From Peace Corps to SLP in 20 Years
I was definitely not a little girl who knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. My interests varied from becoming an astronaut to writing scripts and performing mini-plays. I was creative, yet practical, and by the time I graduated from high school I was ready to leave Oregon far behind and travel the world!
In college I chose communications, because the department included theater majors. However, my classes morphed into cross-cultural ethnographies and culminated with a six-month internship in Manila, Philippines. While there, I lived among squatter communities and volunteered with a micro-finance loan organization. I had no idea at the time how profoundly this experience would reshape my worldview.
Three years later I was accepted into the Peace Corps and spent two years teaching English to grade school students in Lithuania. I lived and worked with people in my adopted community. By living in the Philippines, U.S. and Lithuania, I learned wealth and poverty come in many different forms and are not measured by money alone, but by people’s access to opportunity. Education holds the key. After my time as a volunteer, I became committed to gaining skills and resources to affect change.
Returning to the United States, I worked in Washington, D.C., teaching English to adults from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Peru, El Salvador and Korea. These were hard-working, talented students. Many held multiple jobs and then attended evening and weekend classes. I remember one student nodd...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Genealle Visagorskis Tags: Speech-Language Pathology Autism Spectrum Disorder Cultural Diversity Language Disorders Schools Speech Disorders Source Type: blogs
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