During the summer B I had the opportunity to take part in the Mary’s Place summer program. The experience not only enhanced my skills to become a better speech pathologist, but changed my mindset and gave me valuable insight into the lives of refugees and culturally linguistically diverse children and families. Before starting the placement I had generalizations about how to work with this population, However as I have found, there is much more to consider. One thing that I found challenging and eye opening is the varying levels each of the children were are at. It is easy to stereotype where a child should be academically based on their age or social abilities. Depending on how long a child has been in the United States, amount of language enrichment they’ve had, and how well they learn affects each child differently. I …show more content…
This placement was unique in the way that it required each student clinician to work together rather than creating their own lesson. Each day the other clinicians and myself had to discuss, plan, and prepare how to entertain and provide language enrichment to 30-40 children. This gave me insight and practice with how and why collaboration is necessary. One of my challenges throughout the placement was implementing others ideas and plans. I didn’t always agree with the other clinicians ideas and didn’t always see their vision for the activity. However, it has helped me realize the importance of clearly presenting my own plans and ideas to others for correct and confident execution. As a future speech pathologist, I will be expected to give recommendations to parents and teachers. Similarly, teachers and parents will be giving me recommendations. Having this experience has made me be more conscious of the way you present your ideas and has made me want to gain feedback about my own ideas to ensure they are appropriate and