You worked a whole school year and you're still short on hours

If you started your CF in August, worked the whole school year, and are now looking at a number well below 1,260, nothing has gone wrong. The arithmetic was always going to do this.

Two requirements, not one

ASHA asks for 1,260 hours and, separately, a minimum of 36 weeks. They are not two views of the same thing.

At 35 hours a week — ASHA's full-time figure — the two land on exactly the same day. That is the fellowship the requirements were designed around, and it is where the "nine months" shorthand comes from.

Below 35 hours a week, they come apart, and they come apart in one direction only: you clear the weeks long before you clear the hours.

| Hours per week | Weeks to reach 1,260 | |---|---| | 35 (full time) | 36 | | 30 | 42 | | 25 | 51 | | 20 | 63 | | 15 | 84 |

At 20 hours a week you pass the 36-week minimum less than two-thirds of the way through, and then keep going for another six months.

Why school and EI schedules make it worse than the table suggests

The table assumes you work every week. School-based fellows do not.

Winter break, spring break, and the summer are weeks where no hours accrue. If your contract runs 38 instructional weeks, that is what you get — the calendar year does not help you. And ASHA describes the requirement as "36 weeks of professional experience (at least 5 hours per week)", so a week where you are not working does not appear to count toward the week total either. Both clocks stall together.

Fee-for-service and PRN fellows have a sharper version of the same problem: a week where clients cancel is a week that pays little and accrues little.

A caveat we will not paper over: exactly how ASHA treats a non-working week for the purposes of the 36 is not something we can quote you a rule on. If your fellowship straddles a long break, that is a question worth putting to ASHA certification directly rather than inferring.

The floor beneath everything

Professional experience of less than 5 hours per week does not count at all. Not partially, not pro rata. If your caseload drops below that for a stretch, those weeks are not slow progress — they are no progress.

This matters most for fellows on reduced or irregular schedules, who often assume that anything counts for something.

What actually shortens a long fellowship

More hours per week is the only lever that moves the finish date once you are past 36 weeks. At that point the week minimum is behind you and hours are the sole constraint — so unlike a full-time fellow, extra hours genuinely do bring your date forward. The hours tracker will tell you which constraint is currently binding on you, which is the number worth knowing before you negotiate anything.

A second setting can work, but it costs supervision. Hours from more than one setting can count. But your supervisor must "evaluate all skills in each setting during each segment," so two settings means two evaluations per segment and, usually, a second supervisor with their own full obligation. Check that anyone new is eligible to supervise you before you start.

Watch the outer deadline. The whole fellowship must be completed within 48 months of its start. That is generous for a full-time fellow and genuinely tight for someone at 10–15 hours a week across school years. At 15 hours a week you need 84 working weeks, and school calendars deliver roughly 38 a year.

The thing not to do

Do not assume a long fellowship is a failing one. Part-time, school-based, and fee-for-service fellowships are normal, ASHA plainly contemplates them, and the 48-month window exists precisely because they take longer.

What causes actual harm is not the length. It is discovering in month twenty that a segment was short on supervision, or that a supervisor's certification lapsed somewhere in the middle. A long fellowship simply gives those problems more time to accumulate quietly.

Confirm anything consequential against ASHA's Clinical Fellowship guide.