Featured Honors Scholar: Eileen Ford
As a Speech, Language, and Hearing Science major, it is quite difficult to study abroad and meet the department’s requirements in a timely manner. Think about it, how can you study speech-language pathology when you are not in a country that primarily speaks English! This past summer I had the opportunity to study speech-language pathology while abroad in Belize. Cool, right? I went with a nation-wide undergraduate program designed specifically for students looking to pursue a career in speech-language pathology, or a related degree. It is surprising to most people that English is the official language of Belize. Belize is located in Central America, south of Mexico, east of Guatemala, and north of Honduras.
In 2016 there were about 150,000 working speech-language pathologists in the United States, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the summer of 2018 there was one, yes one, speech-language pathologist in Belize. One of the first days of the two-week intensive program we got to meet her, and tour the clinic she is a part of. She told us how she has to stop seeing clients and place them back on the waiting list every few months because the waiting list is so long and that is the best way to try and provide services to everyone. Not everyone who might benefit from services is on the waiting list. Why? The families may live too far away to justify frequent trips to the capital city, and many people may not know there are services out there to help them.
The study abroad program was small. There were thirteen undergraduate students, three speech-language pathologist employees, two visiting speech-language pathology professors, and one program director. The majority of my time was spent doing things related to the profession. I sat in lectures to learn how to do various screenings (in a classroom in the middle of the rainforest), ran the week long summer camp, made home visits, and participated in discussions about the past or upcoming day’s work.
The lectures I attended were held in a classroom that was basically a glorified treehouse library in the jungle. In these first lectures the group planned the five day-long summer camp we were to run. The theme we picked was jungle adventure. We were divided in to smaller groups and each group was responsible for five days-worth of activities at a station for summer camp. Some of these stations included fine motor skills, gross motor skills, story time, snack time, pretend play, and the like. I was in the story time group. My group decided to read two picture books over the course of camp. This was out plan: Introduce the first book the first day, make predictions and looks at the pictures. The second day we would read the book. The third day we would retell the story together, then reread the book to see how accurate we were. The fourth day we introduced the second book, made predictions and looked at the pictures. And the last day of camp we read the second book. Although that sounds like a well structures plan, I still had to think on my feet during story time. We had not met the kids who would be attending camp prior to the first day. We had to adapt the activities on the spot to the children’s abilities. Making these planned activities last the full duration of story time was also quite the challenge.
Here are two pictures of summer camp. The one on the left is of another student, myself, and a camper. The one on the right is of me being a giraffe during pretend play time.
Other lectures were structured so we could learn screening procedures. There was one day we traveled two hours outside the city to an isolated town, and we performed oral mechanism and hearing screenings on many children.
This was taken during our “how to do an oral mechanism exam” lecture.
The day we made home visits was more of an observation day. The professors and speech pathologists worked with the client and the students got to observe in small groups. Since we were going to people’s homes we learned a lot about the Belizean culture that day.
Daily discussions were prompted by a daily question but frequently wandered to moments of the day that stood out. Sometimes it was I noticed X about person Y, how would you handle the same situation as a practicing clinician in a few years, and sometimes it was why did you do X instead of Y. Every day ended with a personal glow and grow, something we think we did well and something we would like to try an improve for the following day. Discussions happened on the bus between work sites, in the treehouse classroom, at restaurants, and even on the beach. You read that right. We practiced speech pathology on the beach.
The “abroad” part of “study abroad” is just as important as the “study” part. Anyone who has studied abroad knows this to be true. The home base for this program was in the middle of the jungle, in dorms that were quite different from what you are probably thinking. We had a dining hall and got home cooked Belizean meals for breakfast and dinner, we ate lunches wherever we were working that day.
One of many delicious Belizean meals, and the super cool place we got to stay!
There was no air conditioning and limited running water where we were staying. As you can imagine, there were tons of mosquitos. One morning there was a tarantula in the bathroom. That was a terrifying experience to say the least.
Tarantula in the bathroom.
The weekend between the two work weeks was spent hiking, visiting Mayan Ruins, zip-lining through the jungle, and spelunking. Spelunking might just be my favorite word. Some days after work we got to go swimming in the nearby river, or to a beach club. One night we even got to go to the zoo! They have very different animals in their zoos. I held a snake and fed a tapirus (the national animal of Belize). My final weekend in Belize was a total vacation. The group took a ferry boat to Caye Caulker, one of the barrier islands, and got to relax on the beach, go to karaoke, and experience the vacation side of Belize.
The group at the touristy Belize sign.
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