or why certain approaches are chosen over others, what skills assessments are looking for and justify why I choose to do something one way and another practitioner might do it another way. It was so interesting seeing my practice through my student’s eyes. She was surprised at how varied my caseload is, how much contact I had with class teachers as well as just how much admin is required to do the job well!

The experience of having a student has been invaluable to my development as a practitioner and I already can’t wait to develop my skills and experience in this area further!