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.