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.
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