Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan

In this conversation, I sat down with Kim Jenkins from Empowering Speech Services (link here: https://www.empoweringspeechservices.com/meet-kim ) to talk about how she’s used the frameworks from Language Therapy Advance Foundations ( https://drkarenspeech.com/languagetherapy/) along with the gestalt language processing stages, for reluctant readers, and AAC users.

We also talk about how important it is for clinicians to think flexibly with how they apply frameworks in therapy so they can pull from multiple sources to come up with their own personal protocols that work for their caseload.

We also chat about other topics such as what “alter ego” we want to emulate when we’re going through a challenge, social media strategies and mindset, our dogs, and how to draw parallels between language therapy, clinical practice, fitness, tips for learning how to do pull-ups, and other areas of life.

Kim Jenkins is a neurodiversity-affirming speech therapist who is passionate about helping neurodivergent children and their families flourish. Empowering Speech Services was built on the idea that authentic and meaningful communication can be achieved by focusing on a child's strengths, meeting their sensory needs, following their lead, and empowering family members in the process. Serving the Milton and Alpharetta areas of Georgia, she takes the time to truly get to know her clients, their joys, interests, unique strengths, and individual challenges.

In this conversation, we discuss:

✅ How Kim uses semantic features and syntactic study with AAC users

✅ Using the “Essential 5” framework from Language Therapy Advance Foundations with students who use a lot of scripting and gestalts

✅ Engaging a reluctant reader literacy and vocabulary work

✅ Parallels between life, language therapy, fitness, and social media marketing

You can listen to the conversation here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/ep-259-aac-gestalts-and-literacy-case-studies-for-using-the-essential-5-with-kimberly-jenkins/

Recess is often thought of as an “extra” activity in the school day. Sometimes it’s even taken away from students as a punishment.

But some schools think about recess as an integral part of the school day, where students get the opportunity to connect, practice important social and problem-solving skills they’ll need for life.

Others are taking it a step further and using it as a tool to help students feel more connected to their school experience, and to decrease chronic absenteeism and establish a school culture where kids feel like they belong at school.

That’s why I was so excited to connect with Elizabeth Cushing from Playworks.

Elizabeth Cushing is CEO of Playworks, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to using the power of play to bring out the best in every child. Elizabeth joined Playworks in 2004 and was named President and COO in 2011 and CEO in 2020. She leads Playworks' Executive Team and is responsible for the organization's strategy, operations and fiscal health. During her tenure Elizabeth has played a lead role in designing Playworks’ national scaling strategy including engaging national investors. Alongside founder, Jill Vialet, Elizabeth led the organization through a sustained period of growth from a San Francisco Bay Area-focus to a national organization with 14 teams across the country. As a result of strategic expansion, Playworks shares its unique brand of play and physical activity with 1,000 elementary schools reaching more than 1M children annually. For more than 30 years Elizabeth has served in leadership roles in nonprofit organizations focused on youth development, children's advocacy and women's issues.

In this conversation, we discuss:

✅ Simple ways educators can set expectations and rules to create structure and a sense of safety around recess

✅ How to use play as a reset and a preventative measure, instead of something that’s taken away from kids as a punishment

✅ How training kids as peer coaches can help decrease disruptive behaviors and help kids discover their own leadership potential

https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/bonus-using-recess-to-build-social-skills-and-help-students-discover-their-leadership-potential-with-elizabeth-cushing/

Most schools say they “collaborate.” They hold team meetings. They talk about students. They review data.

But without clear infrastructure, those meetings become updates instead of decision-making engines, and multi-tiered systems of support become an extra burden for educators.

In this episode, I interview Kurtis Hewson from Jigsaw Learning to break down their Collaborative Response Team meeting format and explain why effective collaboration requires structure and not just good intentions. From who is in the room to how documents are used before, during, and after the meeting, they share the operational backbone that makes collaboration actually move student outcomes.

