De Facto Leaders

When I first started working in the schools in the early 2000s, there was a push for integrating technology into classrooms and therapy sessions
It was even a box that got checked on my employee evaluation.
Now there’s a defined space referred to as “EdTech”. 
It took me a while to realize that this was a thing, and I didn’t even realize I was a part of it until someone referred to me as the “EdTech person” during a job interview (they were “FinTech” people, short for “Financial Technology”).
In the work I do now creating a caseload management system, I often think about how important it is to define who the intended user of technology is. In product development, we refer to this as the “end user”.
Sometimes the end user is an administrator pulling analytics or managing the budget. 
Sometimes it’s a teacher or clinician collecting data, managing a schedule, tracking referrals, or trying to reduce the administrative burden of their jobs so they can focus on human connection instead of paperwork.
Sometimes it’s a professional providing virtual therapy to students to increase access to services. 
And sometimes, the end user is the student.  
When we think about how technology is helping or hurting education, we have to look at each of these verticals separately. 
A common answer I get when I talked to district leaders about technology is this:
“We know technology has caused problems and is often poorly utilized. But what we were doing before wasn’t working either.” 
We had service deserts where therapy wasn’t accessible. 
There were clinicians spending hours on paperwork or data collection. 
We had administrators without the data they needed to evaluate what’s working or manage fiscal resources.
That’s why I wanted to have a conversation about how technology is being used, and what is and isn’t working. 
I invited Maura Connor from BetterSpeech on to this episode to start the conversation. 
This episode is the first half of our interview. 
Maura Connor is an accomplished executive leader with deep expertise at the intersection of education and healthcare technology. She currently serves as Chief Operating Officer of Better Speech, where she is leading the launch of Streamline, an AI-powered special education management platform that helps districts reduce administrative complexity for providers and teachers, ensure compliance visibility, and strengthen support for students and families. With a career spanning executive roles in ed tech, health tech, and clinical operations, Maura has built a reputation for scaling organizations, driving innovation, and leading high-performing teams through periods of transformation. Her work focuses on uniting vision, strategy, and execution to deliver measurable outcomes for schools, clinicians, and the communities they serve. Maura is passionate about advancing solutions that enable educators and clinicians to spend more time on direct impact—helping children grow, thrive, and reach their potential—while ensuring that systems of care are more efficient, compliant, and sustainable.
You can connect with Maura on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maura-connor-2508929/
Learn more about BetterSpeech’s telehealth platform and services here: https://www.betterspeech.com/
Learn more about Streamline by BetterSpeech here: https://www.streamline-sped.com/why-streamline
Streamline is an AI solution that automates evaluation, service tracking, and compliance workflows, freeing up time for clinical judgement and engagement. 
In this episode, I mentioned Language Therapy Advance Foundations, my program that gives speech pathologists a framework for building language skills needed to thrive in school, social situations, and daily life. You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarenspeech.com/languagetherapy

When everything depends on your real-time decisions, you can’t replicate the progress, scale the outcomes, or lead others through your process. 
Even when it’s working.
In this episode, I share what that looked like in my own career.
As a speech-language pathologist in the schools, I had the training and instincts to support students with complex language and learning needs. But when referrals surged and our team looked to me for leadership, I realized I didn’t have a framework. My sessions were effective, but my tools weren’t replicable. 
There was no way to take what was working and make it repeatable at the team, building, or district level.
What started as a need in my own practice and doctoral work led to a research-informed framework that has now supported thousands of professionals across the country through my Language Therapy Advance Foundations program. 
Here’s what we explore in this episode:
 • What it really costs to rely on instinct alone
 • Why generalization stalls without scalable systems in place
 • How “therapy homework” often lives inside what you're already doing
 • Why leadership begins long before you speak up in a meeting
 • How vocabulary can serve as a container for essential, transferable language skills
If you’re doing great work in direct language therapy sessions but struggling with generalization, this episode is for you.
If your therapy is working, but hard to explain, scale, or share with your team, Language Therapy Advance Foundations will help you change that. 
You’ll build a 5-component system that strengthens vocabulary, supports critical thinking, and works across goals and grade levels. Start building your framework today: https://drkarenspeech.com/languagetherapy

