If you are drowning in browser tabs and disorganized Google Drive folders, you aren’t alone. Read one Michigan SLP’s honest SLP Now membership review to learn how she consolidated her planning, materials, and notes into one platform—and got her district to pay for it.
If you’ve ever spent 20 minutes searching for one worksheet on TPT, only to give up and print the same thing you used last year, this post is for you.
That was basically my life before I found SLP Now.
I’m Dannah. I’m in my second year as a school-based SLP in Michigan, and I split my week between an elementary school (preschool through kindergarten) and a middle school (sixth through eighth grade). My caseload sits around 53 students right now, and honestly, between the two buildings and the very different age ranges, things can get chaotic fast.
What Finding Materials Used to Look Like
Before SLP Now, my “system” for SLP materials organization was… not really a system.
I’d start on Teachers Pay Teachers, scroll through results, click a few previews, decide I didn’t love any of them, and go back to the search bar. Sometimes I’d open a new tab. Then another. Then I’d remember a worksheet my co-worker had emailed me three months ago and spend five minutes digging through Gmail.
“With TPT it’s like going back to the search, oh didn’t like that, okay next, new tab,” I told someone recently. “This is just so much more streamlined.”
And it is. But I didn’t know that yet.
I also relied on SLP Toolkit for my session notes and Medicaid billing documentation. It worked fine. It was what they taught us in grad school, so I stuck with it. But I was also patching things together. TPT for materials. Toolkit for notes. Random Google Drive folders for who knows what. It was a lot of tabs.
How I Heard About SLP Now (SLP Now vs SLP Toolkit)
I didn’t find SLP Now from an ad. My co-SLP in the same building brought it up one day.
She had been exploring it and the first thing she said was: “They have built-in materials. Unlike Toolkit.”
That got my attention.
She was already in a free trial and she invited me to hop on one of SLP Now’s monthly live Q&A calls with her. So we joined together. I was comparing the two platforms in real time—a live SLP Now vs SLP Toolkit debate in my head—and I kept noticing the same thing: it had everything Toolkit did, plus the materials, plus the live support, plus a community.
It seemed like a no-brainer.
What Changed After I Joined
The first thing I noticed was how organized everything is when it comes to finding speech therapy materials for school.
- Instant Searching: Materials are categorized by age, by season, by holiday, by skill level. I can find what I need in about thirty seconds. No new tabs. No scrolling through irrelevant search results. No settling for something that’s almost right. “Everything’s right there,” I said. And it really is.
- Streamlined Notes: I use the session notes feature every day. I keep SLP Now open on one monitor and my district’s billing software open on the other. I type my notes into SLP Now, then copy them over to the billing program. Yes, it’s one extra step. But I love the platform enough to keep doing it.
- Effortless Caseload Import: The other thing I was bracing for was setup. I had 53 students to enter across two schools. I thought that was going to take forever. It didn’t. The import feature made caseload management for SLPs so fast.
“That would’ve taken a bajillion years if you had to type in every single detail,” I told a team member at SLP Now. It’s one of those features that you don’t think about until you imagine not having it.
Why My District Is Paying for It
This part still makes me a little giddy.
After I saw the value, I mentioned it to the right people. And my district decided to cover the cost of the membership!
That’s not something that just happens. It happened because the platform is genuinely useful, not just for me but for our team. The materials, the live calls, the support when you have a quick question. It adds up to something that’s worth an investment at the district level, not just an individual one.
If you’ve been wondering whether SLP Now is something you could pitch to your admin, the answer is: maybe yes. It’s worth asking.
What I’d Tell Any SLP Who’s Drowning in Tabs
- You’re not alone. Most of us are cobbling things together from four different places and spending way too much time doing it.
- Ask your coworkers what they’re using. That’s how I found SLP Now. My co-SLP just mentioned it. One conversation changed my whole workflow.
- Protect your time. Don’t underestimate how much time you lose every week to searching, comparing, previewing, and settling. A system that puts everything in one place gives that time back.
Is SLP Now Right for You?
If you are evaluating school SLP tools, manage a decent-sized caseload, and spend more time looking for materials than using them, SLP Now is worth trying.
It’s not just a materials library, though the library is really good. It’s a whole platform with session planning tools, caseload management, notes, data, and support built in. It’s the tool I wish I had in my CF year.
You can try it free for 14 days, no credit card required. Import your caseload, grab a few materials, and see what it feels like to have everything in one place. It might take you about thirty seconds to find what you need.
That’s what happened for me.
Want to learn more about how SLP Now supports school-based SLPs at every stage of their career? Check out the membership here.
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