74: Having a Multicultural Mindset and More: Working With Your English Language Learners with Sofia Almeida

Do you bring a strong multicultural mindset to your classroom?

This is so important because it allows us to create greater connections with the many different families and clients that we work with.

My guest, Sofia Almeida, is joining us to talk all about working with bilingual students and English language learners. She is also giving tips to monolingual speech therapists!

Sofia Almeida is new to this crazy speech world. She just graduated in 2019 and dove headfirst into the world of Instagram, joining an amazing community. She is a bilingual speech therapist in the big apple where she is certified in both Spanish and English. Having lived in Queens her whole life has allowed her to develop a multicultural mindset which has bettered her as an SLP, specifically with the bilingual community. She has a love for the early childhood population where she works in a preschool by day and in private practice as a side hustle.

Her passion shines through her love for the field and hopes that everyone can develop a multicultural mindset in order to not only better our field but the world!

In This Episode You’ll Discover:

Advice for monolingual speech therapist
Why you can’t fake it until you make it during speech therapy
How to work with parents when you don’t speak their language
The best way to use translators with parents and students
The importance of knowing the language and culture of your students
Positive attributes for bilingualism
Why students often confuse their grammar and syntax

I am always so eager to have conversations like these because I actually work a lot with English language learners. I learned so much from Sofia, and I hope you did too!

If you are a monolingual speech therapist, I encourage you to learn more about different languages and cultures! Sofia is certified in Portuguese & Spanish, so if you could benefit from learning more about those languages and their cultures, I highly recommend you connect with her on Facebook and Instagram! All of her links are below.

Are you sick and tired of professional development that isn't relevant to you in the field being a school-based SLP or an SLP that works with school-aged children? I’ve been there, and that is why I created the Speech Retreat conference which provides amazing professional development and practical and relevant information for school-based SLPs! It is on July 17th, but you should get your ticket ahead of time at speechretreat.com because we are already giving away tons of fun prizes in the exclusive Facebook group!

Joke of the Week:

Q: What kind of keys do kids like to carry?

A: Cookies!

Resources Mentioned:

http://instagram.com/SoSofiaSpeech

https://www.facebook.com/SoSofiaSpeech/

speechretreat.com

Where We Can Connect:

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