Meet Ellen Lunz, SLP
May is Better Hearing and Speech Month—just ask any of the students or staff members at Courtenay Language Arts Center in Chicago, Illinois. All of them are aware of the importance of communication, hearing, and speech, thanks to the efforts of Speech-Language Pathologist Ellen Lunz. For the third year in a row, Lunz is organizing and leading a series of special events at the school to help her colleagues and students understand the impact that hearing and speech have on their lives.
Courtenay is a busy prekindergarten-through-sixth-grade school on Chicago’s north side. Nearly half of the students have special needs, and most of the classrooms are inclusive. In addition, about 80 percent of Courtenay students speak Spanish, and some 50 other languages are represented as well.
All of this keeps Lunz on the go. She sees a caseload of 95 students every week, and works with two other speech specialists, one English speaking and the other bilingual in Spanish. Her days consist of leading classroom groups, working one-on-one with students whose needs are more severe, and consulting with teachers and parents.
Speech bulletin board at the school
Finding time for special activities
In the midst of all of this, she somehow finds time to organize activities at Courtenay to mark Better Hearing and Speech Month. With 23 years of service in the Chicago School District, 13 of them at Courtenay, Lunz is a senior staff member at the school. Three years ago, she took the initiative to build awareness with her colleagues and students. Now, she leads an annual in-service for the staff, writes articles for the school paper, educates students, faculty, and parents through bulletin board displays, and organizes a poster contest for the entire student body.
Students look forward to participating in the contest. Lunz spends four months collecting pictures, assembling a library of thousands of images related to speech, hearing, and communications. Students use the pictures to create their own posters illustrating the ways their lives are affected by these skills. “This year we have two age categories-one just for our youngest students,” says Lunz, noting the way her activities have grown in just a few years.
Student posters are put on display for their parents to see at Courtenay’s spring open house, so that parents are also learning about Better Hearing and Speech Month. Then, every poster (with the student’s name hidden on a tag on the back) is displayed for the school’s faculty. “I bring the Dunkin’ Donuts and they judge the posters,” says Lunz.
Student winners receive a ribbon and a prize. Their pictures are taken and published in the school paper.
A speech poster on the Speech Room door
Seeing the results-these activities work!
In the time that Lunz has organized activities for Better Hearing and Speech Month, she has been able to see the effect of her effort. There is a higher rate of referrals from the teaching staff—all of whom attend her in-service presentations and help judge the student poster contest. And the referrals she gets are appropriate, identifying students who can benefit from intervention with a Speech-Language specialist.
Thanks to the efforts of Ellen Lunz, the word is getting out in Chicago—it’s important to understand speech and hearing and their effects on students!
For more information on Better Hearing and Speech Month, including public service announcements, press releases, and more, go to: http://professional.asha.org/resources/bhs_main.cfm
