Washington DC is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the United States.
If you’re a special education coordinator at a DC area school, you certainly see this reflected in your student body.
Of course, kids of all backgrounds and ethnicities may require the support of a speech-language pathologist in their education.
But culturally sensitive speech and language evaluations are one of the critical roles speech therapists can play.
The Voz Institute is proud to be the only fully bilingual speech therapy clinic in Washington DC, with each of our SLPs fluent in at least two languages.
To help make culturally sensitive speech therapy more accessible, The Voz Institute offers contract services to Washington DC schools.
Comprehensive Speech And Language Evaluations
The Voz Institute offers speech and language evaluations in our clinic as well as on location in your school.
This includes evaluations in the following areas:
- Fluency
- Speech sound production
- Expressive and receptive language
- Social skills
- Reading and writing skills
- Voice quality
- Oral motor skills
- And more
In particular, The Voz Institute offers a focus on dual language learners as well as multilingual students.
This means your speech-language pathologist from The Voz Institute will be better able to distinguish between a speech, language, or communication disorder and a cultural or linguistic difference.
Bilingual Speech Therapy
Following evaluation, your Voz SLP will offer fully bilingual speech therapy treatment tailored to the child’s unique needs.
This includes treatment for a wide variety of speech, language, or communication disorders or delays, including:
- Fluency disorders like stuttering and cluttering
- Speech sound disorders like lisp and articulation disorders
- Expressive and receptive language disorders
- Voice disorders like dysarthria, monotone, or volume concerns
- Speech and language differences related to disabilities or impairments
- Speech and language differences related to autism and neurodivergence
- And others
To find out more about the The Voz Institute approach to each of the above conditions, visit their corresponding page.
You can also visit the The Voz Institute blog, where we regularly publish articles about speech therapy in both English and Spanish.
Why Choose The Voz Institute?
The benefit of working with The Voz Institute is that we offer fully bilingual speech-language pathology services.
Speech therapy is always tailored to the child’s individual needs – or at least, it should be.
However, it’s best to provide speech therapy in the language a child understands best.
As well, multilingual language development can sometimes look like language delays to an untrained eye. Having a speech therapist who understands the unique nature of how multilingual children learn language is important.
If your student body reflects the diversity of DC, you almost certainly have a number of multilingual students. Multilingual speech therapy contracted services from The Voz Institute can help make sure they get the support they need to thrive.
Cultural Sensitivity Training For Staff And Teachers
Being able to understand, and be understood, by people of diverse backgrounds is important in a diverse society.
That’s even truer in a city that’s growing more diverse every day.
That’s why cultural sensitivity training is so important.
You may also see this sort of training referred to as “cultural competency training,” but someone else’s culture is not something you can become “competent” in.
Rather, we can become more sensitive to the cultural differences of the people we work with.
As well, we can learn to recognize the inherent cultural biases built into the systems in which we operate.
With cultural sensitivity training from Voz, your staff will understand:
- What diversity and privilege really mean (and what they don’t mean)
- How to recognize cultural biases and internalized prejudices
- The different intersections of oppression and “isms,” and how they can negatively affect students’ experience
- How to facilitate a greater learning environment for students of diverse backgrounds
- How to manage and reduce implicit biases while performing evaluations
- The nature of code switching for multilingual kids, and how to navigate it as an educator
- The barriers to treatment many kids of diverse backgrounds face
- And so much more
During your next professional development day, consider The Voz Institute’s cultural sensitivity training.
