There’s something about working and servicing linguistically diverse children that is very rewarding. The TESOL program has harnessed into my existing skills and reinforced the skills I possess as a clinician even better. I can now easily immerse myself in the basic relationship between languageand learning. This program has helped me unpack hands on techniques and strategies. I am able to communicate with my students in many different ways; providing a comprehensive linguistically diverse counseling session, being inclusive in the language and tools I use with my students, and using correct and linguistic methods of assessment.
In order to maintain professionalism and provide adequate bilingual services to English Language Learners, one must make sure that as a practitioner, I tend to the necessities of ELLs in youth instruction and delivery in my counseling and assessment. I also have to provide the adequate resorces to best support ELLs, which could serve as a difficulty in many underprivileged communities. It is important that we address the needs of our ELL students early on in early education if we can, that way we can identify interventions and plan early for the children. However, this becomes difficult when not all parties concerning the student are on board. Building a comprehensive team for our students, especially our linguistically diverse students, is essential in measuring success and progress.
One of the things I’ve grown to learn through the program is that it is important to recognize that it is possible for bilingual students to have just as developed cognitive skills as others who only speak one language; however, they build multicultural abilities so that they can succeed in an extremely diverse community. Multilingualism / Bilingualism must be recognized among the plenty facets of someone's culture in order to provide linguistically and culturally skilled work to diverse student populations. Through studying the perspectives of multilingual / bilingual practitioners in this course, as a school psychologist, I may begin to establish a more systematic way of interpreting the function that multiple languages serve in reference to the way a I communicates with students and my delivery of service. I have grown to gain more skills to my arsenal as the program progressed. This program has also challenged me and my own cultural bias as a clinician; I have to be conscious about who my audience is and tailor my service to be inclusive.