Professional Development
Milwaukee Bilingual Speech/Language Pathologists has a passion for bilingual speech/language pathology and would be happy to share our enthusiasm, knowledge, and skills with your staff. We would be available to attend staff meetings or plan professional development trainings to consult with your staff on bilingual issues.
Each Speech/Language Pathologist at MBSLP has extensive experience and training on bilingual development and multicultural issues as well as completed intensive clinical hours with bilingual clients. This expertise enables us to provide professional development to a variety of different disciplines.
Our in-services aim to provide information on the fundamentals of second language acquisition. In-service participants will increase their knowledge of the shared and unique features of the Spanish and English languages and apply this knowledge to the learning needs of regular and special education students. We will assist attendees in recognizing learning and behavior that is typical for second language learners, and determine when a special education referral might be appropriate.
The following topics are frequently requested by school districts. Contact us for more information on our professional development services and to identify which topics would be helpful for your staff.
Professional Development Topics:
- Typical second language acquisition
- Distinguish language differences from language disorders
- Red flags for language impairment and other special education needs in bilingual children
- Similarities and differences between the English and Spanish languages and how this impacts oral and written language
- How to use converging data, language history and exposure, and parent information to assess the learning needs of children from diverse language backgrounds
- Determining appropriate interventions for English language learners and identifying when a special education referral might be appropriate
- Understanding our responsibilities for serving bilingual children as specified by IDEA
- Bilingual assessment and intervention: A tutorial for SLPs