A Note of Thanks

During these 10 weeks I learned a lot about advocacy. The internship helped me to growth as professional and to stand up for the rights of the children and families we work with. It was a pleasure to have heard a lot of excellent comments from colleagues who helped me with ideas for my research paper. As well by reading my colleagues post I was able to acquire strategies based on their experience and how they did to resolve certain issues during their field work. I really enjoyed this online class, it was a challenge but at the end it was worth it because I have gained a lot of new knowledge

Rosario Caballero Early Intervention Services: Interacting with Professionals, Children and Families.

During my field work experience I had the opportunity to see the speech pathologies give therapy to one of the children. The therapist arrived in the classroom during snack time; she washed her hands and sat next to child. Then she began to interact with him by talking about what he was eating for snack. The child tried to vocalized some words but sometimes the words wasn’t understandable then the therapist reinforce what he wanted to say by saying the word and pointing to the object. The child finished his snack and the therapist asked him “Where do you want to play?” the child pointed to the block area and the therapist said “Oh I see you want to play with the blocks, so let’s go and play with the blocks”. The child ran to the block area and said “truuuck”. During the entire session that was for about 45 to 50 minutes the therapist interacted with the little boy and talked to him, always following his interests for play and exploration. She used all the toys available in the classroom and as well she interacted with other children in the classroom and the children taking the therapy as the same time. It was the half of the therapy and the mom of this little boy arrived, the therapist invited her to join the play, the young mother accepted and all the three were interacting. As the therapy went the pathologist gave the mom some tips on how to talk to his child, not just asking questions but as well describing his actions.

When the therapy ended I had the opportunity to talk to the language pathologist and asked her some questions. The first question was that I noticed that she didn’t bring to the room a bag full of toys as other therapist do, and I wanted to know why she didn’t bring any toys with her. The therapist share with me her believe that  the children who are receiving therapy must work with the toys or materials they have access on a daily basis because that way when she is not present the children and teachers have the necessary materials to keep working in the child development. Also I asked her why she didn’t take the child to another room so that way she could have the child’s attention and they were not disturbed by other children. Her answer was that all the children receiving therapy must take the therapy in their natural environment. Their natural environment is where they spend most of their time and in this case the care setting was considered to be the natural environment for the child. She explained that when you enter into the child’s natural environment the child will feel more secure and confident and able to cooperate than when taking them into a different room. Also when working in the room the teachers have the opportunity to talk with the therapist, observe how they work and keep doing this during the entire week, so the child can continue to work on a certain task.

One insight that I gain is that teachers should be open to work with parents and therapist from EI services, a lot of times this doesn’t happen because the teachers are not comfortable to have other people besides the teachers in their classroom for many reasons. But when it comes to open the doors for the therapist and parents to work in the classroom the teachers need to be flexible because they are collaborating to each other for the benefit of the children. Teachers should create strong and positive relationships not only with parents but also with the therapist to work as a team.

Rosario Caballero Interacting With Professionals

Blog 3: Interacting With Professionlas

During my field experience I have been interacting with the lead teacher, the assistant and the agency pathologist.  These people are of so much help when answering my questions and they are accessible when I’m doing my observations. The classroom that I’m observing has four teachers for 12 children, the atmosphere is very pleasant and the teachers have great communication skills. One thing that I really love about this classroom is that teachers are nurturing to the children. Each time a teacher talks to a child the teacher bend down to the child’s eye level and talk to the child with respect and in a passive tone of voice.  Even when it’s time to change a diaper the teacher approaches the child and asked for permission to check the diaper. One scene that I was able to observe is when the teacher was about to change the diaper of a child with special needs. The teacher approached the child and said “Hi P. I see that you are playing with the trucks it looks like you are having fun” (the child looked at the teacher) then the teacher continued talking to the child “P can I check your diaper? I think you need a diaper change” P didn’t responded verbally but he stared at the teacher and smile. The teacher proceeds by taking the child to the changing table holding both of his hands and helped him to walk up the stairs from the changing table. During the entire process of diaper change the teacher talked to the child about what she was doing and maintained eye contact with him.

The lead teacher told me that “P” is a child with special needs who receives developmental therapy, physical therapy and speech therapy. The child came to the agency 8 months ago and since the first day she noticed that “P” wasn’t developing typically according a child of his age. She stated that she didn’t wait until the 45 days required to make the first ASQ to the child; instead she administered the ASQ  as soon as possible and wrote some observations then she talked to P’s mom and asked her if she had any concerns, as well she share her observations. P’s mom had the same concerns the teacher had and she really wanted help from the teacher. The lead teacher and the family support specialist collected all the evidence they have (ASQ’s, daily observations, and the referral consent from the mother) and called the department of early intervention. Usually early intervention services has 45 days to evaluate the child but because the child’s mother, the teacher and the family support specialist were working together and communicating constantly EI services therapist came to evaluate the child in less than two weeks. During the evolution the lead teacher and the family support specialist were asked by the mom to stay in the evaluation because that way she felt supported.

