Indiana Speech-Language-Hearing Association

Paige Brown

Paige BrownPaige Brown, MA, CCC-SLP, is a speech pathologist at Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS). This will be her fifth year in the schools and the fourth year doing First Steps early intervention. Paige’s biggest area of interest is augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). She completed a specialty track in AAC during graduate school and has been primarily working in that population during her career. She currently services the high ability academy at IPS, as well as three self-contained autism classrooms in another building. Additional, placement allows her to travel across buildings in the district with the purpose of building capacity for AAC implementation in the classroom. This involves co-treating, educating/demonstrating, and leading in service trainings with SLPs, other therapists, teachers and paraprofessionals. Paige has serviced middle school, the Newcomer program (for students new to the country, and/or from refugee camps), life skill programs, autism self contained programs, general education/high ability elementary/middle school, and an applied behavior analysis (ABA) program within the school setting over the years. She was always nervous to start doing early intervention, until she realized that working in populations with minimal spoken language/AAC was very similar to working with early language skills. The best part, caregiver/parent/stakeholder coaching, is also at the foundation of both!