SCSD Assistant Professor Shannon Hall-Mills recently presented at the 2021 Long Island Speech-Language-Hearing Association Conference. She spoke to CCI regarding the presentation, see below for her insight:

Dr. Hall-Mills provided a two-part, full day presentation for speech-language pathologists working with school-age children and adolescents. The first part addressed the language and literacy needs of elementary students with language disorders while the second part focused on supporting students in secondary grades. Throughout the presentation, Dr. Hall-Mills addressed the theory and evidence supporting the combination of literacy and speech-language foci in therapy with school-age children with a focus on curriculum-relevant therapy for students in kindergarten through grade twelve. She included an overview of two types of academic vocabulary intervention and shared the methods and results from two cohorts of children and adolescents who had completed her TEXT-MAPS intervention for expository reading comprehension (TEXT-MAPS = Teaching Expository Text Management and Proficiency Skills for Comprehension). Participants reviewed and discussed case examples and engaged in activities to help them plan their implementation of evidence-based approaches within their own caseloads.

For many participants, their interaction with fellow scholars has been limited in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Hall-Mills spoke to CCI regarding the importance of this conference: “For all of the participants, the LISHA Conference was their first face to face interaction with their peers in a continuing education setting for two years due to the pandemic,” she said. “They were incredibly grateful and excited to be together again. In fact, the theme of the conference, “Together Again”, really spoke to the prevalent feeling we all had that day. We have all the best technology available to stay connected virtually, but that face to face time has a unique value that we cannot seem to fully replicate online. Coming together to learn on a topic of shared interest gives participants a chance to receive validation on the things that are working well and encouragement and resources to change it up when and where they can. These events are also helpful to researchers, because it helps us know where our work is most applicable and motivates us to continue working on behalf of these therapists and their students.”

Dr. Hall-Mills has a variety of research interests, primarily focusing on oral and written language development and disorders in school-age children and adolescents and school-based practices in speech-language pathology. In addition to teaching, she currently serves as the Director of the SPEAR lab and is the Immediate Past President of the Florida Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists. To read more about Dr. Hall-Mills and her work, visit https://directory.cci.fsu.edu/shannon-hall-mills/