West Harrison speech pathologist aims to help young students through published book 'Sophie's Special Story'
Since it was published, Gizzo has seen a major improvement from not only her own students, but also from others throughout her community.
It's another day of love for Gabriella Gizzo and her pup, Sophie, in their West Harrison home.
"She's my best friend," said Gizzo. "Sophie and I are very close. She is the first dog that I ever had…She's such a special part of our family, and she just makes life better."
When she's not playing with her pup, Gizzo is working hard as a speech pathologist, a profession she's always admired since she was a young girl.
"I have a caseload of about 20 students, and the students range in age from about 6 to 7 years old all the way up to 15 [and] 16," she said. "My younger brother was a late talker, so he needed speech therapy services when he was younger. I got to see firsthand the impact that the speech therapist had on him."
As she started working with children in a group setting, Gizzo realized she needed to devise a way to target multiple needs at once.
"I actually got the idea when I was in graduate school, because when you're in graduate school you have to do different clinical rotations," she explained. "I was seeing children in group settings, meaning I was seeing four to five children...[and] a lot of them have all different goals. One child might be working on following directions; one child might be working on the S sound; [and] one child might be working on WH questions."
From there, Gizzo decided to put pen to paper and write a children's book targeting all those goals. With the help of her best friend, "Sophie's Special Story" was born.
"When I got the idea to incorporate Sophie, I thought, 'children, people, everyone loves dogs,'" Gizzo explained. "[Since] her name was Sophie, I was like, 'This is a really great way to target the S sound.' So, throughout the book, I wrote about our story, how I got her and the activities that we do together. Then, in order to practice the speech therapy component of the S sound, I describe her using S adjectives. For example, I say, 'Sophie is sassy [and] Sophie is snuggly.' There's a whole list of S adjectives to describe her."
Since it was published, Gizzo has seen a major improvement from not only her own students, but also from others throughout her community.
"When I'm asking them WH questions, they're able to answer them more," she explained. "They're [also] working on strengthening their S sound. They're able to produce it better… I've had other speech therapists use it as well, and the children love it. So, to me, the best part is seeing their reaction, saying [things] like, ‘Oh, I have a dog at home’ or ‘Sophie's so cute.’ So, it's been very positive. I feel very grateful that I've had such a supportive community around the book and that it is helping so many children."
You can buy "Sophie's Special Story" online at retailers like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Walmart.
Gizzo also hopes to write another book about Sophie in the future, possibly incorporating braille to make it even more accessible to children with visual impairments.
For updates on that, or just to simply stay up to date on Gizzo's journey, you can follow her Facebook () and Instagram pages.
