Speech Pathologists

Lori Jens  Lynn A. Cisewski
Christina Katsma   Megan McKean   Jessica Timm

Lori Jens

I have been working as a Pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist for the past ten years.  I truly love and enjoy working with children and their families.  As a speech therapist I have worked with many children with a variety of different diagnoses and impairments in the Birth to Three Program and within our School-age outpatient program.  Continued learning and education is very important to me and I strive to learn and implement new treatment techniques in order to help the children I see on a daily basis achieve better communication and feeding skills.  Some of the skills I have gained are: use of baby sign language, Beckman Oral-Motor exercises, Prompt Cues and Hanen Language Strategies.

I enjoy working with children of all ages from infants to adolescents. I love working with infants to help them and their families gain strategies and skills in order for them to safely take in liquids and foods. I love to see the success of a child taking in their first taste of food or their first liquids. I also really enjoy working with children in order to help them improve their communication skills. I find fulfillment in being able to help young children express their first words to helping them clearly communicate their thoughts.

During my treatment session I use a play-based approach where I let the child lead at times in order to keep the child interested while fully addressing their needs.  My number one goal is for the child to have fun yet to challenge them so that they are progressing in order to achieve new skills.  I also treat the whole child. I like to incorporate many different strategies.  These strategies may include use of different dynamic surfaces and facilitation of movement to help children achieve adequate alignment and postural base in order to work off of for successful communication and eating.  Most of all I strive for the kids and their families to actively participate in therapy so that they can carryover the skills used in therapy into their daily lives.

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Lynn A. Cisewski - MS,CCC-SLP

As a pediatric speech-language therapist, I find the greatest joy in working with children and families to achieve their goals.  I graduated from Marquette University in 1993 with a Master of Science degree in the area of Speech Pathology and Audiology.  I have worked with the Birth-to-Three program for over 10 years and look forward to many more.  My areas of focus include development of feeding skills, development of functional verbal communication skills and augmentative communication.  I value education and am committed to continually learn from fellow therapists, research, courses, and families.

I enjoy working with children of all ages, infants to adolescence.  Through play, I strive to make therapy fun as well as challenging.  Each child and family comes to the program with a different set of circumstances, and I feel that my job as a therapist is to come up with strategies that address the child’s needs as well as the families’ goals and lifestyle.  Sometimes it takes “thinking outside the box” to achieve a successful outcome.   It is my goal to focus on the positive and use a child’s abilities and interests to discover what they are capable of and how to attain it.

In addition to working directly with children, I focus on educating parents and caregivers on how to integrate and maximize skills in daily routines.  Therapy is a partnership and parents are primary advocates and educators for their children.  Through education of the diagnosis and impairments, parents are better able to work on developing ideas and home programming with the therapist to ensure carry over of the goals.  Learning is not isolated to the therapy session.  As we go through each day, it is important to celebrate the accomplishments no matter how minor they may seem and to meet challenges with an open mind.

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Christina Katsma

Since graduating with my Masters in Speech-Language Pathology from the University of WI-Whitewater, I have been blessed to work with a variety of children. I love the opportunity to work with families and caregivers, in order to provide the best possible therapy for each child. I have worked with children with a variety of different needs, including feeding, expressive language, receptive language, social skills, articulation, aural rehabilitation, and fluency.

Before joining the team at Rehab Resources, I worked as an autism therapist for 5 years. Through that experience, I gained many of my therapy skills, including following each child’s lead, using movement and sensory input, creating temptation situations, and gaining each child’s trust.

My therapy techniques and strategies are largely child-specific. I use a holistic approach, in which I incorporate many areas of development in my sessions. I believe in play-based therapy, in which language strategies are used throughout motivating activities, which allows more opportunity for family involvement. I believe in what I do as an early interventionist, and I continue to strive to be a support for each family and an advocate for each child.

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Megan McKean

My interests include developing oral-motor skills in young children and teaching social skills in young children and adolescents. I am PROMPT trained and continue developing my skills in using PROMPT to help children with motor planning and intelligibility issues. I love learning new techniques and enjoy researching different methods to assist children and their families.

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Jessica Timm

I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in 2002. I have been working in birth to three and out-patient pediatrics since that time. I really enjoy working with children as they develop feeding, communication, and play skills. Working with this young age is very fun because children are constantly learning and developing at this age. I like to use strategies such as sign language, augmentative communication, play, working with oral motor skills, and directly educating families.

I believe that the “work” of children is play. Children learn best through play and natural routines. I think it is important to follow the lead of children and allow them to explore and learn this way. It is so rewarding to watch children learn new things and meet the goals that their families have for them.

I really value the families and caregivers for all the children I work with. They are the most important part of intervention because they are the ones who interact and play with their children every day. I do my best to think of ideas that are easy to work into play and everyday routines so that children are learning in the most functional way possible.

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