Page 4 - Curriculum Based Intervention Volume 1 Digital Version

P. 4

INTRODUCTION

As a young speech pathologist, I was confronted with a caseload that was so large and
staggeringly diverse that it nearly brought an immediate end to my early career. I worked
across two campuses with 65 Spanish-speaking students and conducted evaluations on
another five campuses. About a third of my students were in a half-day preschool program
for children with disabilities. Many of my students had multiple disabilities.

I wasn’t alone. The teachers I worked with had equally diverse classrooms and needed a
better way to work with diverse students. The challenges of serving students from diverse
backgrounds pose some of the greatest benefits and greatest difficulties of teaching. On
one hand we are exposed to extremely unique and interesting cultures and the amount of
impact you can make with each child is huge. On the other hand, we are never sure if a
child is behind because he has not had exposure to a certain topic, is having difficulty
working in a second language, or truly has a communication impairment.

I worked nights and weekends to keep up with paperwork and plan therapy and was
rewarded that spring with an additional campus to cover a maternity leave. As bleak as
this situation felt at the time, I now know that this a typical experience for educational
professionals across the nation. These situations are challenging but they also provide us
with a certain resolve and the perfect laboratory to create a solution. Speech-language
pathologists and classroom teachers are able to work together to address academic goals
and speech goals at the same time. The materials that lie ahead solve many of these
issues by combining language enrichment strategies and academic concepts to effectively
address communication disorders.

We can create materials that simultaneously enrich language skills and teach
academic concepts. This way:

1) We make no assumptions about a student’s prior knowledge.
2) We give students multiple opportunities to practice their concepts in school
and at home.
3) We don’t waste precious time re-creating lesson plans and materials year after
year.

To solve the issue, I formed a working group with several speech pathologists to create
language-rich materials and enlisted teachers from campuses across several districts to let
us teach portions of the class and incorporate these language-rich materials into their
classroom.
It is my hope that you find as much success with these materials as we have in supporting
your teachers and moving your students through their goals.
Enjoy!

Scott Prath and the Team at Bilinguistics

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