Highlights from this episode:
We get to know the child, the daughter, the student behind the SLP. Ingrid shares her story from little girl sitting in a classroom not understanding a word of English to master clinician working with dual-language learners in the schools for almost 10 years.
Transcript
welcome to the bold slp podcast we are so happy that you're here and can't wait to share with you all of the amazing conversations we've been having we are the co-founders of the bold slp collective and we are also your hosts Liza, Desi and myself Ingrid each of us has a variety of experiences in all things bilingual and bimodal speech language pathology you'll get to know us pretty well on here we started this podcast to share our lived experiences but also because we want to bring advocacy and cultural humility to the forefront of every speech therapy conversation we hope that you'll join us each week and we hope that you enjoy this episode
LIZA: welcome back to the bold slp podcast today i am here with ingrid um ingrid really saved me throughout the pandemic she was there for me she listened to me she didn't even know me i was a complete stranger so thank you for everything that you've done for me ingrid today we're going to hear all about ingrid's story going beyond the CCCs with ingrid so ingrid whenever you're ready INGRID: thanks liza you're so sweet i loved connecting with you on instagram we'll get to that but i did i wanted to start from the beginning i just i guess kind of give you all the timeline of who i am all about me so i think the first thing you need to know about me is that i i'm the firstborn in my family i'm the oldest of two and i think that that has shaped a lot of who i am and how i am so i love being a big sister so i'm the first one in my family I have a younger
sister and it's just the two of us so when i was little um we were mostly in mexico while i was born in california my mom didn't really ever envision us being over in the u.s she is from chihuahua so is my dad in mexico so i grew up in mexico most of my formative years i would say like birth to six or seven we traveled to the u.s a lot because my dad's family was in the u.s so i had some access to the culture to the language chihuahua for those of you who don't know is a border state so we border texas so it was really easy to go on short holidays and even longer holidays to spend time with our family who was in the u.s and we did that back and forth for many years until yeah until i was six or seven my grandmother who lived in california she had a massive hemorrhagic stroke and she was in the hospital for a long long time and we ended up moving over there semi-permanently we always knew that we would come back but we moved to california for a couple of years and you know if you hear my english and you hear my accent you can credit those couple of years for that i was in school i remember joining the second grade class and sitting there and not understanding a single word that was being said being a native spanish speaker and having very limited english knowledge and zero proficiency really i remember sitting at the assemblies and just not knowing what was going on i was already in second grade so i have pretty vivid memories of that um i know i've shared before oh yeah isn't that crazy? LIZA: yeah we have these these classes in canada called um the welcome class and yeah it's for like immigrant kids who don't speak the language and we just never knew what went on in there and we didn't even communicate with those kids but ah that must have been so hard INGRID: it was and i'm just like now learning to like unpack how that all felt um as a grown-up and as a mom um figuring out like for example i could have been raising my kids to be spanish speakers first but i was very adamant that i didn't want them going into school and being confused or being other you know if they their english wasn't up to par yeah and i realized now that that's stems from my experience you know i don't know that it would happen today especially in the amazing school that we landed in but just that little bit of residual um pain from my experience i was like no they got to have their english down first before we start with spanish which totally goes against everything we know in the research LIZA: that we know now INGRID: yeah everything we now know in the research and everything i know as a speech therapist just couldn't get over that hurdle as a mom and it just brings me back to those first few months in school in california being totally lost i know i've told this story before i had a teacher in second grade who would punish the kids by throwing our shoes out the window and it could be anything it could be speaking out of turn it could be you know grabbing someone else's pencil but for me the one time she threw my shoe out the window was because i was speaking spanish to one of my friends LIZA: oh my goodness INGRID: yes so and that was i mean i'm not that old it was maybe 20 plus years ago yeah so when people now ask me why i'm so loud about linguistic diversity and language equity it's because those kids that we speak of that was me i was one of those kids LIZA: i'm so sorry Ingrid INGRID: oh it's okay i was so lucky lisa i have the best parents in the world they came home after working all day and they sat down with me to make sure that i didn't lose my spanish skills even not knowing back then you know how much they were giving to me they would sit down and teach me from the textbooks from mexico and they would make a point of me being proud of my spanish speaking skills and my mexican heritage so i never really even felt othered in the country or at home it was just those little moments at school that kind of like i think sat with me in a way that i hadn't really processed i guess not to get into like a therapy session LIZA: i'm so proud of your parents and i mean this is all a part of your journey so just like go with it
