Episode 205: Ashley Larisey: Effective and Respectful Therapy Materials for Older Students

This week, Rachel interviews Ashley Larisey, a school-based SLP working in the high school setting and an adjunct faculty member at St. Xavier University. Ashley describes some of her strategies for motivating older students in therapy, why she prefers “age-respectful” instead of “age-appropriate” materials, considerations for older students who are just being introduced to AAC, and more!

Before the interview, Chris and Rachel chat about Rachel’s recent experience diving with sharks in Hawaii with One Ocean (oneoceandiving.com), as well as a fun discussion of 2021’s top episodes and why those episodes might be the most popular.

Key ideas this week:

🔑 it’s not too late to start AAC when a student is in high school. There is no age limit to starting AAC - we’ve never “missed the boat”. Let’s also make sure they have robust systems and are developing literacy.

🔑 Activities using sites like Canva that let you design an image can be very age-respectful. It has lots of stock pictures of teenagers. You can have students describe the pictures they like and help them create one big image with the pictures they chose embedded in it.

🔑 When choosing books with with repetitive lines, you are not going to read “Brown Bear, Brown Bear,” but you can make your own book on sites like Tarheelreader.org  . You can embed more personal interests into the books to make them very personalized. We can make it respectful and also meaningful.

🔑 If you need to tell someone else that their materials are not age-respectful, you can do so in a more respectful way by asking questions like, “do you think he would respond better to materials with teens?” rather than something like “that’s not age-appropriate.