I've accepted a position at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ. I resigned my position at New Mexico State University and decided to make a switch to Arizona because of my need to expand my research skills. I won't be involved with the training of bilingual speech language pathologists but will be teaching courses such as Spanish language acquisition and Assessment of bilingual populations. It's a change in environment where my focus will be research not teaching or clinical supervision. Teaching and supervision has been my focus for the past 13 years and one that I've enjoyed. I think it'll be hard for me to make the switch and not be so clinically focused. The times that I've spent in the field with Head Start children and the work I did with Migrant children has always been rewarding and will always be my best memories. Now I'm in the city of Phoenix and the Spanish-speaking children here will be a little different, with different experiences, and parents with different stresses. But they're still families with needs and concerns about their children.
I suppose that change can be difficult but there needs to be a reason for the change. For me it was the need to answer some questions such as: What do parents need in support from us as SLP's? How do we assist in the maintenance of the home language? And why do preschool children communicate poorly in the home language after one year in English-only preschool programs? Arizona is an English only state and children must receive English only and no bilingual education. What a great place to study the effects on children. The whole state will be a laboratory that will be monitored by every type of educational and language scientist. I need to be here.
My focus for research will be parent programs and children's programs in English only preschool settings. I'm already moved to Arizona State University and setting up my office. I've already set up my data into files and getting these ready for analysis. I've begun a project in Chicago that I hope will strengthen some data I collected in Las Cruces, NM with language impaired Spanish speaking preschoolers and I've begun to set my research agenda for the next 5 years. It's exciting for me.
I would like to hear about the programs that you're using in your school systems and the innovative approaches you're using to work with minority language children in preschool settings. My new email address is Hortencia.Kayser@ASU.edu. I receive a lot of case studies by email for consulting purposes and I don't respond to these because of liability and time reasons. So I would appreciate it if you do write me, please share information that would help me or other clinicians that I could forward to the Bilingual Therapies web site. I look forward to communicating with clinicians who are trying to solve a major issue concerning the education of minority language preschoolers in English only classrooms. Thanks in advance. HK
Visit us on Facebook 
