A speech therapist's schedule for the whole school year: how to book 38 sessions

In a speech therapy practice, September is the month of one conversation repeated twenty times: "so we're meeting on Tuesdays at four, like last year?"

That conversation takes a minute. Entering its consequences into the calendar takes much longer, because speech therapy is not a series of consultations but work spread over the whole school year.

How many entries it really is

The school year runs from the beginning of September to the end of June. After subtracting winter breaks, holiday breaks and public holidays, around 38 weeks of sessions remain (Polish school calendar). The exact number depends on the region and on how the holidays fall in a given year.

With twenty children on fixed slots, that means seven hundred and something calendar entries. Typed in one by one, in September, between sessions.

That is why most practices do not do it. The appointments live in someone's head and in a notebook, and the calendar fills up two weeks ahead. It works until the first phone call asking whether there is a free slot in November.

The whole year in one move

When adding an appointment in MentAI, you choose a repeat pattern. There are ready-made options: four, eight, twelve, twenty-four sessions, or the whole school year. The system creates the following appointments on the same day of the week and at the same time.

If you agree on a specific number of sessions, because that is what your agreement says or what this stage of therapy calls for, you can enter your own number, from 2 to 60. Ten sessions means ten sessions, with no rounding to the nearest option on the list.

Each session in the series is a separate appointment: it has its own reminder for the parent, its own status, and it can be cancelled individually without touching the rest.

Public holidays count themselves

There are thirteen public holidays a year, and four of them move every year (Polish school calendar).

Easter Monday, Whit Sunday and Corpus Christi travel with Easter, so a table copied from last year is already wrong by April. That is why the system does not keep a list of dates but calculates the holidays for each year separately.

In practice this means the series skips them without your involvement. There is nothing to enter in September and nothing to update in January.

School breaks you enter once, and there is no way around it

Honesty is needed here: winter school breaks cannot be calculated. In Poland the dates depend on the region and are announced every year, so no algorithm can guess them.

You enter them yourself as the practice's days off, once, at the start of the year. That is one task instead of thirty-eight, but not zero. The same rule applies to your leave, a training trip and the days when the practice is closed for any other reason.

Once they are entered, the series skips them just like public holidays.

A slot that is already taken

With a year-long series this is not an edge case but a certainty: somewhere along the way, Tuesday at four will already be taken by something.

Such a session is skipped, not added as a second entry at the same time. After saving the series you see how many sessions were created and which slots dropped out, with the reason: a day off at the practice, the therapist's leave, a taken slot or a block in the schedule. Skipped sessions can be booked separately, at a time that suits.

Without this report a year-long series would be risky, because you would discover the missing sessions only in November.

When a series is not the right tool

Not every child comes in a fixed rhythm. For therapy run irregularly, where the next date is set after each session, a series would only litter the calendar with cancellations. Booking sessions one at a time is better then.

Repeat patterns are also not combined with correcting a document, settling a deposit or reserving a specific room at a location. Those are situations where every appointment needs a separate decision.

What this changes in September

The conversation with the parent ends where it should: on agreeing the day and the time. The rest of the year falls into place at once, together with the reminders, and your calendar shows the truth about your availability instead of two weeks ahead.

Free slots also stop being a guessing game, because once the regular clients are in the calendar, a gap between them is a real gap, not an impression.

Frequently asked questions

How many sessions does speech therapy have in a school year?

With a weekly rhythm, around 38. The school year runs from September to the end of June, and school breaks, holiday breaks and public holidays drop out of that period (Polish school calendar).

Can a whole year of therapy be booked at once?

Yes. When adding an appointment you choose a repeat pattern: ready-made options up to the whole school year, or your own number from 2 to 60. Each session gets its own reminder for the parent.

What happens with public holidays in a year-long series?

Public holidays are skipped automatically and calculated separately for each year, including the movable feasts. Winter school breaks you enter yourself, because they depend on the region.

What happens if a slot is already taken?

It is skipped, not added as a duplicate. After saving the series you see the list of skipped slots with the reason and book them separately.

See the calendar in action: demo without creating an account

Prefer to try it on your own practice? Sign-up is open: 30 days of the full version, no card, at mentai.pl. The product interface is in Polish.

Related posts: Software for speech therapists: parents, children, online booking (in Polish) · No-show appointments: how to reduce them · Your first practice: what they do not tell you at university.

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