Employee Spotlight Series
Maya Edelman, SLP
At Cheshire Fitness Zone (CFZ) our goal is to help children and adolescents of all ages feel confident in growing their abilities through therapeutic programs that strengthen and teach new skills for use in everyday life.
Services include: Physical Therapy (PT), Occupational Therapy (OT) and Speech Therapy (ST).
Our monthly, “Employee Spotlight Series,” offers a chance to meet members of the team and learn about their experience working with children.
Maya is a Speech-Language Pathologist here at Cheshire Fitness Zone. Going into grad school, Maya did not think she would work with kids but after being introduced to working with them at the clinic she worked at in grad school, there was no turning back!
Find out how everything has turned out with Maya working with kids being it was not her original intent. We love having her here at CFZ.
“A typical day working at Cheshire Fitness Zone is very busy. We have a lot of kids back to back and they range from, my case load, from 18 months all the way up to 10 years but we see up to 21 years. When I am not working with kids, I’m consulting with Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists, talking to scheduling, calling pediatricians, other providers, so there is always something going on to keep me on my toes.”
“How did I know I wanted to work with kids? So I went to grad school initially thinking I would never work with kids, only adults, and then I was introduced to working with kids in the clinic in grad school, and then I did my clinical with kids and I knew there was no turning back. I just love how its unpredictable and I get so many different ages and how fun and flexible kids are. It is just something different everyday and I love it.”
“My favorite part about my job is definitely working with families. I love that this is an environment that not only do I get to work with the kids but I also get the parents involved. I see so much more progress and carry over when they work on the same goals at home and its really great how it is such a communal effort to make progress with the children. I also like that I not only work with myself but I work with other speech therapists, I can consult with them if I am not sure and I get to co-treat with OT and PT, so its really a nice environment where we can all treat together.”
“Three words that describe me; the first one is definitely innovative because…kids are all different. They all have different needs, sometimes one thing that works for someone else, doesn’t work for another child. So I’m constantly researching and talking to other people about different ways I can approach every goal. Another word would be flexible, kids are unpredictable and sometimes they’re having a great day, sometimes they’re having a bad day, sometimes they’re being silly, so I have to be flexible and kind of roll with the punches. The last word is definitely caring: I care for these kids and their families like they’re my own and I treat them like that too so definitely those would be the three words.”
“So over the next ten years, I definitely want to continue to expand my workshops that I do for parents. I am currently doing, Hanen: It Takes Two To Talk for Parents of Children with Language Delays. I am going to get trained in March for the Autism specific program for parents and I really love how much outreach we can do so I just want to keep offering workshops for often.”