As I write this month's observations of my world, I'm sitting in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport thinking about my trip to California. I'm attending a family reunion, a first cousin's 50th wedding anniversary. It's a great celebration and a wonderful opportunity to see my 3 sisters and 1 brother. It'll be the first time in about 10 years that we've been all together. The major event is the wedding ceremony and then the reception and dance planned for my cousin Dolores and her husband Henry. This is an event for the extended family and one I have not seen in decades. The family gatherings I grew up with in Houston, TX were great, too many cousins and too much food. Actually I think the food at this event will probably be much different from what I remember.
The year has started for me with calls and questions about children from the Special School District in St. Louis. Interesting organization here, because there is one school district that takes care of all of the special needs of children with disabilities. The surrounding districts do not have special education diagnostic services. For 25 years there have been preschool diagnostic teams composed of a psychologist, speech/language pathologist, and an early childhood diagnostic teacher. A social worker takes care of the intakes. I really like this organization. The majority of school systems that I've worked with have 1 or 2 SLP's and maybe 1 or 2 psychologists who work only with the referrals for early childhood special education. They're not really perceived as a team. The inclusion of an early childhood teacher is fantastic. Getting this additional perspective and the observations of a classroom teacher as part of the diagnostic team could probably increase the questions and the observations when the child just is 'not testable.' This is especially important if the child is from a home where English is not the native language.
This Special School District invited me to answer some questions they had about preschool children who are learning 2 languages and so I visited them one Friday morning in January. The Special School District does not have bilingual clinicians, so the district has a contract with the International Institute. This is a federal program that was established in 12 cities across the country to be a resource to refugee/immigrants who were resettled in the United States. The U.S. has approximately 90,000 Bosnians, 30,000 have settled in St. Louis. There are 24 other language groups in the city. The district calls the Institute and an interpreter is available for a fee.
As we talked about the difficulties of working with interpreters, I realized that the diagnosticians were concerned that the interpreters may not always understand what is being expressed in English. Many of these individuals are bilingual, but the first language is not English. These interpreters are also new immigrants. I think you know how complicated the assessment process may become and if the interpreter hasn't been trained to understand the purpose of your testing, you may be barking up the wrong 'arbol.' I remember observing an interpreter for a clinician who was telling a story to a group of children. The clinician read a big book and used the most impressive skills in story telling. The interpreter, on the other hand, was labeling objects on the pages of the book. The interpreter didn't have the English proficiency to understand what the clinician was saying to the children and therefore just labeled the pictures for the Hispanic preschooler. Bilingual proficiency is important; it isn't enough to just speak the language.
Interesting, that some families have expressed that they just do not want an interpreter for testing or conferences. Some of these families do not trust interpreters. Part of the reason is that some of these refugees are fearful that the information may be relayed to unknown individuals in the community and used against the family. What a dilemma, how do you get the needed information about the child without the interpreter? We talked about observing the child's learning potential in the classroom and during testing, the child's interactions with other children, observations of other preschool second language learners and behaviors typical of second language learners, and listening to the parents' concerns. Some of these professionals talked about using older siblings as interpreters even though they all knew that we're not suppose to use family members in the interpreter process.
This past week I attended a conference on the status of refugees/immigrants in the St. Louis area. An organization developed by the Lutheran and Catholic Dioceses have joined to assist communication among different assistance and resource groups in the region. The presenter reported results from conversations with focus groups from different culturally and linguistically diverse populations and professionals from service agencies. The 3 main concerns that families and professionals voiced were: 1) the lack of English for families & lack of interpreters; 2) the difficulty with transportation needs for families and: 3) the loss of authority by parents because children were becoming the interpreters. The last point was interesting, because the schools are honoring the parents wishes by not using an interpreter and using siblings as the interpreter, but the parents are not recognizing that having children as the interpreter changes the role of the parent and may confuse the child's role within the family. If you're interested in this area, you might look at Guadalupe Valdes from Stanford, who studies children who become interpreters for the family.
Another interesting comment was that there are school districts that won't refer refugee children to special education until the child has had at least 3 to 5 years of English language exposure. Yeah, I really think that's an illegal move on the part of educators. Maybe there is a little bit of mistrust of special education professionals, but then also maybe there is also a lack of knowledge on the part of educators about second language acquisition and speech/language disabilities. Or maybe school districts still operate in fear of over identifying second language learners as speech/language impaired or any other disability category. Waiting maybe a cautious move but it doesn't necessarily help the child. These professionals are trying to understand and are seeking information. But somehow, we're still not reaching the classroom teacher and administrator. They're the principle referral sources and the ones who really need to understand the importance of good referrals, ones that are not based on a general assumption that we need to give children 3 to 5 years of English first before identifying children as special needs.
Remember, if school professionals, i.e., teachers/administrators, etc., don't respond to your information about second language learners with your 'articles in the mailbox strategy', refer them to ASHA, American Psychological Association (APA), and the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC). Place a bookmark on these resources on the school library or office computers. Maybe they'll listen to their own organization. I can assure they'll usually refer back to ASHA.
It was an interesting January. February will begin with a celebration with my 5th to 8th generation Mexican American family in California. I don't think we'll need interpreters and it'll be fun to hear Spanish spoken among my traditional Mexican, Chicano and assimilated familia. Maybe we WILL need an interpreter.
