Sarah Wilcox: Personal Statement
While in high school my Spanish teacher Mrs. Robinson asked if I would be interested in joining the Cadet Teaching Program working with the special education students. This is a day I will never forget because agreeing to join the program led me on the road to find myself and my passion in Speech-Language Pathology. I worked with the students on their interpersonal skills and felt extreme joy in watching the progression they were making through our interactions. There was a Speech Pathologist that worked in the special education classroom that let me shadow her and when she explained her role in the school district it seemed very fulfilling to me. I remember one student in particular that I became very close
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During college, I was hired as a Paraeducator for a kindergartener with autism. Together we went to speech sessions and I worked with him on using complete sentences in direct instruction which I found very rewarding. Being able to work with a child hands-on to improve his speech helped me to reinforce concepts learned in my coursework. Through volunteering for Dr. Debra Burnett in the Language Lab I have learned how to gloss children’s language samples using SALT as well as record speech samples using the PRAAT program. This experience paired with the current class I am taking, Clinical Research, has made me want to further my research experience. Currently, I am working as a Peer Assistant Tutor in the Pilot’s Program which is a retention program for first year college students. The program is a service to a diverse community and it has given me the opportunity to tutor students with Asperger’s, Dyslexia, and a student who is deaf that uses lip reading. These experiences have helped me to prepare for the rigors of a graduate program and have given me the desire to learn about everything else Speech Pathology has to offer