Timothy Zercher 0:00

All right, well, Jacqueline, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for taking time. I'm super excited to learn a little bit about you and your practice today. So, first up, what inspired you to combine your role as a school psychologist, a behavioral specialist, and also a speech therapy?

Jacqueline Lerma 0:15

So I believe they're all integrated, they're all interwined. It is a very interesting perspective as a clinician. I started my career started off in speech therapy, and I quickly knew I wanted a little bit more about the background of other disabilities because I was working with a lot of different children with disabilities. So I wanted to learn more about OCD, ODD, autism, and things like that. So I intentionally did not get my master's in communication sciences and disorders. I went school psychology route because it really opened up the floodgates of a numerous disabilities within the realm of TEA. What is a criteria for meeting special education under TEA guidelines? And it's so interesting because when I'm doing evaluations, my speech hat will spit out right away. Oh, we're doing articulation. There's a little bit of Arctic issues here, or it's pragmatic skills. So I'm probably looking at autism, especially with our higher functioning students, that sometimes it's not a very clear picture. They're very complex case. So it just it's really an interesting, I guess, field to interwine different specialties just so you just have that knowledge and you position yourself as an expert once you continue to gain more licensures under your belt. Yeah. I guess our recommendations, when we're making our recommendations for IEPs, they're so much more detailed because you're looking carefully at, okay, what is a speech component? And you rely heavily on one another with other multidisciplinary team members, but I'm very heavily focused on detailed with recommendations so that parents, when they pick up my evaluation, they're able to understand, oh, this is what she meant. Or if they take my evaluation out outside to an outside practice, they're able to see, oh, okay, this is what she saw in the evaluation. This is what she's recommending. It's a really neat component to have integrating.

Timothy Zercher 2:20

Yeah, so that's the fully integrated approach. So how does that fully integrated approach really produce enhanced outcomes for children? How do you see that? How do you see that all play out?

Jacqueline Lerma 2:34

So you're not going in with a narrow lens, but rather a broad lens. At the end of the day, I think my motto is bridging the gap between students' abilities and achievement. And I mean that with all of my heart. It's a holistic approach. And I'm huge about collaboration. So when I sit on the other side of the table where I'm advocating for parents, I also bring parents up to par and have them understand, okay, this is where the school is coming from. Let's be on the same page. And really breaking down some of the terminology for parents and families because sometimes it's just we use so much acronyms in special education. So having them clearly understand and providing that holistic approach of recommendations. How can we as a family support our students? But also how can us as a school better serve our students in the classroom to achieve or access general education with a least restrictive environment. Some cases we have to go with a more restrictive environment, but we are always going to gear with the least restrictive environment first.

Timothy Zercher 3:45

Absolutely. So that clearer understanding, I imagine, really results in better actual service to both the family and the child at the end of the yeah. So having worked in public school systems as well as private practices, what lessons from each setting have really shaped the way that you approach leadership and program development?

Jacqueline Lerma 4:05

Definitely listening. You have to listen first to team members and parents as well. What is kind of going on? And then you take on the approach, collaborate, consulting with one another. Hey, what do you think about this? Hey, what do you think about that? Where can we meet in the middle to better serve our student? So I think that has been a very crucial component in leadership is listening. What is needed from the team and what is needed from the parents as well.

Timothy Zercher 4:36

Absolutely. Absolutely. That makes complete sense. So at A-Train, we are a behavioral health specialist marketing agency. So we always had to ask some more marketing questions. First up, what is working best for you and your team right now in terms of gaining new clients, gaining new partnerships?

Jacqueline Lerma 4:51

So for Mindbridge, it works a little bit different just because our clients are school districts. And some families do reach out to us through our website or through our Instagram page. But, you know, we go through a whole proposal elaborate component of submitting a proposal to the school districts and indicating, okay, what are our services and providing an executive summary, our pricing and all that. So when we're creating this proposal, I'm very intentional about indicating our specialty. Given that I'm a school psychologist and speech therapist, we'll psychoeducational evaluations, psychological evaluations, but also in the Houston area, being bilingual has been our biggest win. And I can't express that enough to families, to school districts, and even to my own children. Knowing a second language is really going to open up the doors for more opportunities for jobs. Also, being that we specialize in bilingual evaluations, but transpiring true passion for what you do. I really try to show that with my emotions, with my heart, with the way I lead my team, having just showing the school districts, hey, I have a heart for what I do. I love what I do. How can I help you better serve your students? And at the end of the day, I think that speaks louder than your words. Yeah.

Timothy Zercher 6:25

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So last question then. What has been the hardest part about growing your team?

Jacqueline Lerma 6:31

It's funny because in the special education field, specifically here in the Houston area, it's actually a very small world. We all know one another. I've worked with so many evaluators at different districts, and eventually we come across one another's evaluations. An IE was requested for a such and such student. We're back at the RD reconvene table. And guess what? A good friend did the evaluation. So I think the hardest part will have to be, I guess, just not hiring your friends that are working for other districts because it's happened to me where I'm hiring for a particular position, let's say school psychologist, but district that is requesting an IEEE. Well, my school psych work also has another part-time job with another contract company and they work for that content. So it's just a little bit of confliction in that piece, but not saying that it's hard because I can't find professionals or clinicians. It's really not that. It's more so that we're so few in the industry that the need is so big that we're coming across one another.

Timothy Zercher 7:40

Yeah. No, that makes complete sense. That makes complete sense. I'm sure that's almost always a challenge, right? Like that. That'll never go away. The longer you're in the industry, the more you know all the people. So even if you grow, you sort of know everybody.

Jacqueline Lerma 7:51

Definitely.

Timothy Zercher 7:52

Yeah. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for sharing some of your insights and thank you for the work you're doing for a lot of families and children out there.

Jacqueline Lerma 8:00

Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

Timothy Zercher 8:02

Absolutely.