I really love the summer, especially a hot "dry" New Mexican summer where there's always a breeze in the evening and the sunsets are spectacular with purple shadows against the mountains. But it's also time-off if you work in the schools or university setting. So I think of this season as my frenzy time.
Its time to organize my priorities for the fall, finish up some projects, make some contacts for upcoming projects, and just sit around under my big Mexican Elder tree thinking about what I would like to do in the future. This summer I'm in New Mexico getting my house ready to sell. So that means I have to schedule my 'thinking projects' around the painting, plastering, yard work, and cleaning. I usually go to Mexico in July, but not this year. Too bad, I love my time there, exploring, learning, and observing. I hope that you'll be able to get away. You might consider the Cruise with Bilingual Therapies. It'll be a great time with other clinicians and wonderful speakers for this year's bilingual symposium.
I've got a boatload to take care of myself. One of my major projects includes completing the application to license our preschool laboratory at Saint Louis University. We have a beautiful preschool classroom, fully equipped for observations and taping. So having it licensed is a major project for me in July. My eventual goal is to get a bilingual preschool going in the fall or spring. I've dreamed of having a preschool classroom that will have an A.M. focus on dual language development and a P.M. class for English as a second language with parent support of the home language. The dual language classroom will have English and Spanish preschoolers who will be instructed in both languages. The second class will be English only instruction but with support of parents in maintenance of the home language through preliteracy activities, music, and arts. These classrooms are for speech-language impaired preschoolers. Hope I can pull it together, I'm really excited about the possibilities. I'll let you know how it goes in the fall.
I've been looking at the preschool programs in the schools in New Mexico, Missouri, and Illinois. I've always been impressed with the ones in NM, mainly because there's an attempt to maintain the home language. So you can have Spanish only, bilingual, or English only. This is all possible because there are a good number of bilingual preschool teachers and speech language pathologists. In Missouri, where I'm now teaching, there aren't bilingual preschool classrooms, English only. So it's difficult for me to see so many of these children dropped into classrooms where there isn't support for families or children in the native language. Last month I spent some time in Chicago and had a great time observing a few classrooms, Spanish maintenance and also bilingual. I just love seeing these children blossom and learning those academic skills so easily in their home language. The classes are alive and the children are excited about what they're learning. Hearing them sing in the native language, repeating rhymes, reading stories, and writing their own stories in Spanish just fills me with joy and pride in these little kiddos.
I'm also visiting two research sites, one in Michigan and the other in Utah. Both projects are working on preliteracy and phonological awareness in Spanish speaking preschoolers. Not exactly Mexico, but I'll be learning and observing.
Another project that I'm hoping to get going this summer is a website for my activities. Many universities and researchers have these maintained so that you can learn about their work. If you're interested in any one particular researcher look the person up in their university website. These are usually listed in some format by university institutes or website links. Or just do a search by the researcher's name. These websites take time to build and maintain so visit some.
I want a website with a resource library of materials that we will develop at Saint Louis University in the coming years. That's my goal for the next 5 years. I want to maintain a library of speech/language activities, music, art activities that clinicians can download for their use. Maybe I can have a section for clinicians to contribute activities by areas, categories, or age groups. OK, my time in the sun is affecting my dreaming; how I love to dream of the possibilities.
I love this time of the year. There is so much to think about. Hope your dreams and possibilities are great this summer. Hope you have some frenzy time for yourself. Have a great time what ever you do, and please make sure that you enjoy the sunset wherever you are this summer.
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