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SLP Matt Guggemos brings his insights from jazz improvisation to his language work with students on the spectrum.
Name: Matthew Guggemos, MS, CCC-SLP
Position: Speech-language pathologist, Vallejo (Calif.) Unified School District; drummer for miRthkon
Hometown: Lansing, Mich.
Improvisation-we all know it's used in music, acting and business. But it's also imperative for communication, points out school-based speechlanguage pathologist Matthew Guggemos. In fact, the concept of improvisation is very much behind InnerVoice, the communication app he built for helping students with autism spectrum disorder. The app is based directly on his patent for interactive video self-modeling, which won the 2013 Mensa Research and Education Intellectual Benefit to Society Award.
"Everyone who speaks a language fluently improvises in some way- you have to access the vocabulary set and then apply the rules and the context," says Guggemos. "But the context is always changing. Kids with ASD don't naturally get that, and that's where we can step in and help them."
And who better to teach improvisation than Guggemos? An accomplished jazz drummer who has played with Branford Marsalis and Eric Alexander, and now tours with his band, miRthkon, Guggemos has taken a career path that hasn't exactly been what you would call "planned." In fact, having a career was probably the farthest thing from his mind...