UTEP SLP Co-Hosts Dream. Speak. Live. Camp for Area Children

Published July 18, 2023                                                        By Darlene Muguiro                                                            UTEP College of Health Sciences

Last week, the UTEP Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences hosted staff from UT Austin’s Arthur M. Blank Center for Stuttering Education and Research – founded and directed by Dr. Courtney Byrd, (UT Austin, Dept. of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences) – at an inaugural Dream. Speak. Live. Camp in El Paso for children who stutter and their families.

The Blank Center’s work is based on three pillars – treatment of individuals who stutter, training in the area for future speech-language pathologists, and research; the Center is the only NIH-supported clinical research center in the US focused on stuttering. The Center’s Dream. Speak. Live. Camp series began in 2014 and is now offered annually during the summer at sites across the globe for children between the ages of 4 and 17.

Dr. Geoffrey Coalson, associate director of research and grant development at the Blank Center, said the group was interested in coming to El Paso due to its cultural and linguistic diversity, as well as ongoing advocacy from Andrea Chee, a bilingual speech-language pathologist and clinical research associate for the Center, who happens to be a native El Pasoan. Chee says that part of the mission of the Blank Center is to expose SLP students early on to the field, but specifically to the area of stuttering.

“Research shows that stuttering is one of the areas that speech-language pathologists don’t feel comfortable treating, and they feel they don’t have enough knowledge about it,” she said.

Coalson and Chee mentioned that pervasive stigma surrounding stuttering makes it challenging to find services. According to Coalson, less than one percent of licensed SLPs openly advertise that they treat individuals who stutter. For this reason, the Center advocates for early training for speech-language pathology students in stuttering to generate interest in the area.

“There are two main schools of thought – one says that if you just ignore the condition, it will eventually go away, and the other says ‘just make them become fluent,’ because fluency is the only permissible outcome, which is just wrong,” Coalson said. “We do not feel that kids who stutter need to stop stuttering. Instead, we feel that they need to be able to communicate effectively, with the addition of stuttering openly. They need to be able to advocate for themselves, be resilient in the face of adversity, and be educated about stuttering.”

Coalson says that the Center’s Dream. Speak. Live. Camp offers an alternative option to these schools of thought, focusing instead on enhancing nonverbal communication skills in children who stutter by immersing them in activities like improvisation and skit performance. Through these sessions, children practice using facial expressions, gestures, vocal variety, and eye contact. The children are also encouraged to openly stutter, which helps to normalize stuttering and allows the children to remain spontaneous and be true to themselves.

“From our years of clinical trials, we’ve learned that people who are listening care less about stuttering, and they will rate people with clinical (nonverbal communication) skills to be a stronger communicator, even when those people are stuttering,” he said. “People who stutter are always planning ahead and intentionally avoid words that they know will cause them to stutter. But with improvisation, the children can’t do that because they can’t respond until the other person has said something.”

Prior to the inaugural camp in El Paso, UTEP SLP students received training videos and in-person training from the Blank Center staff. A total of 11 children attended the camp; 24 second-year SLP students helped supervise activities and worked directly with the children. Deena Peterson, clinical instructor and clinical supervisor for the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, said each of the students will receive over 30 clinical hours toward their graduation requirements.

SLP student David Palacios said that he had not been previously exposed to the use of supplementary gestures as part of treatment for stuttering. As a person who stutters, he plans to focus on this population after he graduates in May 2024. He also wants to encourage open stuttering among his future clients.

“Someone said earlier in the week that we don’t stutter because we’re nervous; it’s just the way we talk,” he said. “Helping these kids learn how to navigate through all of these situations is going to be absolutely massive for my practice. I’m going to tell them that it’s okay to stutter; it is a different way of talking.”

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Go Miners!

For more information about the Arthur M. Blank Center for Stuttering and Research, please visit: https://blankcenterforstuttering.org/