Audience

Early Childhood & Head Start Teachers and Directors

Presenter Name(s)

Rebeca Rivera Rivera

Presenter Bio(s)

Rebeca Rivera Rivera is a retired Bilingual (Spanish-English) Speech-Language Pathologist who worked for the Boston Public Schools for 31 years. While in BPS, she transitioned to Evaluation Team Facilitator for the District coordinating and leading the eligibility meetings for special education. After being an ETF for 4 years, Rebeca culminated her career by becoming the Bilingual Liaison for the Related Services Department. As a dual-language learner herself, Ms. Rivera Rivera has always been passionate about improving the related services for this population, particularly in the area of fair and valid evaluations. To this aim, she has created Professional Development on this topic so more Speech Language Pathologists will contribute to servicing this population as fairly as possible. 

Now as a retired SLP, living in her native Puerto Rico, she keeps in contact with the new generation of Speech Language Pathologists by giving lectures about Bilingualism and mentoring students. With more time in her hands she enjoys traveling and learning new skills like sewing.

Description

Our classrooms in many cities have become very diverse, and every year teachers are interacting with bilingual/bicultural students from many parts of the world. Teachers at every grade level, but especially, in the Early Childhood years (pre-school, Headstart), need to be prepared to be able to recognize the specific language needs of this population and when it would be appropriate to make a referral for a speech-language or special education evaluation. 

This professional development will offer information so that teachers can: 

• Recognize the stages of second language acquisition and identify the factors affecting this acquisition
• Use strategies to support the bilingual student in your classroom
• Gather information to be able to decide when is appropriate to refer a student for speech-language or special education evaluation

Synchronous / Asynchronous

Synchronous

Location

Virtual via Zoom

Dates & Times

Monday, August 18, 2025;  10:00am – 12:00pm

PDPs

2 PDPs 

Credit

n/a

Cost

$150 ACCEPT members/$180 non-members

Registration Deadline

August 4, 2025