I’m Tawna. After completing a degree in Modern Languages, I qualified as a Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) back in 2014, after completing the postgraduate course at City University, London. Since then, for over a decade, I’ve been working in a range of mainstream secondary schools around the capital, mostly privately, but also for the NHS.
When I got my first job, I quickly realised that I was completely out of my depth and that I knew very little about working with this age group! But after years of experience, taking obscure courses and reading as much as I could on the topic, I finally feel that I know what I’m doing and that I’m serving my students as best as I can.
Since there’s still only a fraction of the information available for this age group as there is for younger children, I wanted to find a way to pass on my knowledge and experience to those who might be in the same position I was before I leave. Starting a blog felt like a way of doing that.
My focus is language disorders, since that’s the main difficulty I have dealt with and have experience in. I wanted to try to answer some common questions on the topic (questions that I, myself, found confusing), and to unpick and clarify a range of issues I feel are relevant to this age group. Some of these posts are more academic, but I’ve tried to keep them as clear as possible.
Others are more personal sounding and reflect my own experiences. Later on, I’d like to share my reflections on intervention ideas and approaches that have had the biggest impact on my practice. This blog is aimed at other SLTs but I hope that anyone with an interest will find something useful here.
If you’d care to hear my story in full, please see my first post, here: https://secondaryschoolslt.wordpress.com/2025/09/16/in-at-the-deep-end/ I’d love to know whether any of these ideas resonate; please feel free to leave a comment.
Also, if you’re a fellow SLT working in mainstream secondary schools, or a parent of a young person with DLD and are interested in sharing your perspective or experience on my blog, please do get in touch with a comment!
Thoughts of a secondary school SLT 