INGRID: yes so after that i was a really confident little girl you know english and spanish pretty strong within like six seven months i feel i became really really confident in school and then soon after i believe we we spent a summer in mexico and then we came back and um i was in third grade and i'll never forget her name i don't want to say her name but i remember her name and her face my third great teacher she was um she was hispanic i don't know exactly her heritage but she spoke spanish and she was a godsend to me you know after having had that experience the year prior and then just being stronger in my english and just i kind of hit my stride in third and fourth grade and also in fourth grade i had another latino teacher i do remember he was from puerto rico um all this to say that you know just the difference between one year to the next having that representation and that connection with a teacher who looked like me who spoke the language that i spoke at home so i don't know for all the teachers out there who think that they don't make a difference i hope they know they do
but after that i'll go ahead LIZA: in grade two you didn't speak any english and then in grade three you did yes amazing and it was helpful to have a you know a teacher and you know seeing representation too and there was that comfort level too right that you have you to take risks INGRID: and well she would allow me like um i have this very clear vivid memory of the word dark in spanish because she would allow me to use my spanish skills to know to show what i knew whenever there were gaps you know as my bilingualism was developing yes and so the word dark in spanish is oscuro we say it oh skuro without a b but a lot of spanish speakers spell it with a b of squirrel and so i would i would spell it with the b and she would tell me no no it's not with the b and i would go home to my mom and she's like your teacher's wrong
and i would go back to class and she's like oh maybe i need to learn she would literally like humble herself in front of a third grader and look it up in a dictionary and she'd be like you're right they are both correct options like wow you know we were both correct and she would do things like that for me that i think meant everything LIZA: what an incredible teacher wow INGRID: yes that's why i'm like i know her name i haven't forgotten her i don't know where she's at but i don't know i don't know whatever happened you know there was no social media back then but yeah after that i think
my mom didn't like california and i didn't know at the time you know i didn't understand i was fine either way i'm just a kid you know they made sure i was protected and happy but we went back to mexico after that so i was only in the us really part of the second grade third and fourth and then we went back to mexico and that's where the rest of me you know kind of came about i went to grade school finished grade school and then middle school i don't know if you guys have middle school in canada and LIZA: no we do we go from elementary straight to high school okay so it all kind of stays together but our elementary's a little bit longer so yeah INGRID: yeah in mexico it's longer too you go until the sixth grade in elementary and then middle school we call it secondary and it's 7th 8th and 9th and then high school we call it prep school and it's 10th 11th and 12th growing up in mexico was amazing um i grew up with a strong sense of identity i think that that's really shaped who i am um but i always knew i was american and i think that's hard for people to understand especially in recent climate where you have to be one thing or another yeah um i always knew i was american i always loved being american and i loved being mexican and i think it's okay to be both and honor both and feel patriotism for both i don't see it as something that is one or the other um and so i that's kind of part of me and it's part of my children now too because they understand that they are both american and they're mexican because their mom is Mexican their grandparents are Mexican so it's kind of something we navigate now but back then it was hard for me for because people didn't understand i wasn't Mexican enough sometimes and then i wasn't American enough sometimes but i think we're going in a right in the right direction now talking about identity and yeah what we feel inside and what heritage matters to us so those years were really special being with my family just being i don't know i feel in mexico children grow up to be a little bit more independent if that makes any sense i just felt really independent i was taking public transportation at age 15. i don't see that happening here for my daughters and just i don't know just a lot of freedom which always people wonder and why did you move back to the U.S. and it was again my grandmother who had recovered she became ill and we decided that we would move for good this time my parents received their their permits their permanent residency permits to move and i was 16 and i was heartbroken i had my whole life we had just bought a house and i was in a really amazing private preparatory school i had a boyfriend i had friends i had an entire life you know i was learning to drive and all of a sudden we were moving and i didn't even know where we were going LIZA: oh no okay yeah that's a big shift INGRID: it was um at the time being at that private school um there was a lot of expectation i know we talked about that in your episode a little bit um i got accepted into a very prestigious private school i was on scholarship at the age of 15 i had to test into this school and so the pressure was on everybody there like you mentioned Liza was either going to be a doctor an engineer a lawyer something major um and the course load was heavy and i was taking organic chem in english when i was 16 years old
