Interview of SLP and teacher:

SLP: How is Johnny doing lately?
T: Well I think he has been improving ever since he has started therapy. I am just worried about him. In class he just keeps to himself and he does not talk, or interact with the other kids.
SLP: Well you know he may just feel like he does not fit in. In therapy he is real active and participates with the other students. He often complains that he does not want to go back to the classroom that he likes being in the speech room. I guess he just feel comfortable being around the kids in therapy.
T. That is why I wanted to have this talk. I want to maybe get some ideas of how I can help Johnny feel better about himself and become more active in class.
SLP: There are many things that you can do to help improve his self-esteem. I have been doing a little bit of self-esteem activities in therapy but I just don’t have a lot of time to squeeze in too many self-esteem activities. Johnny only comes every Monday and Wed. for 30 minutes and he does group therapy with three other people. In order to help build his self-esteem you need to know how does his disorder impact his life. You probably have observed him in the classroom and you know what he goes through.
T: I do know that Johnny has a phonological disorder, which affects the production of his speech sounds. I know that he uses a lot of speech sounds in place of other sounds (w-r) etc. Sometimes it is very hard for his classmates to understand him. The kids often can’t understand and will ask him to slow down and repeat himself but he just gets frustrated and just avoids talking at all. I know that these feelings that he is experiencing is affecting his self-esteem which is causing him to withdraw from class participation and social activities. Not only does he not participate in class even at recess he just keeps to himself. I would really like to help him become more positive about himself and active with the classmates.
SLP: Well there are many activities that you can use in your classroom that will help build Johnny’s self-esteem. In order to help build Johnny’s self-esteem you need to have activities that will identify his strengths, help him get support from his classmates, focus on positive concepts, have him set his own goals and objectives, and help him be able to problem solve. These activities will help him with awareness, worthiness, and power. These activities will show his individual strengths and weakness and hopefully these activities will help him to balance out his strengths and weakness which will help his self-esteem.

SLP: One way to identify his strengths is an activity called Handicaps not Limiting. Here, you would bring in a speaker (adult) of someone who has a communication disorder. Let them give a speech, on how having a communication disorder does not interfere with their life and they were able to succeed and live a very productive life. After the speaker, have each student list their personal strengths.
T: Yes, I really like this activity. Having a speaker could really boost Johnny’s self-esteem by helping him realize that he is somebody who can make a difference in life no matter if he has a disorder. I think the students will also, benefit from this activity as they will learn more about communication disorders, and then maybe understand that having a communication disorders does not make that person any different than the other classmates. They can be just as nice, smart, fun to be around etc.

SLP: Another good activity to help Johnny build his self-esteem is s to build support groups in the classroom. A good activity for this would be Booster Boxes. Here, have your students decorate a shoebox and cut a slit in the box. Then each student will write a compliment about the child and put in the box.
T: Oh, I think that is a great way to get Johnny involved with the class. Not to mention how much those positive comments will help him feel better about himself.

SLP: Now to help Johnny focus on the positive things about himself you can do an activity called Me Trees. First everyone needs to trace their own hand, and then take paper cut out leaves and paste them on the hand to make a tree. On each individual leaf have the students write positive characteristics about themselves on each leaf.
T: I think activities like these will really help Johnny build his self-esteem. It really will have him realizing that there are good things about him despite the fact he has a communication disorder. Also, when classmates read his Me-Tree they will learn more things about Johnny (not Just Johnny a boy with a communication disorder).

SLP: Another activity is to help him build his self-esteem it to have him develop goals and objectives by an activity called Targeting. Here you have the students make a self-improvement contract. Here each student needs to choose a behavior that they would like to see either increase or decrease. Then have them set a goal and a reward for reaching the goal. Then they will observe this behavior for one week and record the results (when, why, & how often the behavior occurs) & daily progress of the results. They will continue to do this for several weeks and each week they will predict the progress of how they think they will do.
T: So this activity will really help Johnny learn more about himself. Here he will learn about ways to self-improve something about himself by setting goals and reaching them.

SLP: I really think that if you do these activities with Johnny and his fellow classmates you will really begin to see a bit difference in the way that he sees himself and the way that the class views him.

T; I really like the ideas of these activities. I really think these activities will increase Johnny’s self-esteem. Thank you so much for giving me such great suggestions.

SLP: Just remember that if you need anymore help please come by and see me.

T: Thank you so much.