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Our Top 10 Worst Speech Room Locations!

It’s that time of year again when we start to wonder about where we will be located next year – will you be staying put in your existing speech room or will you be relocated?  Today we are having a (not too serious!!) look at our top 10 worst speech room locations!

Top 10 Worst Speech Room Locations!

Unfortunately sometimes, us SLPs are not top-of-the-list when it comes to allocating classrooms and SLPs all over the country have been placed into less than desirable conditions on many occasions – here are our top 10 of the absolute worst speech room situations!:

#10. Basement Room: A cold, damp unfinished underground room, lacking light – your students would just love coming down here, right?!  But in some schools, this is the ony space that can be found!

#9. A Through-Room:  Ever been placed into one of these?  A room that links two main rooms or corridors and people constantly use it as a short-cut.  It would be difficult to concentrate on therapy with people  frequently passing by!

#8. Art Storage Room: This is a frequent location for SLPs!  Tucked away amonst the paint and art supplies, we can be found trying to squeeze our resources in on top of everything else!  If you’re lucky, it might be a little bit ‘artsy’ in decor, but not likely!

#7. Gym Storage Room: Another popular spot for us to be located!  With a gym store, you are likely to be close to the gym and therefore have noise to worry about as well as the lack of space and sharing storage with others – imagine trying to work with students while a game is going on next door with cheering and shouting!

#6. Book Closet:  At least in a book closet you will have plenty of reading resources close to hand!  But not much space, or light, or storage – not likely to be very much opportunity for your decor either – bookshelves everywhere…

#5. Cleaners Closet: This would be similar to the book closet in some ways, but clear distinction between the cleaners storage space and yours will need to be set out from the start – you don’t need any nasty chemical cleaning solutions popping up amongst your resources!

#4. Disused Toilet: So they are having problems finding a place to put you – and some bright spark decides that the disused toilet would make a good spot!  Remove the toilet and maybe the hand basin, but it’s still a tiny space that is likely to be cold and have no natural light – and probably have tiled floor and walls – making it feel colder and sterile.  You will need to get very creative!

#3. Hallway:  Yes – if you are a day-a-week SLP, then you may find yourself landed in the hallway!  Far from ideal – imagine the distractions, the noise, the lack of order and privacy – you would need to invent easily portable screens to demarkate a space for yourself!

#2. Janitors Store: Tucked away in some remote part of the school building, you will not be too easy for students to find!  And when they do arrive to your dimly lit and dull room, they will be greeted by the aroma of cut grass and fuel, mixed in with a greasy workshop smell – hmmm, maybe not the impression you had wanted to make…!!

#1. The Boiler Room:  This has to be the all-time worst location for your speech room – in fact I’d say that if you were located here, you would move your sessions outside on dry days!  Imagine the noise and the smell!  A boiler room wouldn’t have much in the way of light or finishes either! A huge decor challenge, not for the faint-hearted!

Maybe, before you began to read our top ten, you were stressing out about the details and touches for your classroom decor this year – but now that you’ve been reminded of some of the awful places that others have to work in, you realize that you’re blessed to only have the worries you do!  And if you’re someone who has to face working in a situation like one of our Top 10 Worst…, then fear not, we will be putting up a post about organization in a small space over the next few weeks to give you a few tips!

If you have been located in an odd place for your speech room, or consider yours to be worthy of a ‘worst speech room’ mention, then let us know about it, we’d love to hear from you!

 

PS  You might also like to read…

… Following up on last weeks post on the top 10 worst speech room locations, today we are bringing you our top tips on how to best decorate a small speech room!  If you happen to be in a small space like one of those we mentioned last week, or something similar, then read on to find how to make the best of it….Read more…

…Whether you work in the public or private sector, budget is always a factor when it comes to decorating. Today we are starting a little 5-week series giving you our Top 5 Tips for decorating your speech room or class room on a budget to give you the inspiration to get started on your room redo – whatever your budget…Read more…

 

 

 

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  1. Debbie Reynolds says

    When I was working in the NYC, I was in a “converted” bathroom. I unfortunately didn’t have the sink or urinals removed, but at least the urinals were boxed up. It actually would have been neat to have a sink, however this one did not work and just took up space. Fitting me and 8 high school boys in this tiny room must have been a sight for anyone passing by. At times I had to sit on my desk to squeeze everyone in. Tried to express this was a fire hazard, but they only moved me when the principal came in my room one day and left soaking wet since it was so hot.

