Communication Services
The Stern Center offers social learning services and speech-language therapy services. We serve children and adults, customizing programs to serve individual needs and unique learning styles.
Social Learning
Our social learning team (including special educators, speech-language pathologists, and psychologists) provides individual and group coaching for students with social learning needs, including:
- social cognitive challenges, such as autism, Asperger's, nonverbal learning disability, attention deficit disorder, and mental health issues
- cognition issues including attention, memory, executive functioning, and visuospatial skills
- We also have experience with medical and behavioral diagnoses including autism spectrum disorders, selective mutism, social-emotional disturbances, ADHD, dyslexia, stroke, traumatic brain injury, and cerebral palsy.
Social learning instruction includes:
- Students experience social learning through participation in our Social Thinking® groups. Our coaches combine similar social learning profiles to create groups. Click here to learn more about Social Thinking groups.
- Individual instruction in Social Thinking® is also available.
- We incorporate naturalistic teaching, modeling, self-management, social narratives, and visual supports in our evidence-based coaching and use a cognitive behavioral approach to teach participants to understand the thinking that motivates their words and actions. Differing from traditional social skills practices, our Social Thinking® approach (as developed by Michelle Garcia Winner, founder and creator of the Social Thinking framework and curriculum) creates a more generalized use of skills. In addition, students who struggle with social skills and who participate in social emotional learning programs have been shown to achieve higher academic test scores.
- We offer services via telepractice (Skype, Facetime) for clients at a distance.
- We offer a summer camp experience. Learn more about Camp Compass here!
Speech-Language Therapy
Our certified speech-language therapists provide comprehensive evaluations and treatment plans for students experiencing language, speech, and dysphagia (swallowing) challenges, including:
Language needs include understanding and/or expressing correct:
- Syntax (sentence structure)
- Semantics (meaning)
- Pragmatics (social use of language)
- Morphology (word parts)
- Phonology (how words sound)
Speech needs include:
- Articulation, the formation of basic speech sounds
- The mechanics of voice, how we use various vocal muscles and breathing to produce sounds
- Voice challenges such as hypo/hypernasality, disorders due to cleft lip/palate, and dysphonia
- Fluency, the rate and rhythm of speech
Dysphagia (swallowing) needs include:
- For children, treatment focuses on oral-motor and feeding issues
- For adults, treatment focuses on acquired and neurological issues impacting ability to meet nutritional needs
Some programs used by our clinicians include:
- The Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Program for Reading, Spelling, and Speech®
- The Talkies Program® for enhancing concept imagery for oral and written language processing
- It Takes Two to Talk® — The Hanen Program® for Parents, a well-known model of family-focused, early language intervention for young children with expressive and/or receptive language delays
We offer flexible after school scheduling to meet the needs of students. We also consult with schools to provide direct instruction and to develop a plan customized to meet student needs.
Questions?
Contact us at 802-878-2332 to speak with our Communication Services Intake Scheduler. You may also use our online form to contact the Communication Services department.
Meet our Speech Language Pathologists and our Social Thinking® Coaches.
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