Teletherapy Organization: Managing Your Virtual Calendar
If you're a teletherapist, staying organized isn't just helpful, it's essential. As an SLP working remotely in the school setting, my schedule is anything but simple. Between weekly sessions, IEP meetings, progress report deadlines, school holidays, early release days, and juggling multiple school districts with completely different calendars, things can get overwhelming fast. Over time, I've developed a system that keeps me on top of it all. I'm a big fan of Google Calendar, but the strategies I'm sharing today can be adapted to whatever platform you prefer.
Start With Your Sessions
At the beginning of each school year, the very first thing I do is block out all of my weekly sessions and recurring meetings. Set them up as recurring appointments right from the start, whether that's daily, weekly, or monthly. This saves so much time compared to entering each one manually.
Send Google Calendar invites to parents or school staff for recurring sessions and include your virtual therapy room link right in the invite. It keeps everyone informed and cuts down on the "where's the link?" messages!
Add Holidays and Early Release Days
Go through each school's calendar and add all holidays, early release days, and special events as all-day events. They stay at the top of your calendar for easy reference. For longer breaks, create one event that spans the entire period rather than entering each day separately. I always include the school name in the event title since every district has a different calendar.
Clean Up Your Calendar
Once your sessions and school calendars are loaded, go through and delete any sessions that fall on non-school days.
When deleting, choose "delete this event only" so you don't accidentally remove your entire recurring series!
Block Your Out-of-Office Time
Vacations, appointments, personal days.. add them all. In Google Calendar, you can set your Out of Office block to automatically decline incoming invites during that time. Some therapists even use this feature during morning routines or lunch breaks to protect their personal time.
Stay Ahead of IEP Due Dates
Even if you don't know exact meeting dates at the start of the year, add the due dates from each student's IEP right away as all-day events. I like to make three calendar events per student: the actual due date, a two-week reminder, and a one-month reminder. This layered approach keeps me from scrambling and gives me time to pull data, get new baseline data, etc.
Track Progress Report Deadlines
I use the same approach for progress reports: the due date as an all-day event plus a one-week reminder leading up to it. Always include the school name since deadlines rarely line up across districts.
Final Thoughts
Setting up your calendar this way takes a little time upfront, but it pays off all year long. Once the system is in place, it practically runs itself, and you get to spend less time scrambling and more time focusing on your students.
Got questions or your own calendar tips to share? Drop them in the comments below!
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