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Speech is Beautiful

Summer Career Coaching for SLPs

About me

5 Jun

How is your career going? Are you hitting a rough spot? Do you need someone to talk to? I’m opening up time on my schedule this summer to work directly with some of you.

There have been times during my career where I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t have anyone to talk to — that understood. I’ve decided to pay it forward. I’m available to work with you.

My background

Let me go back to the beginning of my career to share what I have to offer. Back in 1999, I graduated from UW-Madison with a major in Spanish and a minor in business. I moved to Chicago to work for Kraft Foods, where I worked for four years. I spent my time in logistics and transportation. Working with buyers and sales, I had to manage the entire order management from point of sale to successfully getting the product to the customers’ warehouses.

But after four years I wasn’t happy. I wanted to make a difference in the world — getting Capri Sun and Oscar Mayer hot dogs to the customer before a promotion just wasn’t doing it for me.

I wish I’d had someone to talk to in that moment, but I didn’t.

On my own, I shopped around to find a better career. I knew someone who knew someone who was a speech pathologist. I sought out job shadowing experiences and watched several speech-language pathologists at work. It was a revelation.

So I went back to school and eventually got my masters in speech pathology in 2006 from Northwestern University. Grad school was stressful and afterwards I chose to work in Chicago Public Schools.

The job appealed to me for a lot of reasons, but most importantly I could finally feel like I could make a difference in the world. But I was overworked as many bilingual SLPs are.

At the end of 2009 I noticed the low quality of the district’s school lunch program and I wanted to do something. I went online and set up an anonymous school lunch blog, intending to quietly eat a year of school lunches and document it. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you view it), the blog caught on and went viral, leading to the publishing Fed Up With Lunch and outing myself as the anonymous “Mrs. Q” on Good Morning America and The View in October of 2011.

Writing a blog and a book made an impact in the school lunch environment in CPS, but it changed my ability to work there and I had to resign.

Nowhere To Find Career Help

At that time I would have loved to talk to someone for career advice, but I didn’t have an idea of who to reach out to and where to find someone who would understand. And frankly, most of the people I did find, were out of my price range.

I ended up moving to the suburbs and bouncing around to several different school districts. The ones that turned out to be the right fit were too far away for me to commute to with two small boys at home. I made it work as long as I could, but ultimately it was just too much for me.

However, over the summer of 2016 I accepted a teletherapy job, which I worked at for four years. In 2019 I started coursework in bilingual education, curriculum and instruction, and best practices in ESL education. In June 2022 I will finish an education specialist (EdS) in curriculum and instruction. Since 2020, I have been working in non-clinical positions primarily (training coordinator and clinician supervision) as well as running a bilingual evaluation-only private practice.

How I Can Help:

I can provide guidance and share from my experience in both private and public workplaces. Here’s how I can help during our individual coaching sessions:

  1. Discussion of your career goals
  2. How your current employment does or doesn’t meet your needs
  3. Figuring out what’s next for you
  4. Developing an personalized action plan for you

To view my rates and book me this summer, click here to fill out a survey: Summer Career Coaching with Sarah.

I’ve got lots of time on my calendar through August, but this is opportunity is only for summer because when the fall begins, I will be pretty booked (and I bet you will be busy too!)

What are you waiting for? I can’t wait to work with you!

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