  2. Joan Pasqua says

    Ok so I’ve been in numbers 8 and 2. Actually, 8 was a storage room for all school supplies. Full of metal shelves , no windows or air vent. These days, it has been transformed into a really nice music room with bright colors and air conditioning!! Of course, my perfect room is next door…..
    I was also in 2, what was referred to as the ‘Garbage’ room! I had all the fuel smells after lawn cutting and snow blowing. Yuck! That was about 30 years ago. I never forgot how much fun that was….

  3. Jodi Kobernick says

    My first school-based speech room was in a very small confessional! The charter school I was working for was housed in an old catholic high school building. I had a nice small stained glass window on my front door, but it went down hill from there!! An added bonus was the family of giant cockroaches that would frequently visit – maybe to confess their sins?! (They never told me…)

    • I have had a few not so hot spots. One was an old used storage room with no light.other than tiny windows at the top that nobody could reach to open, no A/C on the second floor of a very OLD building in Florida…similar to what a sauna would be like. Another was in the corner of a conference room where meetings would frequently take place, so id be asked to move into the main hallway with high volunes of traffic whike trying to work with kids on the spectrum.

  4. All of the above except the unused toilet situation. I guess I should be thankful!

  5. SweetMelissa says

    I have done therapy in all of these except the basement. There are not too many of those around in my area. Can we also add *outside under a pavilion in the rain at a school *water heater office

  6. My first year, I was in the Teacher’s Lounge, through which the teachers had to pass to reach the teachers’ restroom. A least I was close to the microwave, refrigerator, and coffee pot. My Second Year, I was in The Book Storage Room, which was located next to the Learning Center’s one and only toilet. The sink for said toilet–which flushes for 2 full minutes (in spite of repeated referrals to the plumber)– was in my room. You had to go through my room to get to the toilet. This past year I had MY OWN ROOM, with windows, a 5 shelf book case, a round table, and a closet with shelves and a door that locks! There was some talk about moving me this coming year since the School Counselor needs group room. We worked it out, however. She gets the book storage room…with ALL the book relocated and the toilet being declared non-functional and off limits. She will have use of my room when I am not there. At my other school I have a good-sized room that I share with the Councilor and the School Psychologist. None of us are there on the same days. I am truly blessed!

  7. I have been in an elevator shaft, janitors closet with a dripping faucet, and a small, short hallway to the boiler room with a shower curtain as a door…

  8. I spent all of last year in a closet-it stored old computers, a large format printer, office supplies, old records and some cleaning supplies. It didn’t have heat, so we would turn on the space heater and all crowd around it to keep warm during our arctic winter. Sometimes my fingers would go numb. Also, there was no table just a desk pushed to the side of the wall and the students had to sit on broken rolling chairs that were stored in the closet.

  9. I’ve been in 5,6,7,8 & 10 to attempt to assess kids. The room for gym storage is the worst cuz of the noise. A psychologist had to stop using a cleaning storage room this year because the student she was testing had watering eyes from an open solution that was making her eyes sting. Health and safety finally told the school it could not be used for student interactions. A colleague has frequently been in an old girls’ change room, which is like #4.

    Probably the worst part about many of these is noise or being isolated with the kids. I now refuse to work in a room that compromises me and the child (e.g. No window) just to protect myself from any potential allegations! Also, I’ve gotten to the point in my career that if one of those sorts of rooms is the only option and I don’t feel it’s safe or appropriate, I just say I need a different space or I can’t see kids. It’s not worth it if my assessment results are useless because of noise or, more importantly, if people aren’t safe.

  10. Lori Brasel says

    One year I traveled to another site part time and had the choice of either the built-in concession stand or the art supply room with the kiln. I chose the art supply room because it at least had some windows. Pretty dusty and cold when the kiln wasn’t in use. We wore our coats in the winter. The next year I was moved up to a pre-fab storage room. At least they tried to find me space. Lol.

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