Empowering learners

Without adequate communication skills, it’s nearly impossible to learn. With that understanding in mind, Jessie Shypkowski – the new South Heart speech and language pathologist – is assisting more than 40 students of varying degrees of acumen how best to grow while facilitating their learning processes.
“I just have found a passion to help people communicate and the subject really delves pretty deep into more than just language,” Shypkowski said. “It looks into how people are able to understand you, and there’s just so many different levels of it that I enjoy being able to support individuals with it for their benefit.”
Shypkowski graduated from Nova University – which is located in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. – with most of her education being completed online for her graduate degree. Before that, she was a teacher with Dickinson Public Schools following her bachelor’s-degree education at Utah State University, which also was completed mostly online, and all that education has come in handy for her new role.
“There is a range of communication disorders, speech language impairments, so it can go anywhere from looking at articulation errors – that might be a student that is really hard to understand – so you help them make sure that their pronunciation of speech sounds is correct to help align the support for those communication needs,” Shypkowski said. “There’s also, on the other end of it, when a student is completely non-verbal due to specific diagnoses such as autism, and that might look like incorporating what’s called an augmentative device, and that might look like an iPad that has words for the child, but they’re able to manipulate it to portray their message so that even though they’re nonverbal, they still have a voice.”
It’s a fascinating field for Shypkowski, and she sees many opportunities and mechanisms within it to assist her students in innumerable ways, from “kinesthetic learning,” visuals and other ways to “provide services so that I can get them the best communication, support, and scaffolding that they require,” she said, while adding that the field is edifying and where she sees herself for a very long time.
“It’s really fun when you see them day-to-day, but to look back at the progress and to see where they started, and I have one student that started nonverbal, but is beginning to imitate words, and she’s in the fifth grade,” Shypkowski said. “So, it’s really cool to be able to watch that unfold in front of me, of her becoming vocal and being able to verbalize.”
Ironically enough, the Dickinson native is married to another “Jesse,” which makes things interesting in their household and amongst their friends, and the former DHS tennis athlete wanted to stay close to home in North Dakota. The Shypkowskis have two children – Maizy, 6, and Brooks, 5 – but they live closer to South Heart on land Jessie grew up on with her family as Maizy is a Kindergartner at South Heart Public School.
“Our goal was to just kind of take a step back and really prioritize a smaller community, but also give family time for us,” she added.
On a professional level, she maintains a direct and daily line of communication with the students’ parents and stays current on any developments in her field.
“I first look at where standards are for state specific standards, and then I incorporate any continued education that I can find that relates to the population that I am working with,” Shypkowski said. “Right now, we have about 40 on our caseload, but with how tight-knit South Heart is and how on top of it our teachers are, we have kids that are on our radar that we’re able to hop into the classroom to make sure that everybody is on track with that, and we’re just constantly looking at how we can help students.”
Regardless, the classroom is where Shypkowski says she belongs, and there always remains more work to be done on the student’s behalf.
“My passion is really being in the trenches with the students, just supporting them in that way,” she added. “Just being able to advocate for these students, especially those that are nonverbal is important, and I really enjoy putting forth creativity to help it not just be like therapy; it’s something that they’re going to be able to generalize into their school curriculum and in their everyday life.”
It’s also crucial for speech/language pathologists to discern between visual learning and that “kinesthetic” method, which she said, “Is just more of like a hands-on learning, and so that might be where they’re sounding out or writing a word, or as they’re sounding out a word, writing the word and being able to visualize it, write it, and have different modalities of how they can input that information.”
Many of the sessions are individual, but the students sometimes get to join age-related groups of the different skill levels. That takes a significant degree of flexibility, and one Shypkowski works at daily and gets easier over time.
“I try and keep the lines of communication open with the students and parents, and we do have yearly meetings where we sit down and we look at where the student is presently with their goals and I try and keep that communication open for that,” Shypkowski said. “I also try – depending on where the skill level is – and send home weekly slips of what we’re working on, and then I send home like flashcards or activities that you can do at home to supplement their abilities.”
For more information about South Heart Public School, and all their activities, please keep reading the Billings County Pioneer and/or visit their website at www.southheart.k12.nd.us. Please see the Billings County Pioneer’s Facebook page for more photo-galleries and videos.