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From: Dorothy J. ("D.J.") Williams (Dave's wife)
Date: 10 Oct 2008
Time: 06:33:36 -0500
Remote Name: 71.228.93.115
I very much enjoyed the article. I spent my entire speech pathology career in the schools. I used many of the approaches mentioned here. The DeKalb County IL speech therapists had a monthly meeting at which another Wendell Johnson-trained speech therapist and I answered questions and made suggestions to the others about stuttering therapy, I shared the mimeographed material that I used. One technique I used not mentioned in the article was monitoring past stuttering clients as they went into middle school. I sent a note to key teachers asking them to listen to a child's speech. I did not identify the child as a stutterer. If the teacher noticed disfluency, I would talk to the student and on rare occasions, schedule him at the N. Il. Univ. speech clinic under my husband Dave's supervision. These contacts usually did not take extensive therapy. With preschool screening in our county my stuttering caseload was light. I felt joy when I got to start a new stutterer because I knew that even though not all of them would become fluent speakers, I would be able to help all of them. One symptom which my kids never developed was fear of the telephone if they stayed in one of my schools from kindergarten through fifth grade. (I'm Dave Williams and I approve this message.)