Quite rightly, teachers view themselves as professionals, offering highly competent teaching to a variety of learners, with direct reference to curricula and jurisdictional accountability frameworks. Speech Pathologists and Occupational Therapists also have such frameworks, to satisfy their criteria for professionalism. While we are a private learning consultancy, we too view that we set an amazingly high standard for services to our clients. We demand not only registered and qualified personnel to work for us, but we also demand that they maintain our professional standards of behaviour, support, mentoring, interaction and communication with our clients. We believe in optimising each child’s chances of success, and to do that, parents are an integral part of the learning process.

While we do not necessarily follow any particular jurisdiction in terms of curriculum, we are at all times aware of the contents of curricula around the country, and the need for strong educational programs. Not only are our consultants trained, registered and experienced teachers and professional practitioners, we have in place a stringent training program and ongoing mentoring and support.  More importantly, we view that we are ‘educationally sound’,  in that our program focusses specifically on the acquisition of underpinning learning skills and on the development of functional literacy and numeracy skills, surely a sound approach for any educational program.

However, we genuinetly feel we go past ‘educationally sound’ into the arena of ‘professionally sound’. We don’t ask teachers to do anything in addition to their current hard work – we ask them to work smarter, not harder, and offer programs to enhance existing learning programs. We work from a framework of integration of high standards from the three professions of education, speech pathology and occupational therapy. This is, of course, a very sound way of working.

What are your thoughts about what constitutes ‘professional’ and ‘educationally sound’ practices?

Well, we have finally reached that lovely state of affairs where the learning consultancy requires another speech pathologist to keep up with demand. If any of you know of a registered, qualified speech pathologist who would be happy with part-time sessional work, please ask him or her to contact the 5energies office urgently.

As you know, we run a professional consultancy, one where we offer an integrated and personal service to children with learning delays and their families. We work as a team, with each of the professions of speech pathology, occupational therapy and education contributing equally to offer a holistic approach to resolve learning delays, but also to offer insight to teachers who want to cater more effectively for the individual needs of learners in their classrooms.

What are we after with a new team -member? Someone with qualifications and registration in Speech Pathology, but this person could also be a new graduate looking to fine-tune their practical skills. Someone who loves to work as part of a thriving and busy learning consultancy, in tandem with other highly motivated professionals. Someone who enjoys working with children, and has a calm, unflappable demeanour. Someone with an enjoyment of life, and a sense of humour. If you know of such a person, please ask them to contact us: we would love to train them in January, and have them on the team for the start of the new year.