um because LIZA: did you enjoy those courses? INGRID: oh i loved it i loved it because not only did i enjoy the science i enjoyed math it was a easy lay-up for me already being an English speaker you know whereas my peers were learning english sometimes as a second language for me it was kind of like uh extra little boost you know something that was easy to me because of my time spent in california so that's when i started taking french LIZA: woohoo INGRID: i know because english was easy and spanish was easy so we went for the third language which was amazing yeah so french was my third language and i think i started when i was 15 and i really loved it i had this amazing teacher from Quebec she was so interactive we were never sitting down never doing a workbook we were playing uno we were playing charades and towards the end of the third semester we put on an entire play in french and i wish i remembered what it was i think it was something from Shakespeare i just can't remember if it was romeo and juliet or midsummer night's dream um
yeah she was so exciting she was you know just so so dynamic and then my last semester i went to the more advanced class with which was with um a man from france i can't remember his name obviously didn't make a big impact on me but he was the workbook and don't speak any spanish or english in my class you know so it was a little bit kind of like the luster wore off for a little bit but i had a lot of the basics and i enjoyed it and language came easily to me i think maybe like already having learned two languages the third one wasn't that bad and it was exciting at first so i tried to keep it up i tried i know we talked about that before in our conversations but i feel like i've lost my french LIZA: i'm here for you so are you ready INGRID: thanks i know i'm like so self-conscious about it but yeah that was me in high school and i feel like we moved to the U.S. and i just grew up real quick i didn't have time for messing around in parties and you know getting to know people i had three semesters left if we were being real and i just wanted to get out of there i wanted to be done and i wanted to go to college and that was it and so i i feel like that last year and a half is kind of a blur i tried to do everything i could to catch up because i didn't have you know the u.s. history and u.s. geography you know i was missing some of those extras so i did a lot of that online and just trying to keep afloat and i did do some AP stuff like you were talking about the pressures i thought i still wanted to be a pediatrician i thought i still wanted to go to med school i took advanced anatomy and physiology and like you said it wasn't did you say pigs i can't remember what you said dissecting rats it wasn't rats for us it was a cat Liza
LIZA: well that will deter anyone from the field INGRID: we were dissecting a cat
LIZA: ugh stop! I do want to go back to something you were saying before INGRID: yeah go ahead LIZA: i feel that a lot of us especially immigrants do always feel the need to like catch up to the rest of our peers whereas no hurry and like take gap years and i don't know where this came from where we constantly feel like we're behind but we're fine INGRID: yeah i don't know and i was honestly like i graduated in the top 10 percent of my class yeah i was not happy about it oh i could not care less because i wasn't top five
you know what i mean like that that drive that seems like it's good drive but it's rooted in something else LIZA: yeah i feel like we always
we all know that the standard just has to be higher for us like we already feel 'lower than' 'not as good as' so we put that the bar so high for ourselves and yeah it causes a lot of confusion damage to our self-esteem INGRID: right, yeah i was just glad to be done and honestly i understood that if i had more time there i could have achieved that goal but at the same time i didn't celebrate what i did achieve and so now i definitely am more mindful of that with myself and in raising my own children great great um because i don't think it was anything that my parents put on me it was just society you know i was coming in as a new girl as a girl who looked different had a different name and was coming in from mexico and and i actually went to two different high schools i didn't even tell you that because we were in one part of texas for a few months and then in another part of texas for another for the rest of the time so i was the new kid twice in that year that's really hard yeah so i think now that i think about it like i became really good at making friends but not really good at keeping them not really good at keeping in touch not really good at going deep enough in a friendship that you could get hurt if something happens or if you lose that friendship um i'm trying to get better at it even though a lot of these new friendships are long distance they feel really open and unique and strong