Our Mission Statement

King’s Speech and Learning Center has a team of specialized  therapists and educators to meet the individual needs of their clients. We strive to hire the most dedicated and passionate professionals to support our mission to train speech, social, academic  and life skills for success in the 21st Century.

Our Story

King’s Speech and Learning Center began two years go as  Wait Your Turn, LLC in Avon.  Wait Your Turn was formed to  to focus on the functional or pragmatic aspects of communication problems. This meant working extensively with our young client’s  caregivers and family to address the daily issues affected by communication and learning challenges.  For teens and adults, this meant incorporating  meaningful contexts into the therapy process, such as  career or homework tasks, interviewing, power point for public speaking, and informal social conversations.

“Wait Your Turn” was chosen to emphasize  the importance of a give- and- take structure to balance  interactions  in order to  strengthen social connections.  Wait Your Turn, LLC incorporated this structure for all of its speech- language programming for both  children and adults.

As a result of our  enormous response to such a  functional treatment approach, it became necessary to expand in size, name, demographics,  and scope of practice.  As of September 1, 2011, Wait Your Turn, LLC moved to Simsbury, added a second location in New Britain, and changed its name to King’s Speech and Learning Center.  Named after the award winning movie, The name reflects our goal to always keep our clients’ emotional side in mind, and our therapists’ coaching side  in mind as we work together to achieve success. The name, “Wait Your Turn” will continue to live on as the name of our social communication program  for pragmatic language disorders.

King’s Speech and Learning Center  uses a multidisciplinary approach to provide  educational and rehabilitation services for Autism Spectrum Disorders and Asperger’s Syndrome, second language learners, ADD/ADHD, shyness, social anxiety/selective mutism, speech-language delays, Sensory Processing Disorders, Apraxia, Stuttering, Dyslexia, Nonverbal Learning Disorder, and Auditory Processing Disorders, as well as the general population without disabilities. We offer speech-language  therapy, sign language instruction,  specialized tutoring, occupational therapy, adaptive art instruction, and music therapy.

Director/ Owner

 Judith Rosenfield, M.A., CCC-SLP, is a licensed speech-language pathologist. She has twenty-six years of experience treating patients of all ages and medical needs, and supervising and managing teams of speech-language pathologists. Before developing the Wait Your Turn  program, and opening King’s Speech and Learning Center, Judith was the former owner of Swallowing Diagnostics, LLC  which provides portable endoscopy studies to hospitals and nursing centers throughout New England.

As a mother of four children, she understands the reality of parenting and the importance of building skills from each individual’s unique set of gifts. Ms. Rosenfield received her B.A. degree in Communication Sciences from the University of Connecticut in 1983, her M.A. degree in Speech-Language Pathology in 1985 from the Ohio State University where she extensively studied adult-child conversational language development, and completed several Ph.D. courses at the University of Pittsburgh where she studied Generalized Language Learning in Developmentally Delayed Preschoolers.

Areas of specialized training:

• Adult-Child Joint Activity Routines with Dr. James MacDonald, Nisonger Center, The Ohio State University
• DIR/Floortime training by Dr. Stanley Greenspan
• Scerts® model by Amy Wetherby
• “Inclusion” by various clinical leaders
• Asperger’s Syndrome by Timothy Kowalski
• Therapeutic Listening

Professional Involvement:
American Speech Language and Hearing Association, Connecticut Speech Language and Hearing Association, Autism Society of Connecticut, Autism Speaks,  Farmington SEPTA, Farmington Valley Asperger’s Network, Friendship Circle-West Hartford.

Staff

Speech-Language Pathology

Crystal Aya, B.A., is  a native of Queens, New York,  and received a B.S. in  Psychology from Hunter College.  She is our go- to person in the office for an array of tasks, including billing, scheduling, coordinating and assisting staff, and scoring assessments. As a prospective graduate student in speech pathology, she has a love for children and a friendly nature with all who come into contact with her. Crystal  is an experienced actress, speaks fluent Spanish,  and works as a tutor for the ABC House, a nonprofit agency which allows underprivileged high school students from out of state the chance to receive a higher quality education system by living and attending school in Sims bury, CT.  Crystal works in our Simsbury office,  and leads a preschool group in Newington once per week.

Michelle Lenihan, M.A., CCC-SLP comes to King’s Speech from the  Avon Public Schools.  She is a highly skilled clinician with a multitude of experience across childhood , adult and geriatric communication disorders.   Michelle’s professionalism, wisdom, humor and sensitivity put her at ease with all of her patients and families.  Michelle provides services at the Meliora Academy for us as well as covering occasional outpatient  cases in Simsbury.

Julianne Kelley Smith, M.A., CCC-SLP is a licensed speech-language pathologist providing ASL groups for providers, and ages 8 and up at our Simsbury facility. We are fortunate to have Julianne join our staff as she is an intuitive and proactive clinician who gained nearly fluent sign language skills by growing up with a close friend who was hearing disabled. She has been dedicating her career thus far to early language development through her work at a local school, and treating Birth to Three cases in the home and community.

