After a long and exhausting school year winds down, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and defeated by all of the IEP meetings, evaluations, and endless documentation that stand between you and your summer vacation. Working in a secondary school with 4,200 students, it is also easy to feel like just another number—one of hundreds of adult faces that will be quickly forgotten by young minds filled with the anticipation of summer adventures and new beginnings in the fall.

At our school, there is a long-standing tradition that the last official assignment a senior must complete before graduating is writing a thank you note to someone who has made a difference in his or her life. In the final days of the school year, following a long day of meetings and paperwork, I sat down at my desk and looked up to see a letter on my keyboard, addressed to me from one of my seniors.

After reading this letter I was overcome with emotion. I had sat down at my desk feeling defeated, but now had a renewed sense of triumph!

I began to reflect on my time with this student. I had worked with him for four years during his time at my school. He had previously been in speech intervention in other states and with multiple SLPs, and had been dismissed from treatment years before moving to our school. When he first came to my office, he had very little self-confidence and was reluctant to speak in his classes. He was able to recall some of the techniques he had learned in previous treatment, but was rusty and, in his words, wanted to "brush up." We used a combination of stuttering modification and fluency-shaping strategies.

Given his strong musical background, he had great success in using linked relaxation rhythm and easy onset. He would bring class presentations with him to treatment sessions and I would video-tape him presenting his assignments. We would then play back the videos to critique what he did well and what he needed to work on. I watched his confidence increase dramatically, and soon he was no longer hesitant about speaking up during classroom discussions, or even participating in fast-paced debates in his higher-level classes. As a senior, he was able to openly discuss his stutter with his teachers and let them know how they could help him be successful in the classroom.

This student and his kind words helped to remind me of the reason I went into this field: success stories! These little moments of success are the source of my passion for working with students with speech-language disabilities. It may take years to see progress, but seeing that smile and sense of accomplishment on a student's face gets me every time. I am sad that my time with this student has come to an end, but I know that many new faces and stories of success await me as school starts back this month.