About Alicia Garza

Ms. Garza is a native Houstonian. She has more than 20 years of experience working in public and private schools, including six years as an early childhood ESL teacher and over 14 years working as a bilingual speech pathologist at all educational levels.  She has a bachelor's degree in Spanish and Masters of Science in Speech-Language Pathology. Ms. Garza is passionate about working with underserved communities to help students with disabilities achieve their highest potential. 

How I Became a Speech-Language Pathologist

I started my professional career as an early education teacher at a dual language school, although prior to that I worked as teacher assistant and tutor in a variety of educational settings. As an ESL teacher, I worked with prekindergarten 3 and 4 year olds, then I taught kindergarten and then first graders.  Most of these students had very little exposure to English and often their families were recently arrived immigrants from Mexico or Central or South America.  Early on, I realized that I really connected with being a facilitator of my students’ second language development. I enjoyed the challenge of helping them go from a silent phase, to single words, then phrases, then true meaningful expressions of their thoughts and ideas in their second language.  I studied the stages and characteristics of second language development and co-developed an ESL curriculum for the young students in that dual language program. I found it to be very interesting work helping children move through the stages of language and communication development.  It felt like a natural transition to shift to being a speech-language pathologist after teaching young children in that setting.  I also found a lot of gratitude and personal fulfillment working with underserved communities and continue to be drawn to serving others in that capacity.