By Klaran Warner
For three weeks now, I have been turning-on and tuning-in to a school district in New Hampshire as I fill in for their on-leave speech pathologist. This is accomplished through the wonders of teletherapy: the students come into the “speech room” as customary, but I am miles away at my desk, in a presentable office outfit—wearing bedroom slippers because I can: I’m inside my house!
For both sides of the screen, it is an adjustment. I, who fumble with dispatching even an email, now will be calling up items from the vast Internet to make for an interesting lesson, and wonder. They, with their varying ages and varying techno exposure, will answer my questions, imitate the gestures and exercises, and wonder.
One of the precious moments in the first week was when an elementary student asked me, “Where ARE you?” The more sophisticated high school student advised me to adjust my screen such that more of my face—and less of the ceiling fan—showed in his monitor!
I grew to know the interests of the children, the accompanying staff, the school schedule, the day’s priorities. I grew to love it all just as if I were there. One day the schools closed early so all could scramble to coziness in the advent of an incoming blizzard, but after the busses had departed, some staff remained in the “speech room” with me, and we chatted and debriefed, becoming additionally acquainted. Through “Zoom Room” I met people with whom I will possibly never share a cup of coffee, but with whom I share educational insights and professional values.
The power of the lesson resides in the presentation, which includes a simpatico. To achieve that—half-hour by half-hour— with newly familiar youngsters to teens requires a magic that transcends technology. It is true that clarity of speaking specifically improved over a 20-minute session; it is the case that a high school student acknowledged with me the discovery of an additional perspective as we watched a short video; vocabulary and strategies were communicated both ways. But…
Joint attention becomes an oxymoron. There is nothing between us on which to focus except the miles. I’m on my side of a screen, and the students, on their side of their screen. To take in the presentation requires steady gaze at that square segment of existence. There is no head-turn to glance at something between us on the table. I cannot turn to each of the students in a group session. The eye gaze to the screen is unmodified and independent of whether it’s a human image, a moving video, a workbook page, or an evolving drawing or text.
How I would have loved to share a pair of scissors, sliding them back and forth across the work table, cutting red paper into hearts for Valentine’s Day, hanging them in the admittedly stripped down “speech room.” Well, we did punch up red hearts onto line drawings within the Zoom Room whiteboard and erased them one by one magically with their mouse and my cursor.
Not only is the visual interaction limited (being two-dimensional and flattened), sound also is compromised in this idiosyncratic presentation. It does come from the source; i.e., my mouth to your microphone. However, it cannot be modulated and does not change as it would with variable proximity. Indeed, as students moved away from the screen, some of the message was lost to me. Following a conversation was difficult because I was not in the center of it. With a coach sitting at another desk and outside the visual of the monitor, sometimes the child turned to the live person sitting next-to and literally made an aside.
Glitches happened just as with any itinerant speech position. I traversed three schools, but online—one box appearing then another, as monitors switched on and off. Sometimes the on and off didn’t occur on schedule. But that’s akin to my not finding a parking space immediately and being late to the next session, next school, in real life.
Eventually, the move school-to-school was smooth. In fact one day, finishing up at the elementary school with a small student, the high school box blinked and a teenager appeared; so now there were three of us, side by side onscreen in our respective Zoom Room visual displays, smiles on each face, a wave of greeting and connection.
Now that it’s over, I go back to days of retirement—no half-hour by half-hour bookings. No school children on my horizon. No impetus to be arranged. On the other hand, I’m not confined to the house 8 to 3, with a silenced phone and a crated dog. Life swings in such a pendulum!
One of the dear, shared moments was when, well into the half hour, I missed a comment by one of the youngest students: the accompanying adult chuckled and said, “He called you Siri!”
So here we are: Siri signing off!
Klaran Warner has enjoyed being a speech pathologist in VT and NH since 1976 and considered this venture into teletherapy an adventure!