“I became an SLP because I just love paperwork and planning, soooo much!”, said no SLP ever. When we all made the decision to join this profession, it had nothing to do with paperwork and everything to do with wanting to make the positive impact on someone’s life through communication.
But there I was, fresh out of grad school and ready to change lives…and then the real world hit me like a 5lb ream of printer paper. All the aspects of managing a caseload, that they seemed to have just forgotten to mention in grad school, were staring back at me waiting for me to figure them out. I knew I would have to make a schedule and do everything I could to support my students in working on the 250+ 250+ combined goals they were working on. The mere thought of it caused my brain to get lost in a sea of overwhelming questions I wasn’t sure how to answer.
How was I going to keep track of them all?
How would I remember what to work on and take data?
How was I going to find time to even plan sessions to work on them?
Oh, and of course all my kids were in mixed groups which added to the fun.
Ever felt like this before? 😅
So here is how I have gone from mentally unraveling, trying system after system, and wishing on a star this system would be ‘the one’… to calmly and sanely being the confident queen of my speech room.
In the past I had tried binders, schedules with everyone’s goals, index cards, etc. They usually ended up taking a long time to put together and they may have worked for a part of the problem but still fell flat in other area. Maybe one would help with data but still left me stressed about working on goals or one helped with goals but left me digging through past sheets trying to see what I took data on last.
So I went digital.
And I’m pretty sure at that moment angels started singing somewhere because it was a golden moment.
Our brains can only hold onto and organize so much information. That is why we have planners and reminders set on our phones. Your brain wasn’t meant to remember every kids’ goal and when you last took data and worked on a certain objective. So I decided to create something digital to help myself, and any other SLP who was feeling stressed and overwhelmed by goals, planning, and data.
Enter…Swivel Scheduler 💡
With so many combinations of students goals, because of mixed and crazy school schedules, I needed something that would keep track of all the goals, telling me when things needed to be worked on. I don’t know about you but discovering at progress report time that you only worked a certain objective 3 times because it got lost in the shuffle is not a fun feeling. This would take care of that.
Swivel Scheduler rotates (aka swivels) all my kids goals into my therapy schedule. *cue happy dance*
No more forgotten goals and that stress is kicked to the curb.
Finally, there was joy in planning again 🙌🏼
I never had time to plan the kind of sessions I wanted to for my kids. Not necessarily crazy, fun elaborate sessions, but engaging, meaningful and efficient sessions to help them grow their skills. And with the schedule I was currently in, there was never time in my day between therapy, meetings, evals, reports etc. to put something together. Swivel helped with that too!
Since I could see what everyone needed to work on, weeks ahead of time, I could use the 5-10 minutes of time I did have and put together a plan that left me feeling like the SLP I wanted to be. Seeing everyone’s goals that needed to be targeted in a session, especially in mixed groups, meant all I needed to do was decide the activity I wanted to use to target them. I could just type it in, or hyperlink it if it was a site or a video, and boom…done! So when the session rolled around I just need to grab my material and I could see how I had to adapt it for each student, and all I had to do was pick the material!
Then there was data.
Now, I love data. I am a self-proclaimed data nerd, but taking it and analyzing it are two different beasts. I also strongly dislike doing math…it was never my thing. I tried data tracking pages, labels, post its, etc. I could take the tally’s but didn’t have time to really break it down and do the math to get the numbers and information I needed for progress reports to even to do a quick check on therapy if I was using a new strategy. That is why I knew Swivel Scheduler had to do the math for me. So Swivel not only graphs your student data (yay for visuals!) it calculates it, giving you 4 different numbers: Overall average, average of last three sessions, score of first session, and score of most recent session. I also like to track goals but % over three sessions, so I made so that when you hovered over a data point it gave you the % of the session. Holy cow did these graphs and numbers make a difference… I did a progress report in 5 minutes!
Now, Swivel Scheduler isn’t for everyone. If you are looking for something that has a library of digital resources or assessments, then this may not be the best fit. If you are the SLP who has materials and screeners, but needs help keeping everyone’s goals straight, planning efficient sessions, and collecting analyzing data then you are definitely a Swiveler!
It is super fast and easy to set up, so there is no reason not to give the 2 week free trial a shot! Just click below to see all the features Swivel has to take the stress off of your shoulders so you can be the SLP you’ve always wanted to be.
