I was born and raised in Piura, Peru before immigrating as a young adult to America; thus, I am more Peruvian than American and look forward to contributing to the diversity of your program as a South American woman. After completing my undergraduate degree in education, I began the only related coursework in my country, and completed half of a Master’s Program in Auditory and Language Education 2002-2003, at the Universidad Femenina Del Sagrado Corazon in Lima, Peru. I also completed a practicum at the Hospital del Nino del Peru, working with children with cleft palettes.
I did not finish the program because I left Peru to immigrate to the USA as the result of marriage. Nearly a decade later, now fully bilingual and bicultural, I have much more to offer to a graduate program.
I have also made California my home, especially the vast Latino community. Thus, my professional interests span two worlds, north and south. I have chosen the career path of becoming a certified SLP because of a concern that I developed as a child and have continued throughout my lifetime, a concern for those people, especially children, who for one reason or another are unable to communicate successfully. I see these children as trapped, and I wish to devote my life to their freedom through expression. I am particularly concerned about the lack of development in this field in my Peru—which I saw close at hand in my practicum at Lima’s Children’s Hospital; and hope to return someday to build a school for children.
I was not accepted to your program last year. Since then, I have worked very hard to strengthen my credentials as an applicant in the hope that you might choose me this year. I have earned my Montessori Teaching Certificate and I am now a part-time Head Teacher for a Montessori Kindergarten. I am thrilled with what I see are possibilities for progressive and creative interaction between SLP and the Montessori philosophy. I also volunteer twice a week at a speech therapy clinic.
Being Latina is fundamental to my identity as a teacher, and I work at a bilingual school with children that have attention disorders, stutter, or have other problems that inhibit their effective communication and development of appropriate social skills. Facial and vocal exercises are part of our routine. I also spend two afternoons per week at the Speech Pathology Clinic in Berkeley, translating for little Latinos in the Head Start Program. I prepare materials, do assessments, discuss cases, observe, and translate assessments for the Latino community. I use sign language to tell stories to special children who are hard of hearing, deaf, have Down’s syndrome, etc.
I look forward to a long and productive career with enormous professional growth both here in California and back home in Peru. My experiences in Peru working at the Children’s Hospital have stayed with me, the terrible scarcity of resources devoted to this area. Becoming an SLP professional in California will provide me with a platform from which I will be able to someday return to Peru and build a special needs school for children in need of communication therapy.
My application is strengthened by the fact that I am fully fluent in both written and spoken Portuguese; and this may be of critical importance to future professional networking with colleagues in Brazil. Most importantly, however, I have been taking classes in American Sign Language at Berkeley City College and have achieved an intermediate level and a basic level in Swedish Sign Language.
I look forward to developing a special research interest in your program in the area of the speech problems of newly arriving members of the Latino community, helping them to overcome misunderstandings, prejudices, and to seek the remedial attention that their children need.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for again taking my application into consideration.
MA Personal Purpose Communicative Sciences and Disorders