A Time of Reckoning, a Call for Change

When multilingual families of children with speech and language-learning disabilities have come to see me with anguish and guilt because another SLP emphasized that their use of a home language was ‘delaying’ the development of English, I have told them of being 17, not speaking a word of English and walking into my first American History class in my senior year of high school. I’ve told them of times when I’ve been told: “Are you stupid? Don’t you know how we speak English? You should learn.” I pause to give room to the grief I feel that I’ve given up writing in my lengua materna, which is beautiful and romantic, to write in the rational, measured, and direct English register in which I write. And yet, after 28 years of living in the United States, English is not the language in which I express my anger, nor the one in which I do math computations, and especially not the one in which I sing. I shamefully remember the times I’ve heard myself thinking “I suppose that my dissertation, which focused only on Spanish phonotactics, is not an impactful contribution to our field,” as if in order for my narrative to be credible and complete, English must take up space. To them I say: Your language matters. Your language is necessary. Your language is your legacy. <a href="https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/a-time-of-reckoning-a-call-for-change-915de791118f">Learn More</a>