One insight that I gained is that communication is a key factor when working with children. In the previous scenario we can see that there was a lot of communication between the teacher, family support specialist and the family of this child. Thanks to the excellent communication skills the child was able to get the services he needed as soon as possible and have a better opportunity in life. The teacher also thought me that when you really care about the children you need to advocate for them and do the impossible to offer the same opportunities to all the children.

Rosario Caballero Early Intervention System

Observing and Interacting With Professionals/Colleagues in Your Setting

Blog Assignment 2

I have been observing a two year old classroom for two weeks, as I sat with the teacher to discuss the childrens development she informed me that two of the children in the classroom receive speech therapy, and one receives developmental therapy.  Two of the children receive therapy from early intervention services and the other child gets the therapies from the agency speech-language pathologist. It was interest to know that the agency where I’m doing my field work has their own speech-language pathologist because that way the children can get the services as soon as the teachers detect a language delay in a child. The host teacher informed me that they were lucky to have a speech-language pathologist thanks to a grant they won; the therapist serves to only 15 children in the program.

I asked the host teacher to share with me about her experience with early intervention services and she said that the referral process is kind of slow in her point of view. It is because a lot of factors first of all the parent consent for the child to be referred, then they need to wait until EI services evaluate the child. My host teacher thinks the parents need to be educated about the benefit of the children to get EI services at an early age in order for the child minimize the need for special education later when a child enters school.

Moreover I had the opportunity to see the speech language pathologist from the agency; I saw her giving therapy to one child. I noticed the therapist didn’t bring a bag full of special toys to work with the child; instead she used the toys and materials from the classroom. I also noticed the therapist gave the therapy in the classroom she didn’t take the child out to another room. After the therapy was finished I talked to the therapist and she shared with me her beliefs regarding how a quality therapy should be. She said that she didn’t take the child out from the classroom because the therapy must be in the child’s natural environment, in this case is the classroom where the child spends most of the time. Also she said she likes to work with the materials the child uses on a daily basis and that way the teachers can implement the same activities even when the therapist is not in the classroom.

One insight that I gained is that the teachers, therapist and parents need to work together for the benefit of the child. The therapist and teachers need to have a lot of communication regarding the activities that can help the child to develop as well when individualizing in the lesson plan teachers can write activities that are an extension to what the therapist is working with the child.

Another insight I gained is about the child’s natural environment.  In the past years I had the experience of working with EI therapists and every time they come to give the therapy they took the child out of the classroom. I think that by giving the therapy in the child’s natural environment the child will be more likely to collaborate with the therapist and the child is being inclusive to the classroom.  

Rosario Caballero Advocacy in Early Childhood Education

I decided to interview two people in the Early Childhood Education field, one is a current Early Head Start teacher she works in a toddler’s classroom. The other person is a Family Support Specialist where I’m planning to do my field work. I talked to the head teacher about my concern regarding children’s language development and how my experience working with them has influence the way I think. After many years working with the Latino community I have noticed that a lot of children are behind language development.

The head teacher told me that in order for her to know if the children are developing according a child of their age they use the ASQ’s screening tool. This tool gives them an entire view of how the child is developing on the different domains; one of those is communication. If a child scores low in the communication area there is a process in order to refer the child, the first and most important step, is the parents consent for the child to be referred. The head teacher stated that a lot of parents don’t have enough information on how this process works; some parents refuse to sign for the child to be referred because they believe that their children will learn how to talk by themselves. When the teacher told me this I agreed, unfortunately for a lot of parents it’s normal that their children don’t talk at certain age (3 or 4 years) sometimes culture has to do a lot with this and as early childhood professionals we need to advocate for our families and children. They need to be informed about all the services that are available for them.

When talking with the family support specialist, she told me that parents don’t have enough information on the referral process. She stated that Latino low income families are the ones that don’t get into the referral process as soon as possible, this is because a lot of factors including the lack of language. She said that as a family support specialist she supports the families during the entire process; but in her point of view early childhood families need a lot of support regarding early intervention services.

After interviewing these two early childhood professionals I found out that I’m not the only one who is concerned about the early intervention programs and how this affects children. I’m also interested on literacy programs for families because language and reading goes hand by hand. I think this topic has a lot of information that will help parents to get into the reading routines with their children.

As we all know exposing your child to books to an early age is a fundamental key for their success. By reading books to children at an early age will help them to develop a passion for reading, as well it is a great way of gaining new and sophisticated vocabulary. Unfortunately not a lot of children like to read, they do read but sometimes it's because they have to do it in order to gain a price at school. They don't do it because of pleasure instead they see reading as a work that they must do, maybe because is a requirement to read certain amount of books for a class. Students should see reading as a hobby. I believe parents play an important role in order for thier children to develop a passion for reading. They need to teach their children the beauty of reading. It doesn't matter if their read in their own language, parents should be reading their children a book in a daily basis. Public libraries are an excellent resource to get different genres books and are age appropriate.