Located in a little room known as E12, is the home of Ms. Beth Janoff. For the past ten years, Janoff has been teaching at North Penn as a speech pathologist. But starting out as a speech pathologist was not all that easy.
“I started at a little elementary school behind Temple University and I was 21 years old. And I had all special-ed kids and some of them were 21 years old. And I was scared to death because I didn’t know what I was doing and I went home and cried. And my father told me to give it month and I ended up staying at that school for a year and in Philadelphia schools for 20 years,” explains Janoff.
With teaching in Philadelphia schools for the past twenty years, Janoff decided to leave and start a new journey. Janoff accepted a friend’s offer and officially signed on to become a North Penn teacher in December of 2003.
“I was actually recruited by one of friends to come from Philadelphia to work with her daughter who has special needs. And so I have been here for a little more than ten years and I work with primarily special needs kids.”
Janoff leaves many of us to wonder, what was her motivation for choosing to become a speech pathologist?
“I actually chose my field when I was a senior in high school. My sister had braces and the orthodontist told her she had a reverse swallow and she had to go for speech therapy so she wouldn’t push her teeth back out. My mother came home from the speech pathologist and said “that is something you could do.” So I spent a summer interning at Thomas Jefferson Hospital with their audiology department and I really liked it. I went to college and my undergrad was in speech and language pathology and I graduated and went to work at Philadelphia Schools immediately afterwards,” continues Janoff.
For many of those not familiar with speech pathology, it is the study and treatment of language and communication. “Speech therapy, or speech pathology…is actually a pretty broad field, so it’s looking at the way people speak as well as their non-verbal communication. So language, voice articulation, fluency, and then pragmatic are language skills. So that’s a lot of what I do here.”
As the school year comes closer to an end and Janoff is about to begin her retirement, Janoff has quite some new and tremendous plans ahead of her.
“I have big plans. Big plans. The biggest plan is that my oldest daughter is expecting my first grandchild. Super excited about that. And I’m going to do some private speech therapy and also I started a consulting business working with kids on the autism spectrum and with learning disabilities and social skills and motivational skills as they transition into college” exclaims Janoff.
Janoff’s new consulting business is called My Social Mentor. She plans to coach with executive functioning skills, help organize time management, and help people deal with different situations and flexibility.
“You can sign up online at www.mysocialmentor.org. I’m excited. I have never been an entrepreneur, I have been in public schools for my entire life so to stick my neck out and try a new adventure is very exciting.”
Janoff has also offered her words of wisdom to the class of 2014 who will be experience new adventures of their own.
“My advice to [the class] entering college is to stick your neck out and try something that is a little bit scary as long as you have a safety net. Meet some new people and try something exciting.”