Language and Literacy Lab Opens in Havican Hall

By Howard Dukes

 

Susan Scherer Calandra ’72 was considering the many worthy Saint Mary’s College programs that she could support when she learned about the planned Language and Literacy Lab.

 

A ribbon cutting ceremony marked the official opening of the Language and Literacy Lab on September 8 in Havican Hall, where the lab is located. Susan Olney Latham ’91, associate professor of speech-language pathology at Saint Mary’s College, created the Language and Literacy Lab to address a literacy crisis confronting Indiana and St. Joseph County.

 

“In St. Joseph County, we have some schools where up to 30 percent of the children in the third grade are not able to read, so we want to intervene,” Latham said. “We want to be proactive instead of reactive, so if we give children a good foundation when they are three to five years of age it’s less likely that they will need language intervention when they start school.”

 

Latham said that the lab has several purposes with the first goal being to give children chances to interact with and learn from literature. “Talk to any preschool teacher and they will say, ‘read to your children,’ so reading is critical,” Latham noted. 

 

Latham noted that our spoken language is different from our written language in that people encounter words in print that they don’t use when they talk. “The only way that children will have those experiences of language is being read to,” Latham said.

 

Historically, children in need of speech and language therapy receive those services in what Latham calls the clinical model where a therapist teaches the child, often in school  where the therapist pulls the student from the classroom to provide the services in a one-on-one setting.

 

“This lab isn’t like that because in early childhood children construct their knowledge through their play and their experiences,” Latham said.  “In the Language and Literacy Lab the speech-language pathologist is helping the child facilitate their language and as they’re constructing knowledge they’re interacting with their peers.”

 

The Language and Literacy Lab’s five instructional areas are designed to engage children whether an adult is reading to them, or they are expanding their language through play, according to Latham. The room includes a quiet area where therapists read to the children. That area has an inviting couch where children gather for story time. 

 

“Sometimes we have a very specific purpose for why we are reading, so sometimes it might be to teach language and other times to practice rhyming,” Latham said.

 

Another center, the dramatic play area, is the frame of a life-sized playhouse that children can walk into and allow their imaginations to run wild as their language grows. There is an area where children work with manipulatives, which are physical objects like blocks that students can handle, explore as they seek to understand abstract concepts. Manipulatives are often used in early childhood education.

 

Latham said the lab includes a writing center and art center. Those physical areas will remain the same. However, the layout of the lab will vary depending on what topic the students are learning about, according to Latham.

 

“So, for example if we are reading a book about the farmers market, then our dramatic play area will turn into a farmers market,” Latham said. “Children practice roles to develop theory of mind and perspective taking. Those who develop these skills are better at self-regulation and do better in school.” 

 

The lab will also be a training lab for Saint Mary’s students, as well as educators from the community; participating children will come from the Early Childhood Development Center on campus. “We are starting with our own students, so graduate students who are learning how to be speech-language pathologists can go out and replicate this model as a language teacher in schools,” Latham said. “We’re also giving the opportunity to our teachers and speech-language pathologists in the community to come in and observe what we’re doing because we want people to replicate this.” 

 

Erin Connelly, graduate program director in the department of SLP, said once her students graduate from the masters of SLP program, they have a variety of career options. “When they graduate, they can work in a school or private practice, a hospital, and in-home early intervention or outpatient settings,” Connelly said. “About half of our students work in schools and about half of them go into the medical side of the field.”