Spring 2009 Classes Filed Under News

The semester is over, so it’s time for my update of the semester. This semester was probably my busiest one so far with 4 classes and clinic. My classes this semester included Fluency, Traumatic Brain Injury, Aphasia, and Dysphagia. Technically I should have taken Aphasia and Dysphagia last year, but they had to be postponed due to schedule conflicts.

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) was a good class. Typically, students take a class in Childhood Apraxia of Speech, but because most of my classmates are interested in the medical setting and they did not get much of an aphasia class, Apraxia was replaced. TBI was taught by the director of the clinic who worked several years with this population. The teacher doesn’t have a doctorate, so she has to get special permission to teach. This is the same teacher we had for Motor Speech Disorders last year. She is still one of the best teacher’s I’ve had. In the class we learned about cognitive communication disorders (impairments in memory, executive functioning, and attention) that result from a TBI and how to treat people with these impairments. It is an interesting field, but very heartbreaking to see individuals with injuries that have caused such damage to the brain. Next....