2024 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 17-19, 2024 • Denver, CO
3/19/2024 | 3:30 PM - 3:55 PM | The Language of Self Advocacy: Success from Early Intervention and Beyond | Capitol 5
The Language of Self Advocacy: Success from Early Intervention and Beyond
How early does the language of self-advocacy start? Language is defined as a system to communicate and self-advocacy is defined as the ability to communicate your needs to others. People who self-advocate are more likely to thrive in school, work, and life. Infusing daily routines with meaningful language focused on self advocacy sets children up for success from early intervention through adulthood. By combining the complexity of language skills with the function of self-advocacy skills within meaningful language opportunities children have the opportunity to fully maximize their communication potential. Children’s language development and self advocacy skills progress when teachers, speech-language pathologists, early intervention specialists and parents work collaboratively to develop expectations and opportunities across settings. The goal is to provide a foundation for young students that builds into late elementary, middle school, and high school.
This presentation will provide strategies that can be implemented and generalized to support children’ self-advocacy skills across a variety of environments. The presentation will include how to define language skills and self-advocacy skills and demonstrate how they support each other. It will include how to prioritize language targets by identifying motivating factors and utilizing them to facilitate language production and self-advocacy. Evidence supports that specialized intervention focused on specific language structures increases language proficiency and allows children to advocate for themselves from birth and beyond.
- Attendees will define self-advocacy skills in early childhood.
- Attendees will identify the language needed for young children to effectively communicate their needs.
- Attendees will identify tools and strategies to facilitate self-advocacy through motivating language opportunities in early childhood.
Presentation:
3478265_16312AlexandriaMestres.pdf
Handouts:
Handout is not Available
Transcripts:
3478265_16312AlexandriaMestres.docx
Presenters/Authors
Alexandria Mestres
(Primary Presenter,Co-Presenter), University of Miami Children's Hearing Program, asm120@med.miami.edu;
Alex Mestres, a Miami native, attended Flagler College where she received a degree in Education of the Hearing Impaired and Elementary Education. She holds a Master's Degree in Applied Learning Sciences from University of Miami. Alex also has a wide variety of experience and credentialing in early childhood. She has worked in the private sector as an administrator, professional development trainer, and consultant. More recently she served as the department chairperson for Deaf and Hard of Hearing services with Miami Dade County Public School. While with the county she oversaw the itinerant teacher program and provided technical assistance to a wide variety of schools. Alex currently serves as a consultant and provides all deaf and hard of hearing services for Academica Charter Schools as well as Charter Schools USA. Along with those responsibilities, she is the educational specialist at the University Miami's Children's Hearing Program where she provides educational support for families of children with hearing loss.
ASHA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
No relevant financial relationship exists.
Nonfinancial -
No relevant nonfinancial relationship exists.
AAA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
Financial relationship with University of Miami.
Nature: AGBell Florida Board, AGBell International Financial Aid Committee, ACIA Scientific Committee.
Nonfinancial -
No relevant nonfinancial relationship exists.
Daniela Berrios-Reyes
(Co-Presenter), Nova Southeastern University, danielab.slp@gmail.com;
Daniela Berrios, M.A. CCC-SLP, LSLS Cert AVEd is an ASHA certified and Florida licensed bilingual speech-language pathologist and certified Listening and Spoken Language Specialist. She currently works at Nova Southeastern University as a Clinical Supervisor/Instructor. Daniela is passionate about advocacy, research, training and building capacity for individuals who serve children with hearing loss. She has served on a variety of professional organization committees and presented at the state, national and international levels. She is currently the President of the Florida Chapter of the Alexander Graham Bell Association and participates in research pertaining to listening, speech and language development and outcomes for children with hearing loss.
ASHA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
Nonfinancial -
AAA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
Nonfinancial -