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School may be out for a few more weeks, but more than 50 local school-age children and their parents participated in a program in June designed to rev up literacy skills and foster a love of reading — the perfect antidote to the dreaded academic backslide many students experience when classrooms close for the summer.

The LAUNCH program as a whole isn’t new — faculty and students in the Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology program have offered it in a group of apartment communities for several years. But this year, parents were included in what , called the “Learning to LAUNCH” component. That effort was held on two weekday evenings and boosted attendance tremendously. It included dinner for families, informational sessions with tips on how to engage and read with their children at home, and books and resources to take home. Learning to LAUNCH was held during times that were convenient for families, right in their communities, Kennedy said.

“It’s actually not necessarily just school readiness,” Kennedy said. “It is also to highlight those language and literacy skills that are foundational to school success for kids that aren’t just getting ready for school but have been attending as well.”

Students ran the two-week program with the support of three supervising speech-language pathologists at each of the two community sites. Children were screened before the program began to enable students to tailor the activities to their needs. The graduate students planned and implemented engaging activities such as crafts, movement and sensory activities, while ensuring the program hit key language and literacy targets, Kennedy said. 

The LAUNCH program not only enables students to develop their clinical skills, but also gives them a first-hand understanding of the social determinants of health, Kennedy said. 

“It’s important because they are aware of the need,” she said. “When you look at it from a health standpoint and an educational standpoint and use that lens, it really gives it a hands-on feel and really helps them to understand and relate more to where patients are coming from, which helps them to modify their service delivery.”

Other pediatric summer programs offered by the department include ROAR, a program for children with a speech-sound disorder diagnosis, and a language-based program in partnership with the Down Syndrome Association of South Texas.

Second-year master’s student Diana Perez was part of a group of students who applied for a Community Service Learning Grant from the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics to fund the Learning to LAUNCH program. The Harrington Foundation Fund also supported the LAUNCH program.

“Being in the community was in and of itself the most rewarding thing possible,” Perez said. “A lot of these kids during the summer don’t have access to books. They sometimes fall back. Being there was really important for a lot of us because we really saw a lot of growth in the kids.” 

Students let parents and caregivers know that they can get creative in how they encourage their children to develop literacy.

“Not every parent has the time, capability and resources to sit down and read a whole book with their child,” Perez said. “We emphasized that it doesn’t need to be this structured formal type of literacy event. It can be casual, it can be funny, it can be at bath time. It can be for five minutes at time.”

Second-year Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology student Araceli Ortiz said her participation in LAUNCH and other summer programs has given her the opportunity to glimpse what it will be like to practice in her chosen profession.

“I have a passion for community-based programs like this,” Ortiz said. “It was a unique experience that not only did I learn as graduate student clinician, but also I know we were making an impact for the community.”