so hopefully we can get to know each other and meet in person one day even though we're in two different countries but oh 100 LIZA: but i do want to ask you how all this led to speech therapy INGRID: oh my gosh it's wild, so all of this leads to speech therapy because i start pre-med and so i take all of those bio classes and i do well um but then i'm feeling like you said you know the dissection and when do you ever really get to help people you know if you're working on this sciency stuff and then i got to know like the businessy side of medical settings too and i'm like no that doesn't sound like anything you know i wanted i always said pediatrician because i love children and i like helping families like being a pediatrician i don't think sounds like i would be helping a single family at all you know so in the way that i wanted so i switched over to psychology and that was a little bit hard to explain because i didn't know where that would go either um but i'm so thankful that i did it led me to classes like philosophy and led me to classes like statistics and just more time to do my french i kept going with my french studies and more time to learn about languages and linguistics if i hadn't made that switch from pre-med to psych i wouldn't have found linguistics and i wouldn't have found slp so yeah and even my senior year i was feeling pretty lost i was applying to different kinds of programs i wasn't sure if i was going to be a researcher i applied to some phd school psych programs um psychology phd programs until one of my friends and peers from university she had graduated a year before me and she said hey you're bilingual if you were an slp you would never struggle to find a job like you have no idea how much we need spanish-speaking slps and i'm like what in the world is an slp right so i'm here it's literally probably 10 days before all the grad school application deadlines are hitting for the fall of 2009 and she's telling me about this whole new job new career and i'm looking it up and i'm like this is me this is everything that i have been doing that i don't know how to put together all of my love for anatomy and physiology for helping people for languages and linguistics for bilingual brains for behavior and human interaction like all of the things that i've been kind of flip-flopping and bouncing around with yeah put into one little packet called speech language pathology so i was obsessed i was obsessed and i didn't care if i got into all those other other programs that i had applied to i wanted to get into an slp grad program
and so i i did LIZA: it all came together for you like every bit of interest you had were all in one place INGRID: it was amazing it was amazing and i had a lot of help along the way i as always i had scholarships i had financial aid through college so i was working that's one of the programs from federal funding you kind of get a grant and you do a work study i was working for the last four years i mean i've been working every year in school but the last two years of college i was working with a person from new mexico who had a friend who was a professor of audiology and so she said hey if you're looking into slp you gotta meet my friend and i was like okay what does your friend do she said oh she's an audiologist at this really awesome program and i'm like oh okay i would love to like pick her brain and she set that all up for me and even before going to dallas i had information i had a contact and i think that that was really really imperative and i got into the program i wanted in dallas i got into a program in texas tech in lubbock i believe texas i got into the program in arizona which now in hindsight my bilingualism would have been more supported over there but i had to decide based on financial you know opportunities because i was a texas resident and i couldn't afford to go to arizona so i had to make a choice to either you know go far away from my family and everyone i knew my fiance at the time my husband now and go do slp far away in dallas i know it sounds like it's the same state but texas is huge it's like 11 hours away and um i went there and it was an amazing fit right away i i didn't like the city i'm not a big city person but my program my experiences the people i met the clinical instructors i had they were my favorite i still to this day i'm like my dream is to be a clinical instructor like the ones i had they would teach us at clinic in the morning with real clients and then in the afternoon we had lecture so my first year there i was um at an outpatient neuro rehabilitation center in the morning i had a client a bilingual spanish speaking client and then in the afternoon i would go to neuro class with the same clinical instructor and i think it made a world of difference to me and how i view our field and mentorship and supervision it was a great great place for me hopefully on another episode we can get more into my journey in the slp world how i became a bilingual slp but for now this was you know pretty much all about me how i got here uh beyond the ccc's all the things that make me me and yeah that's pretty much all i wanted to share with you guys today just getting to know me um as we move on with this project we all felt it was really important for you guys to know who we are and where we're coming from and i think for myself i really think my journey started very early on and all those things came together to make me the slp that i am today so thank you guys so much for listening thank you Liza
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