Last Tuesday, members from the Philadelphia, South Jersey and Atlantic chapters participated in the Panel of People Who Stutter at La Salle University. This panel is part of the curriculum for the Speech Language Pathologist Graduate Program. It is a great opportunity for us to educate future SLPs on what it means to be a person who stutters.

This year the panel took place online but it was as fun and engaging as it ever was in person. The students had a lot of questions and we ran out of time to answer more.

I received the following message from the professor, Dr James Mancinelli:

“The students are still raving about the panel experience.  Their comments include praise for the panel members’ courage and growth that developed through self-help groups like yours.  They now see how a self-help model like the NSA’s facilitates social involvement, communicative confidence, and authenticity among its members.  One student commented, “The panel brought it all together for me.  Now I get it.”  They have been listening to me blab on since January but it wasn’t until the panel experience did they connect stuttering with real people living real lives.

On a personal note, I want to thank you for your flexibility and willingness to participate in the clinical education of our students. The benefits they reaped are immeasurable.”

Thank you very much to Katherine Filer, Maria Turner, Jim McFarlane, Mykia Daniels and Nick Bruno for sharing their experiences and feelings with the students. We hope that activities like this will help broaden their understanding about stuttering and make them better clinicians.