by Nancy Castilleja on March 1, 2010
Nancy Castilleja, M.A., CCC-SLP, Pearson Assessments (Publisher), San Antonio, TX
Nancy is a speech-language pathologist specializing in early language development and multicultural issues. Nancy currently is a Senior Product Manager for the speech and language products at Pearson Assessment. Prior to this role, Nancy was a Senior Research Director at Harcourt Assessment, developing norm-referenced assessments for early childhood populations and for Spanish-speaking children. Nancy’s clinical experience includes working with infants/toddlers in community settings, children in Head Start programs, and elementary through high school students with severe developmental delays in school settings.
Spanish language assessments available in our field range from simple translations to Spanish language assessments developed from “the ground floor up.” As you review Spanish assessments to determine if they will meet your needs, you will find them described as “translations,” “adaptations,” “Spanish editions,” or “Spanish assessments.” [click to continue…]
by Nancy Lewis on February 8, 2010
Nancy Lewis, M.S. CCC-SLP. Pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist, Denver, CO
Nancy Lewis, M.S. CCC-SLP has been a pediatric speech-language pathologist for 30 years. Currently, she leads a Bilingual Consultation Team for a large school district in the metro-Denver area, providing bilingual assessments (English-Spanish) and consultation to schools regarding English language learners. Her areas of expertise have included child phonology and the provision of services to culturally and linguistically diverse populations. She is the co-author of the Khan-Lewis Phonological Analysis-Second Edition. Nancy is the Coordinator of the ASHA Special Interest Division 14: Communication Development and Disorders in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations.
It is February 2010. Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow. And we all know what that means. ….six more weeks of winter! I am writing this from Boulder, Colorado, where this forecast is quite believable.
Currently, I have the good fortune of being the Coordinator of the ASHA Special Interest Division 14: Communication Disorders and Sciences in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Populations (hereinafter referred to as Division 14). As you may know, there are 16 Special Interest Divisions that operate within ASHA. The idea of offering ASHA members a manner in which to become affiliated with a smaller group of professionals that allows members to identify with their distinct clinical interests has been wildly popular. So popular, in fact, other professional associations have replicated ASHA’s model. [click to continue…]
by Raquel Anderson on January 1, 2010
Raquel Anderson, Ph.D. CCC-SLP. Bilingual Speech-Language Pathologist, Bloomington, IN
Raquel Anderson is an associate professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at Indiana University, Bloomington Campus. She teaches and conducts research in the areas of child language disorders, with a special on child second language acquisition. In particular, she studies children with language learning deficits who are Spanish-speaking and in an English language immersion context. Her research aims at describing how different language learners are impacted by sociolinguistic environment. Because of the difficulty in identifying language disability in second language learners, her research focuses on identifying potential clinical markers of language learning deficits in second language learners.
Dr. Anderson has been the recipient of various grants, including a research grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the grammatical skills of Spanish-speaking children in monolingual and bilingual environments with a diagnosis of specific language impairment (SLI). She has presented locally, nationally, and internationally in the areas of child language learning disorders, second language acquisition and communication assessment of diverse children. She has published extensively in the area of child language and second language acquisition in children with and without language impairment.
She most recently received a training grant from the Office of Special Education Programs, Department of Education to implement a clinical graduate training program focused on working with Latino children and their families (Speech Therapy Education, Practicum and Services for Latino Children and Families – STEPS). Dr. Anderson also coordinates the Training in Research and Academic Careers in Communication Sciences (TRACCS), a summer research program aimed at increasing the number of individuals from underrepresented groups pursuing academic and research careers in communication disorders.
¡Feliz año Nuevo 2010! Welcome to the first blog of the year. The purpose of this blog is to provide practical information to individuals who are considering a profession as speech-language pathologists (SLP) with an emphasis on working with the growing culturally and linguistically diverse population in the United States. As most of us who work with individuals from diverse backgrounds, fluency in a language other than English, although important, is not sufficient preparation for serving individuals from diverse groups. Background knowledge in a variety of areas that are unfortunately not presented in detail within the typical graduate curriculum in SLP is needed. This includes coursework that covers in depth bilingual language development and disorders, alternative assessment methods, cultural differences and their impact in service provision, working with diverse families, and language development, use and disorders particular to the target language. In addition, clinical experiences embedded within the graduate program where students, under the guidance of a supervisor with the needed linguistic and experiential/academic preparation, work directly with families from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds is also important. [click to continue…]
by Fereshteh Kunkel on December 1, 2009
Fereshteh Kunkel, Ph.D. CCC-SLP. Bilingual Speech-Language Pathologist, San José, CA
Fereshteh Kunkel earned a Bachelor’s of Arts degree from the University of New Mexico, with a double major in Communication Disorders and Spanish. During her undergraduate studies, she learned American Sign Language and spent a summer research internship at Gallaudet University. She received a master’s degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Texas at Dallas and completed her Clinical Fellowship Year serving monolingual English and Spanish-speaking elementary and middle school students. After completing research on the English, Spanish and Bilingual lexical development of Spanish-English speaking preschoolers, Fereshteh was awarded a Ph.D. in Communicative Sciences and Disorders from the University of Texas at Dallas. Currently, she works for Bilingual Therapies as a bilingual clinician evaluating and providing speech and language therapy in Spanish, Persian and English to young children in San José, California.
The purpose of December’s blog is to introduce clinicians to the vocabulary checklist of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences English and Spanish form and to discuss how this tool is used to calculate a Bilingual score, otherwise known as a total conceptual score. Before discussing the organization and norming of the inventory, a definition and overview of the lexicon as well as a general description of English, Spanish, and Bilingual lexical development will be given. Finally, a summary and discussion of the questionnaire and other relevant information will be provided. [click to continue…]
by Sandra Márquez on November 2, 2009
Sandra Márquez, M.A. CCC-SLP, Bilingual Speech-Language Pathologist, Chicago, IL
Sandra Márquez is a Mexican-American native of Chicago. She earned her degree from Saint Xavier University in the Communication Disorders undergraduate program. Prior to graduate school, Sandra spent one year as a speech-language paraprofessional in the Chicago Public Schools. Sandra went on to receive her master’s degree from New Mexico State University where she was enrolled in Dr. Hortencia Kayser’s Bilingual Communication Disorders program. Sandra is in her tenth year as a bilingual speech-language pathologist, of which all has been spent working with Bilingual Therapies. She currently works in the Summit, IL school district as a supervisor for two speech-language paraprofessionals.
With the increasing demand for Speech-Language Pathologists (SLP) across the country, school districts face the challenge of meeting the needs of students identified with speech, language, and overall communication impairments. Compounding this challenge is the increase of English Language Learners (ELL) requiring speech-language services as the population increases in the United States. As the demand for speech-language pathologists grows so do the demands for district administrators to meet the needs of all students requiring speech-language services, their school district, and to work within the legal guidelines delineated at the state and federal level. To meet these demands, many states across the country have passed legislation allowing Speech-Language Aides (SLPA) or Speech-Language Paraprofessionals (SLPP) to provide varying levels of support in the field of speech-language pathology under the direct supervision of a certified and licensed SLP. As the description of both an SLPA and SLPP vary from state to state, general descriptions will be discussed as well as general guidelines for supervising bilingual SLPAs and SLPPs working with a linguistically diverse population. [click to continue…]
