I primarily spent this week contemplating the different areas of needs assessment that I want to address in my Power Point presentation. As of now, I have a pretty solid idea of what I want to address so now I just have to put my rough draft onto the slides. I expect this to be a fairly easy task because throughout the semester, I’ve been fiddling around with Power Point and trying to get a better feel for working with backgrounds and slides. The only area that I think my Power Point presentation will be lacking is in the area of multimedia use. My presentation is a very straightforward display of facts and examples of different ways to use needs assessment to plan for therapy. I couldn’t really find any pictures, or sound clips that I felt were relevant to my particular topic, therefore, I didn’t include any of these. I hope it’s not required that we do so in the presentations, and I also hope that it doesn’t make my Power Point too boring. I have decided that the audience for my presentation will be a group of SLP’s who are relatively inexperienced in working with ESL clients. This week, I also realized that some of my essential questions have changed even from my most recent revision of them. If the overall presentation is going to be evaluated on how well I specifically address the essential questions, then I am presented with a new task. It is to re-revise my essential questions. Ahh—sometimes I feel like this project is a never ending revision. I guess that is a good thing, although it’s time consuming. One essential question that has changed is the one concerning the use of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in needs assessment of ESL clients. I don’t really want to expand to greatly upon this now because, through my research, I have found that it isn’t specifically used in the SLP’s therapy planning process. I do feel it’s important that a clinician consider the ESL client’s basic human needs, yet, I don’t think that this is a crucial part of the needs assessment process. Actually, now that I think about it, many of the needs assessment plans incorporate the basic principles found in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs anyway…just in a more indirect way. For instance, one of the basic needs Maslow discusses is acceptance and many of the other needs assessment procedures also question and probe the ESL client about this very issue. This just demonstrates that needs assessment can assume a variety of different forms and that some forms may overlap with others. Another question that came to my mind this week is, “What is the actual definition of needs assessment?” Of course, I know what it is because I’ve been researching it for so long now, but do my readers really know what this is? After contemplating that, I decided that somewhere in my work I need to formulate an actual definition. This will help ensure that readers’ really understand the topic that they’re reading about. I also want to make sure that my readers understand that needs assessment isn’t just something that occurs prior therapy, but that it is a continual process that takes places throughout the therapy. I realized that continual needs assessment during therapy is a way for the SLP to adapt the original therapy plan, select different materials, therapy objectives, and ways to approach teaching the client. This would, in turn, allow the curriculum of therapy to be flexible and responsive to the ESL client’s concerns, rather than following a distinct, linear plan. I really didn’t realize this before now because I thought that needs assessment of ESL clients was a way to provide the clinician with specific information about exactly what to address in therapy. So, needless to say a few changes in my thinking occurred this week. Just a thought…I know we’re suppose to address objectives, content, processes, changes in thinking, and then questions in each journal entry. I apologize for these areas being presented rather haphazardly, but my free flowing thoughts don’t really take that kind of organization into account! Anyway, in regards to processes used this week, I have turned my ideas for my Power Point into a written rough draft. This has been a good way for me to see what the various slides will look like on paper before transferring that information on the computer. One question I have regarding this area is if sources need to be cited throughout the Power Point and on a reference page at the end of a slide show or if the references used for this genre can just be included in the references in my project prospectus? I have viewed some of the presentations from the summer class and some presentations cite sources, while others do not. I’d say that I will most likely include the sources when I construct my presentation because it can’t really hurt anything. Other processes used this week were reviewing and offering suggestions to my fellow group members about their fifth genres. I think that my group is doing extremely well with their genres and as of right now, all of their genres seem to flow together and mesh nicely with one another. It’s neat to be able to watch the progress of others’ work for this class. I like the reciprocal relationship that I have with members of my group because I feel like my input positively influences their work, while at the same time, their input and ideas help to make my work stronger. Of course, the whole class helps each other during the MOO meetings, but I think the groups are really the ideal environment for others to share ideas, address questions and concerns, and support each other throughout this course. Actually, that’s about it for this week. I’m excited to get started next week on my unifying genre, which I believe will be in the form of a narrative story, written either by the ESL client or his clinician. The only question I’m pondering now is which person’s voice would be better to write my unifying genre in. I’ll probably just test out a few ideas written from each perspective and see which one most adequately incorporates all of my genres. I have a feeling that the final piece will be written in the voice of the clinician, but who knows at this point. Until next time…

“I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.” --Pearl S. Buck