Northdale Middle School

Speech Pathologist, Kathryn McLachlan, attended Northern Michigan University where she received a B.S. in Communication Disorders.  She also received her M.S. in Speech Pathology from the University of California, Northridge and is certified by the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association.  She holds licensure by the Minnesota Department of Health and Minnesota Department of Education specific to speech pathology. 

Kathryn has over eighteen years of experience in diagnosing and treating individuals with a wide range of communicative disorders. Some of the individuals she has successfully treated include those with disorders in voice, fluency, articulation/phonology, language, social skills, and neurologically based communicative disorders.  

Kathryn has a passion to directly help each student reach his or her potential.  She understands that technology plays a key role reaching the needs and potential of her students.  Hence, she continuously looks for innovative ways to bring the latest technology to students and staff.  She has conducted and written many assistive technology evaluations for those needing to augment their communication with a speech generating device, and provided in services for successful implementation of such.  On a larger scale, Kathryn was a team leader of a two-year innovation project at Northdale Middle School that has received attention at a national level.  She has presented results from the innovation project to several audiences including an Anoka-Hennepin event, Closing the Gap Conference, and an Apple event.  Kathryn has also provided a lecture series on laryngeal cancer and smoking, as well as communication disorder prevention programs.

 Her favorite quote is by John Wooden:  "Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do".