Kurtis Hewson is an award-winning former administrator and teacher, as well as post-secondary teaching faculty. He is the co-founder of Jigsaw Learning and co-author of Collaborative Response: Three Foundational Components That Transform How We Respond to the Needs of Learners (Corwin, 2022). Kurtis works with districts and schools nationally and internationally to establish Collaborative Response frameworks and interacts with thousands of educators each year.

If you care about MTSS, intervention systems, or building-level leadership, this episode will shift how you think about team meetings and collaboration.

In this interview, we discuss:

✅ Why the Collaborative Team Meeting framework helps educators move from between “talking about students” to making strategic, forward progress that changes school-wide practice

✅ How structured documents before, during, and after meetings create clarity and accountability and psychological safety

✅ How to capture action items in real time and encourage innovative thinking

✅ Why the Collaborative Team Meeting requires specific roles, and how these roles determine whether a meeting moves forward or feels like busywork

Listen in here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/ep-257-how-to-go-from-talking-about-students-to-changing-school-systems-with-kurtis-hewson/

When schools talk about improving engagement, student wellness, or school climate, it often turns into assemblies, themed weeks, or standalone initiatives.

When schools talk about community engagement, student wellness, or school climate, they often turn into assemblies, themed weeks, or standalone initiatives.

In this episode, I invited Lauren Porosoff from The Teacher Nerd to unpack why a focus on engagement and wellness must be woven into the daily fabric of the school experience to have lasting impact.

Lauren is an educational consultant who helps schools design learning environments where community values like equity, empathy, and creativity emerge from the instruction itself. She was a teacher for 18 years, most recently at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York. She’s taught the 2nd, 5th, 6th, and 7th grades, mostly in English and history, and has also served as a diversity coordinator, a grade dean, and a leader of curricular initiatives. Lauren develops tools and protocols that transform the psychological experience of school for teachers and students. She’s developed applications in instructional design, social-emotional learning, professional development, and anti-bias action.

In this conversation, we discuss:

✅ What “compensatory programs” mean in the context of wellness, belonging, and community engagement.

✅ Why one-off events and initiatives aren’t sufficient for supporting student mental health and well-being.

✅ How to embed protective factors like connection into instruction and routines.

✅ The impact of technology on engagement and agency (plus a writing example)

You can listen to the episode here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/ep-256-student-wellness-is-a-design-decision-not-a-siloed-activity-with-lauren-porosoff/

In episode 255 of De Facto Leaders, I elaborate on the concept of using vocabulary as a large “container”, so you can design sessions efficiently without sacrificing quality.

I talk about why more experienced clinicians often struggle to make their interventions scalable, and why this gets in the way of carryover.

I also share the five “containers” I use in my Language Therapy Advance Foundations program that can support skills like reading, writing, spelling, and language processing in ways that can be reinforced outside sessions.

If you have a ton of knowledge relating to language and executive functioning, but don’t know how to organize it into a cohesive system…

If you’re getting results in sessions, but it takes a ton of effort on your part and consumes all your capacity…

If you’re able to scaffold and model “on-the-fly”, but struggle to explain your techniques to others so they can replicate them…

Then you’ll find this concept of “containers” really useful.

You can listen here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/ep-255-five-clinical-containers-to-design-your-language-therapy-system/

Many experienced SLPs think they just need to plan better.

Tweak the activity.

Adjust the visuals.

Try a new printable or protocol.

But what if none of that is the real problem?

What if your sessions are already so skillful that no one else can reinforce what you're doing?

🧠 What if the very clinical decision-making that gets you results is the thing preventing generalization?

In episode 254 of De Facto leaders, I share the top three pieces of unconventional advice I give SLPs when they’re designing their language therapy system.

It’s not just about what you should do, but about what you SHOULDN’T do

You can listen to the episode here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/ep-254-three-pieces-of-unconventional-advice-i-give-slps/

“Education isn’t a business” is a thing people say when they’re upset about how the school systems are being run.

But education actually IS a business. Saying otherwise isn't going to change reality.
If you’re frustrated about how the school systems work, you can continue to wish this wasn’t the case…

Or you can accept how things actually are an+d learn what to do about it.
In this podcast episode, I share how that looks for school clinicians supporting language and cognition.

