Traveling Cart for SLPs in the Time of COVID-19

I don’t know about you, SLP friends, but I feel like I am having to re-think everything that I am used to for the 2020-2021 school year!  While I am preparing to head back next week to a hybrid in-person and remote learning schedule, I know that we need to be prepared to go fully remote at any time.

For my in-person sessions, we have quite a few more restrictions than in previous years.  Some factors to consider include the fact that we all need to wear masks and we need to keep as much physical distance between adults and students as possible.  We also need to reduce the amount of materials shared with students to ones we can clean, and we need to limit travel within the building.

After pondering this, I came up with an idea for a “speech therapy” cart!  My district was able to find the funding for these pieces from Amazon, but it would make a good Donor’s Choose project as well.  (Psst:  Need tips on writing a successful grant application?  Check out my blog post here.)

I wanted something that could travel easily between classrooms and that could be easily sanitized.  I envision going between classrooms, and getting one student to work with at a time in the hallway for short speech-language therapy sessions.  (Our hallway traffic is another thing that has to be limited this year, which will help with privacy.)  I think this will work especially well for students working on articulation, and I will likely need to go to the “speedy speech” or five-minute approach for my in person sessions.  (I anticipate having to do at least one remote session with students every week, since each student will only be at school two days per week in our current plan.)

Here is what I found from Amazon (affiliate links provided).

• Plastic 2 Flat Shelf Service Cart – I like this one because it has a flat top, which is easier to use like a table top, and that there was enough storage underneath.

• Protective Sneeze Guard for Counters and Desks – This fits the cart nicely, and has a small pass through on the bottom that I can send my iPad through as needed.

• Yaheetech Plastic Stack Stools – I can fit two of these easily under the cart, so both my student and I have a place to sit.  I also like that they are plastic and easy to sanitize as needed.

It’s not a perfect solution (is there such a thing in 2020?!?), but I think it will be very helpful for in person speech-language therapy sessions this year!  Let me know in a comment below if you have any other suggestions!

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