Lucinda Soares Brodeur,M.A,CCC-SLP is a dynamic and creative speech pathologist who is committed to doing what it takes to unlock communicative challenges across pediatric and adult age groups. Lucinda has a strong background in pragmatic language disorders, cognitive dysfunction, and swallowing disorders; and is also employed at The Hospital for Special Care in New Britain.  Lucinda provides outpatient services at our New Britain facility.

Lanelle Gallo, M.S., CCC-SLP- a rare find!  As  both a licensed speech pathologist and a certified yoga instructor, Lanelle is able to offer a holistic approach to her  speech-language intervention.  Her positive energy, warmth and creativity serve her well to provide the most effective and inspiring services for her clients.    Lanelle  provides  yoga instruction to girls 12-16 years old as a means to manage anxiety,  and improve social confidence.  She also helps out with individual speech therapy sessions in Simsbury.

Tara Turken. M.A., CCC-SLP- Tara Turken is our most recent addition to our speech staff.  Tara has had many years of success in  private practice, specializing in fluency, in addition to  most speech and language disorders across pediatric and adult populations. Tara resides in Avon with her husband and 3 young children, and helps us with our  outpatient caseload in Simsbury  in her spare time!

Occupational Therapy

Tricia Tierney, OTR/L, Occupational Therapist, a graduate of Baypath College has experience servicing children with  emotional/behavioral needs in a school based setting. She has  helped children  overcome  challenges of developmental delays, autism spectrum disorders and fine and gross motor difficulty.   Tricia enjoys working with all ages and specializes in fine motor coordination and handwriting. She also has a strong background in geriatrics and treats patients at a skilled nursing facility in Massachusetts.  Tricia provides O.T. evaluations and treatment, specializing in fine motor and handwriting across ages.  She also helps run our social communication groups to meet the  multi-sensory needs of our group members.

 

Tutoring Services

Sandy Tovray Greenberg, M.A., Ed. is an accomplished teacher, tutor and author who comes highly recommended by the Hartford Public Schools.  She  is described by colleagues to be a  creative, responsible and loving tutor to her students. Sandy has years of experience working with children of all needs and knows how to combine  the right amount of TLC and positive reinforcement with structure and discipline to motivate her students and achieve results.

 

Sign Language

Julianne Kelley Smith, M.A., CCC-SLP is a licensed speech-language pathologist providing  ASL groups for providers, and ages 8 and up at our Simsbury facility.  We are fortunate to have Julianne join our staff as she is an intuitive and proactive clinician who gained nearly fluent  sign language skills by growing up with a close friend who was  hearing   disabled. She has been dedicating her career thus far to early language development through her work at a local school, and treating   Birth to Three cases in the home and community. Julianne runs our preschool speech, sign and music group for oral motor apraxia, verbal apraxia, and phonological speech delays.

 Advocacy

Kevin Daly, Educational Advocate, is a trained and certified Parent Advocate by the Learning Disabilities Association of Connecticut and a member of the Council of Parent Advocates and Attorneys.  Kevin helps our families   prepare for school meetings (including PPT and Section 504),  accompanies you to school meetings, explains school records and evaluations, clarifies your legal rights and the school’s obligations, and empowers you to become an effective advocate for your child. Kevin has a “matter of fact” approach to advocacy which reduces drama and offers a calming effect to  a highly emotional process, allowing the parent-educator relationship to truly function as a team.

 

Laura B. DeAngelo, A.B., M.B.A., RDI® Program Certified, received her A.B in economics from Dartmouth College and her Master’s in Business Administration with acentration in Health Care Administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She had a successful career in management consulting and hospital management until, in 2002, she discovered that her then-2-year-old son had autism.  She investigated many interventions over the years, and  began a Relationship Development Intervention ( RDI®) program in 2005.  She is thrilled to have the opportunity to help other parents learn to be competent guides to their children in remediating the core deficits of their autism, and help them advocate for their children so that they can receive the highest possible level of education in terms of quality and individual needs. Laura helps our clients formulate school IEP goals under the  more “gray area” of social- emotional development.

 

Music

Katherine Gay is an experienced musician, and  former oboist for  a European symphony orchestra. After returning to the states to pursue a career in special education, she has put her talents and love for children to good use as a brilliant and fun loving music instructor.  Katherine collaborates with our speech therapists in a group format to incorporate speech production and/or pragmatic language goals into  interactive music and movement activities.

 

Adaptive Art

Kimberly Gerry-Tucker, nationally known artist, honed her artistic skills at Art Instruction Schools of Minneapolis, MN., but for the most part she is self-taught. She is a mother, grandmother, author, ghostwriter, muralist and artist. Her memoir: “Communication Breakdown (Living, Loving, Loss and Aspergers/Selective Mutism)” can be found on Amazon.com. She ghostwrote the book: “Reborn Through Fire” for burn survivor Tony Yarijanian, available on Lulu.com, and she is currently working on several writing projects. Her paintings have shown in numerous galleries and shows in New Haven CT, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, and annually with AANE exhibit. Kimberly adores children, and enjoys guiding them in self expression as they discover their hidden artist.