In the episode, I share:

✅ Why people who have no classroom experience get hired into educational leadership positions.

✅ Why good teachers or clinicians struggle when they get into school leadership, even if they were amazing at working with students.

✅ The “business” skill you can learn that will boost generalization beyond your language therapy sessions.

Listen in here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/ep-253-education-is-a-business-lets-stop-pretending-it-isnt/

While virtual learning has become more prevalent since 2020, the founders of Banyan Global Learning have been offering digital learning experiences for over 20 years.

Some people are excited about the possibilities technology offers. Others are backpedaling or worrying that tech does more harm than good.

Like most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

The outcomes depend on how experiences (both virtual and in-person) are designed and how learners are asked to engage.

Passive consumption rarely leads to meaningful learning, but well-structured virtual experiences can support problem solving, perspective-taking, and authentic connection across contexts.

Not as a replacement to in-person experiences, but as an additional option to provide opportunities that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

That’s why I invited Seth Fleischauer to De Facto Leaders to talk about how to use virtual field trips to connect with peers and learn about cultures and experiences worldwide.

Seth Fleischauer is the President of Banyan Global Learning, which he founded in 2008 after teaching elementary school with NYC Teaching Fellows. Banyan pioneered daily international EFL distance learning and has since expanded to train teachers and educate K-12 students across three continents. His programs focus on teaching digital and cultural competencies through a global lens and have delivered over 40,000 live teaching sessions. Seth has also hosted over 100 podcast episodes, including Make It Mindful and Why Distance Learning?

Listen to the episode here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/ep-252-a-case-for-well-designed-virtual-field-trips-with-seth-fleischauer/

Lack of generalization is a problem for many SLPs and other related service providers, even for experienced clinicians who are great at scaffolding within sessions with students.

But it shows up way more in areas like language and executive functioning. Especially social executive functioning.

Listen to my conversation with Seth Fleischauer in episode 75 of the Make It Mindful podcast to learn why-plus how to solve this problem: https://makeitmindful.transistor.fm/episodes/75-scale-impact-without-burning-out-executive-functioning-part-3-with-karen-dudek-brannan

Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning | #75 Systems Thinking for Clinical Impact with Karen Dudek-Brannan What happens when the “direct service” model—pull-out support, isolated practice, and heroic effort—doesn’t translate into real independence for students in real classrooms?In this episode, Seth Fl...

When I first started working in the schools in the early 2000s, there was a push for integrating technology into classrooms and therapy sessions

It was even a box that got checked on my employee evaluation.

Now there’s a defined space referred to as “EdTech”.

It took me a while to realize that this was a thing, and I didn’t even realize I was a part of it until someone referred to me as the “EdTech person” during a job interview (they were “FinTech” people, short for “Financial Technology”).

In the work I do now creating a caseload management system, I often think about how important it is to define who the intended user of technology is. In product development, we refer to this as the “end user”.

Sometimes the end user is an administrator pulling analytics or managing the budget.

Sometimes it’s a teacher or clinician collecting data, managing a schedule, tracking referrals, or trying to reduce the administrative burden of their jobs so they can focus on human connection instead of paperwork.

Sometimes it’s a professional providing virtual therapy to students to increase access to services.
And sometimes, the end user is the student.

When we think about how technology is helping or hurting education, we have to look at each of these verticals separately.

A common answer I get when I talked to district leaders about technology is this:

“We know technology has caused problems and is often poorly utilized. But what we were doing before wasn’t working either.”

We had service deserts where therapy wasn’t accessible.

There were clinicians spending hours on paperwork or data collection.

We had administrators without the data they needed to evaluate what’s working or manage fiscal resources.

That’s why I wanted to have a conversation about how technology is being used, and what is and isn’t working.

I invited Maura Connor from BetterSpeech on to this episode to start the conversation.

Listen to the episode here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/ep-250-defining-edtech-and-the-end-user-with-maura-connor/