At the last meeting,we talked a little about the grad students from Cal State Fullerton who often attend our group. These same students also often attend the Riverside group & the North Orange County group. We talked about just how much, if anything, these students add to our group. I think they get more from us than we do from them. One member of our group mentioned that we never get back the results of various forms we fill out for the students. They attend our group at the direction of Dr. Tsao, the department head, to get course credits. They're not coming out of their own free will. Cal State Fullerton's speech department doesn't have a specialty in stuttering. The students there can take one undergrad course & one grad course in I believe what is called "Fluency Disorders", & these may be electives. So, most or all of them are not going to go on to be SLPs focusing on stuttering. I've always had mixed feelings about the students attending NSA groups. They're friendly & pleasant enough, but the groups don't really flow the same as when they're not there. I don't feel as "natural" as I do when they're not there. If we're going to keep allowing them to attend our groups, we should try as much as possible to conduct the groups as if they weren't there. The students should be neutral observers & not participate in our activities. Taking time at the end of a group to field their questions may be of some value as far as educating them for possible use in their careers, but even this takes away from our time at the meetings. Again, most or none of them will become SLP's who treat stutterers exclusively, although they may encounter stutterers at times. I don't think that a planned activity of a group should ever be cancelled or cut short for the sake of the students. The suggestion was made that we hold an extra meeting (each month?) with just the students in mind. This at first sounded like a good idea to me, but on second thought I don't think it would work. It's tough enough already to get enough members to come to our regular meetings. If there were another meeting just to accommodate the students, the turnout would be very low. Also, it could reduce the turnout at our regular meetings - who can go to 3 meetings a month? I suggest we allow the students to come to ONE of our meetings each of their semesters. This would come to two meetings a year. Either that or just not have them come at all. Comments?
