The first full week of May is designated as Licensed Employee Appreciation Week. At Clackamas ESD alone, we have at least 20 types of licensed jobs, with many variations in those positions. These are people who have completed higher education and earned licenses to be certified to teach students, lead continuing education training for staff, serve as social skills specialists, and provide speech, physical and occupational therapy within Clackamas ESD programs and the school districts we serve.
This Licensed Employee Appreciation Week, we’re highlighting a few of our approximately 185 licensed staff members and contractors to provide a peek into the diverse ways this large group of employees lives our mission of service. We appreciate our entire licensed team and the meaningful work they do.
Jessica Livernois is a speech-language pathologist at Clackamas Education Service District’s Heron Creek Therapeutic Program. Jessica helps students experiencing significant social, emotional, behavioral and academic challenges with their individual communication needs and improves their ability to express themselves.
Jessica assists students in a number of ways, from working with nonspeaking students to improve their ability to communicate with sign language and alternative and augmentative communication devices, to supporting students who need extra help with pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. Because of Heron Creek’s focus on helping students with social, emotional and behavioral challenges, Jessica also supports many students in the social aspects of communication.
“We go over how to find solutions to problems that may come up in different situations, how to ask questions, how to enter conversations, and how to try and make friends,” Jessica explains. “A lot of times, we will work on these things in the moment as they come up in the classroom.”
Jessica’s passion for speech-language pathology has brought her all across the country. She completed her undergraduate studies in Michigan, initially studying to be a clinical child psychologist before discovering her interest in speech-language pathology and double majoring in psychology and communications disorders. After graduation, she moved to northern California to work as a speech-language pathology assistant and pursue her graduate degree in an online master’s program through the University of California, Northridge. Jessica then headed to the East Coast to complete her graduate clinic hours in Virginia and a summer externship in North Carolina before moving to Indiana to practice speech-language pathology on an emergency permit. She completed her clinical fellowship in Michigan and worked as a speech-language pathologist there for nine years before moving to Oregon for her partner’s job in 2022. She interviewed for a position at Heron Creek and saw how different the opportunity was.
“I’m a big believer in everything happens for a reason, that you end up in certain places for a reason. And Heron Creek was just so different,” Jessica shares. “This is the most one-on-one time I’ve been able to have with kids, and being able to build good relationships with them makes a big difference.
“Recently, one of the kids I have been working with for the last couple of years has made huge progress, and it was time for him to graduate from speech. He was like, ‘What do you mean I don’t have to come here anymore? I don’t get to come in here anymore?!” I reassured him that it wasn’t a bad thing; it just meant that if he did come here, we wouldn’t have to work on his sounds anymore. And he was like, ‘Oh, okay! That’s fine.’”
Looking back on her time at Heron Creek so far, Jessica is especially proud of the work she has done to increase students’ access to alternative and augmentative communication devices.
“I want to make sure all of our students have a voice,” Jessica says. “When I first got to Heron Creek, maybe one or two students were using communication devices, but now there are about nine students using communication devices. I’m really proud of the kids’ progress and the staff’s progress because it’s a lot for them to learn, too, and they’ve really helped make sure the kids always have access to a way to communicate.”
