My Perspective On: Private vs. Schools

Today I’m going to chat about my perspective on private practice vs. the schools. I have to add a disclaimer that this is only MY perspective. While I’ve worked at a couple private practices part time thus far, I’ve only worked at one full time for a year. The rest of my experience has been in the schools in a few different states.

I’m going to go over my pros and cons of three different scenarios: part time private practice, full time private practice, and schools.

Part Time Private:

Pros: you can choose how many clients you want, pay per hour is higher, typically individual sessions (30-60 mins in length)

Cons: you generally don’t get paid if a client doesn’t show, might mean afternoon/evening/weekend hours, will probably get a 1099 so you need to be aware of and take out taxes yourself, may need to travel to daycares/homes

Full Time Private: (note: when I did this for a year, I was salaried)

Pros: I only had individual 45 minute sessions, ability to talk with the parent after every session was a huge bonus, at the practice I was at parents could watch session behind a two way mirror which helped them see what you were doing during sessions, still paid if there were cancellations, I did have health insurance, someone else generally took care of scheduling, there were at least a few other SLPs to chat with

Cons: working year round, no groups, I did have to work until 7pm at least one night a week, you could get a wide variety of ages/disorders

Schools:

Pros: on a school schedule (this was a big positive for me especially after having my daughter), feeling like you’re part of the school team, seeing groups can be great for social skills, relationships that you form with co-workers

Cons: paperwork can be overwhelming, some states don’t have caseload caps, we have to treat what disorders we encounter and sometimes don’t have the level of expertise we feel like we should have in all areas, it can sometimes feel like we’re not appreciated, pay is generally lower than in other settings

Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list. I’m not sure where I’ll end up in the future. There are things I like about both settings and things I don’t. You really just have to weigh the positives and negatives for yourself and see which wins out. What’s your favorite setting?