Who Am I?
My name is Sharon Parisi. I have been a speech-language pathologist since 1977. I have seen many changes in the field of communication over the past 25 years. When I graduated from college with my masters’ degree the focus of speech therapy in the public schools was remediation of articulation errrors. Language was a new area which speech-language pathologists were exploring. Currently more and more children are being identified as speech-language delayed. They exhibit moderate to severe delays in receptive and/or expressive language skills.
In recent years, there has been a good deal of research on the relationship between language and reading. The American Speech Language Hearing Association has released a document entitled “Roles and Responsibilities of Speech-Language Pathologists With Respect to Reading and Writing.” There is also a document on the speech pathologist’s role in emerging literacy skills.
Since I have been incorporating many aspects of literacy into my work as a preschool speech-language pathologist, I decided that earning a CAGS in reading would benefit my students. By providing information to parents and teachers that I have learned in this program, I know that I am improving my students’ emerging literacy skills.