In this episode, I’m sharing my top resources for clinicians to explain why we do what we do in language therapy, and how parents and colleagues can support skills outside of sessions.
I share:
How to answer the dreaded “Is there an app for that?” question. 
Why language therapy doesn’t come in a standard curriculum (plus resources you can share to explain the essentials behind vocabulary intervention).
How parents can reinforce language at home (and when and if tech actually helps)
Plus I share an opportunity for therapists who want to learn the “Essential 5” framework and who are also interested in getting referrals for private clients. 
Resources mentioned in this episode:
The Language Therapy Success Path article that shows how to cycle through a set of strategies to hit both higher level language (inferencing, problem-solving) as well as foundational language skills (vocabulary, syntax): https://drkarenspeech.com/the-language-therapy-success-path-for-slps/
The Ultimate Guide to Language Therapy article that defines the "Essential 5" components (morphology, phonology, orthography, semantics, syntax) and explains why there isn't a boxed curriculum for language therapy: https://drkarenspeech.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-language-therapy/
Semantic Feature Analysis for Adjectives article that shares two videos from Language Therapy Advance Foundations that provide a walkthrough of how to do word study with adjectives in a way that builds deep understanding: https://drkarenspeech.com/semantic-feature-analysis-adjectives/
Ultimate Guide to Sentence Structure: My free guide that explains the "how" and the "why" behind studying sentence structure in a way that's digestible for parents and professionals without a speech pathology background: https://drkarenspeech.com/sentencestructure
In this episode, I mentioned Language Therapy Advance Foundations, my program that gives speech pathologists a framework for building language skills needed to thrive in school, social situations, and daily life. You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarenspeech.com/languagetherapy

When you’re teaching storytelling with students, do your lessons feel kind of…random?
I used to feel like this a lot when I was a school SLP, so if you’ve ever had a “throw spaghetti at the wall” therapy session that felt all over the place, I get it.
The truth is, repetition and drill is not the enemy. If you ONLY focus on unstructured activities, you’re probably seeing students getting overwhelmed, not remembering to apply important language skills (like syntax, vocabulary words, etc). 
But if you ONLY stick with structured activities, kids never get the chance to apply and practice. 
That’s why leveraging books and story grammar as part of your “therapy toolkit” can be such a powerful tool to bridge this gap…even though many storytelling activities look like simple “cutesy” activities on the surface.
(and if you understand the “why” it’s much easier to apply for older kids who are kind of over coming to therapy). 

In this second half of my interview with my colleague Jane Gebers, we talk about how to use tools like dynamic assessment and narrative intervention to make therapy structured, rigorous, and functional.

Jane L. Gebers is the author of the popular resource, Books Are for Talking, Too!, first published in 1990, and now in its 4th edition as of March 2023. A practicing speech-language pathologist for over 40 years, she has worked in public school, hospital, private, and clinical settings. She has been an adjunct professor at St. Mary’s College of California and other universities where she taught Language Development, Assessment, and Intervention courses to students pursuing special education credentials. She currently holds a private practice in Northern California.

You can connect with Jane on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-l-gebers-53856119/
Email her at [email protected]
Learn more about her book, Books Are For Talking, Too! here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C2SG8J58?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_RR4P3SB19A92WD6FPD3R
Learn more about her storytelling resources and speech therapy services on her website here: http://soundingyourbest.com/
In this episode, I mentioned Language Therapy Advance Foundations, my program that gives speech pathologists a framework for building language skills needed to thrive in school, social situations, and daily life. You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarenspeech.com/languagetherapy
I also mentioned the Art and Science of Narrative Language, my program that gives speech pathologists and educational professionals a process for evaluating and supporting narrative language. You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarenspeech.lpages.co/art-science-narratives-blog-297/

Why are we so obsessed with “storytelling”?
In education, we talk about it when we’re working on language and reading comprehension. 
It’s also referred to in sales and copy writing as a tool for generating more leads and customers. And of course, people writing books or films think about it all the time. 
We all know storytelling is an important life skill. But do we remember HOW MUCH it can impact our ability to communicate and function? 
And do we know how to support students who don’t have this skill?
I invited my colleague Jane Gebers to the De Facto Leaders podcast to discuss this topic. 
If you’re helping students build skills for functional daily tasks, challenging academic work, or in social situations, you won’t want to miss this conversation. 
In this first half of the interview, we talk about the “why” behind teaching narrative discourse, plus specific examples of how we’ve both used narrative structure to build our own comprehension.

Jane L. Gebers is the author of the popular resource, Books Are for Talking, Too!, first published in 1990, and now in its 4th edition as of March 2023. A practicing speech-language pathologist for over 40 years, she has worked in public school, hospital, private, and clinical settings. She has been an adjunct professor at St. Mary’s College of California and other universities where she taught Language Development, Assessment, and Intervention courses to students pursuing special education credentials. She currently holds a private practice in Northern California.
You can connect with Jane on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-l-gebers-53856119/
Email her at [email protected]
Learn more about her book, Books Are For Talking, Too! here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C2SG8J58?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_RR4P3SB19A92WD6FPD3R
Learn more about her storytelling resources and speech therapy services on her website here: http://soundingyourbest.com/
In this episode, I mentioned Language Therapy Advance Foundations, my program that gives speech pathologists a framework for building language skills needed to thrive in school, social situations, and daily life. You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarenspeech.com/languagetherapy
I also mentioned the Art and Science of Narrative Language, my program that gives speech pathologists and educational professionals a process for evaluating and supporting narrative language. You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarenspeech.lpages.co/art-science-narratives-blog-297/