Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/969549
Do… • Listen closely when the student speaks. Pay attention to what the stu- dent says, rather than the way it is said. • Provide opportunities for the student to talk to you without distractions or competition from class- mates or others. • Limit the number of ques- tions you ask a student, since questions demand the student make an immediate response. • Give the student enough time to talk, and give the student time to answer a question before asking a second question. • Recognize that certain environmental factors may have a negative affect on fluency: com- petition to speak, excitement, time pres- sure, arguing, fatigue, new situations, and unfa- miliar listeners. • Repeat or rephrase what the student says to verify you understand it. • Expect the same quality and quantity of work from a student who stutters as one who doesn't. Don't… • Say "Relax," "Slow down," " Take your time," or " Think before you talk." • Call attention to the stu- dent's speech. • Place the student in situ- ations where their speech would be on display. • Look distressed when the student is disfluent. • Interrupt the student. • Criticize or correct the student's speech. • Complete the student's sentences. Resources: • American Speech- Language-Hearing Association: asha.org • The Stuttering Founda- tion: stutteringhelp.org/ 8-tips-teachers • National Stuttering Asso- ciation: westutter.org Do's and don'ts for educators and others managing just fine for 24 years. He discovered that getting more sleep at night improves his f luency the following day, so he tries to get a good night's sleep. He proudly says his "classroom voice" is f luent about 95 percent of the time. "But when I leave the classroom and I speak with my peers, I will often have trouble. It almost seems that, adversely, when I am most comfortable with a person, I let down my guard and my disfluency increases. I don't stutter a lot, but if the occasion is especially noticeable, I am silently bothered by it." He seldom stutters when speaking publicly in his role of chapter president. He admits, "I am a huge ham and love to be in the spotlight. Traditionally, most stutterers do not." He has theories about why people stutter and how they cope. "Stutterers are always thinking several words ahead of our speech. If we fear we will 'block' on specific words or phonetic sounds, we will substitute another word, a synonym, for the troublesome words. We must have a huge vocabulary to smoothly accomplish this." Speech-language pathologists can help "I wouldn't say there's a cure for stuttering, but many people overcome it," says Xena Wickliffe, a speech-language pathologist 57 A P R I L / M AY 2 018