De Facto Leaders
On the De Facto Leaders podcast, host Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan helps pediatric therapists and educators become better leaders, so they can make a bigger impact with their services. With over 15 years of experience supporting school-age kids with diverse learning needs, Dr. Karen shares up-to-date evidence-based practices, her own experiences and guest interviews designed to help clinicians, teachers, and aspiring school leaders feel more confident in the way they serve their students and clients. She’ll cover a range of topics designed to help you support students' emotional and academic growth and set kids up for success in adulthood, including how to support language, literacy, executive functioning, and how to help IEP teams working together to support kids across the day. Whether you want to learn more effective strategies for your therapy session or classroom, be a more influential leader on your team, or find creative ways to use your skills to advance in your career, Dr. Karen has you covered.
Show episodes
In this episode, we dive into the often-overlooked art of writing clear, measurable goals for executive functioning. Unlike other academic or functional goals, executive functioning focuses on internal processes—making it harder to quantify and observe. Whether you're a teacher, therapist, or part of a school team, t
FAQs: Task-based goals vs. strategy goals, scaffolding for semantics and syntax, and going from decontextualized to contextualized
This session is a Q & A I did in the Language Therapy Advance Foundations member’s group relating to how to support students through semantic study and working on complex syntax. I addressed the following FAQs: “How do I help students who struggle to define and describe words without making them prompt-dependent?” “Ho
Making professional development and programming goals meaningful (with John Mihalyo)
Having someone observe your therapy room or classroom can feel awkward; whether it’s your boss doing your evaluation, or whether it’s a special service provider who’s supporting students in your class. When I’ve talked with administrators and service providers about classroom observations, they say it can be a learning
Failure to launch, screen addiction, and preparing kids for life after high school (with Michael McLeod)
Many young adults enter their post-high school years without the executive functioning skills needed to thrive. This is often because the people supporting them underestimate the amount of support they’re getting, and there’s no plan in place to fade that prompting. When young adults enter college, they have to manag
For episode 206 of De Facto Leaders, I share a Q & A session where I discuss Reading Recovery and cueing strategies for decoding, and I make some recommendations for additional information that will give you more information on this topic. I also share what you can do if you're in a district that uses Fountas and Pinne
Using the essential 5 to build vocabulary and syntax in secondary school (with Amy Baugh)
Today I’m sharing an interview I did with Amy Baugh, a member of Language Therapy Advance Foundations. Amy Baugh is an experienced SLP, a life-long learner and truly enjoys listening to podcasts, joining SLP groups on social media and collaborating with her besties about all things’ speech, language and being a busine