This was a lot of fun! We were invited to come to talk to students of the Stuttering and Fluency Graduate Course at La Salle University on Tuesday, March 17. This is a regular event that Dr Barbara Amster has been hosting for her class for many years and this year she is joined by Dr Mitchel Trichon, a new teacher at La Salle who also happens to be a member of our chapter.
I have participated in the panel for the last five years and I’ve always enjoyed talking to the students and catch up with some of the other panel members that have become regulars (Shaun, we missed you today!). Usually we sit in front of the class and answer the students’ questions, offering different perspectives on a topic or talking about our experiences.
This year we started introducing ourselves and talking about our experience with therapy and how we’ve handled our stuttering. Afterwards, the students broke up into seven groups and each of the panel members talked to one group at a time, rotating every ten minutes. As a person who stutters, I felt more comfortable in the new format because I was talking to 5 or 6 persons that were very close to me at eye level, rather than being at the bottom of the classroom facing up to 35-40 people that had their eyes focused on me. So, just to start, it was a lot easier and less threatening to talk to the students that way. We were just having a casual conversation and I was more relaxed.
I was asked often about stuttering in different languages and the difference between therapy methods in Spain vs the US. They also asked about my childhood experiences, my involvement with the NSA, difficult situations, what I found helpful about therapy (or not), and many other topics. I also asked them about their classroom exercise to go out and pretend that they stuttered.
By the end of the two hours I had been talking non-stop and I was very tired and at the same time very happy to have been able to share so much with the students. It was very exhilarating and a lot of fun. I was disappointed that there wasn’t more time, I felt that I had a lot more to say and wanted to continue to talk longer. There is always next year.