When Three Languages Aren't Enough: Moran Levery on Building a Bilingual SLP Practice in Miami
"At 18 months, if you would have evaluated them in English, they would have looked severely delayed."
Moran Levery isn't talking about a client. She's talking about her own kids. And that's exactly the point. When a child grows up hearing Hebrew from one parent, Spanish from the other, and English at school, a monolingual evaluation doesn't just miss the picture. It paints the wrong one entirely.
Moran is the founder of Speak Up Bilingual SLP in Miami, and she brings something rare to the table: clinical training in bilingual language development backed by personal experience raising trilingual children. Her practice serves a community where roughly 95% of the kids she sees are bilingual, and her story on Clinic Chats is a masterclass in building a private practice around a genuine, deeply personal niche.
Bilingual Isn't a Diagnosis
One of the biggest problems Moran sees in the field is how bilingual children get misidentified. A three-year-old from a Spanish-speaking household starts preschool and gets exposed to English for the first time around 18 months. By age three, they're developing normally in both languages but haven't caught up to monolingual peers in either one. A standard English-only evaluation could flag that child as delayed when they're actually right on track.
This is where Moran's training at Columbia University's bilingual and bicultural program becomes critical. Her professor, Dr. Kate Crowley, taught her to conduct dynamic assessments, using clinical judgment and knowledge of bilingual language development rather than relying on standardized tools that were never normed on multilingual speakers.
"You have to make sure if you have concerns about your child that you have to be seen by a therapist who understands bilingual language development."
For therapists who want to sharpen their skills in this area, Moran recommends leadersproject.org, where Dr. Crowley offers free CEU modules and video content on bilingual and bicultural evaluations.
From Broken Leg to Breakthrough
Moran's path to speech therapy wasn't exactly linear. She grew up Israeli in Montreal, speaking Hebrew at home, studying in French, and learning English as a second language. She earned a bachelor's in social work and worked in the field before her father started nudging her toward speech-language pathology.
She resisted. No science background. No interest.
Then she broke her leg.
"I sat there pondering my life. And I realized that everything that I wanted to do was right in front of me."
She enrolled in Columbia's bilingual-focused SLP program, graduated, started her clinical fellowship in New York, and eventually moved to Miami when her Colombian husband's business travel made it the better hub. Looking back, she says everything led her there. Miami, where bilingualism isn't the exception but the baseline, turned out to be the exact place her training was built for.
Building a Language Enrichment Program from Scratch
Beyond her private caseload, Moran developed something unusual: a language enrichment program for a local preschool. The Sheckle Hill Community Day School approached her to create a pilot targeting general education classrooms, not kids with IEPs or diagnosed disorders, but typically developing bilingual children who could benefit from structured language stimulation.
The program runs 45 minutes per classroom per week. Moran reads a book using targeted language strategies, then runs three learning centers built around the book's theme. She works alongside classroom teachers and assistants, training them on language development techniques in real time.
In year one, she covered eight classrooms and got to know 144 students individually, tracking their levels, profiles, and needs. The program was renewed for a second year with nine classrooms.
"By the end of the year, I knew 144 different students, their levels, their profiles, what their needs were, and I was able to work with the teachers in real time, on the ground."
That kind of embedded, collaborative model is rare in private practice. And Moran built the entire curriculum herself, week by week, laminator and all.
The Private Pay Reality in a Multilingual Market
Moran runs a private pay only practice, which means she regularly refers families to check their insurance first. She's upfront about it: therapy is a lengthy process, it's expensive, and if coverage exists, she encourages families to use it.
But her niche creates its own demand. When a French-speaking family moves to Miami and needs a speech therapist who can evaluate their child in French, the options are essentially zero. Hebrew-speaking families face the same problem. Spanish-speaking therapists are plentiful in Miami, but French and Hebrew? Moran may be the only one.
"When a family finally reaches me, they tell me, 'We've been searching high and dry, all of Google, for days for a therapist who speaks French or Hebrew, and I'm so glad we found you.'"
She also fights a broader battle: educating parents, teachers, administrators, and even psychologists about what speech-language pathologists actually do when it comes to language. Too many referrals get routed to tutors or reading specialists when the child would benefit from a therapist focused on language development. It's a scope-of-practice awareness gap that she encounters constantly.
Growing Slowly on Purpose
With two young children at home (ages three and five, both being raised trilingually), Moran has built her practice to match her life stage. Mornings are spent in classrooms running the enrichment program. Afternoons are reserved for private patients until school pickup. The structure is intentional.
She keeps operations simple. Parents pay by check, Venmo, Zelle, or PayPal. An accountant handles year-end and quarterly taxes. She uses her iPad for therapy notes and progress reports. Without the overhead of insurance billing, her documentation workflow stays lean and focused on what matters: communicating progress to parents and teachers.
The school contract provides predictable annual income paid in monthly installments, and private clients fill in the rest. It's a deliberate, sustainable model that lets her grow at the pace her family needs.
Her advice for anyone considering the leap? Jump in. Find your niche. Develop it. Because when a parent calls looking for a stuttering expert, a literacy specialist, or a bilingual SLP who speaks their language, and nobody picks up, that's a gap worth filling.
Serving bilingual families means juggling evaluations, progress tracking, and parent communication across languages. ClinicNote is a HIPAA-compliant EMR built specifically for private practices and university clinics, keeping your documentation, scheduling, and billing organized in one place so you can focus on the families who need you most. See how ClinicNote works.
Transcript
Kadie: You are listening to Clinic Chats, the speech therapist's private practice podcast, a podcast full of personal journeys where we not only talk about success stories, but also real life struggles of small business startups. Clinic Chats is sponsored by ClinicNote, a HIPAA compliant, cloud-based EMR platform used specifically by private practice owners and university clinics. I'm your host, Kadie Jackstatt, and thank you for joining me today. I'm speaking with Moran Levery, and she's the owner of Speak Up Bilingual SLP, which is located in Miami. Hi, Moran. How are you?
Moran: Hi. Good morning. I'm doing great. How are you?
Kadie: I'm doing great. We've spoke a bit already this morning due to some major hoops that you have jumped through. Now, I want to tell our listeners about this story. Moran is in Colombia, correct?
Moran: Yes. I'm currently in Bogota.
Kadie: So, she's out of the country, and she has been running around this country like crazy trying to find the best internet connection. Thank goodness she was able to join us this morning. I cannot wait to hear about what she's doing in Miami. So, I know you have told me a little bit about your extensive background, your bilingual language treatment. So, tell me about how you got involved in private practice.
Moran: So, first of all, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Basically, my speech and language journey is a really interesting one. I'm Israeli, and I grew up in Canada, and so I grew up speaking various languages. And when I pursued my bachelor's in social work, I worked a little bit in the field. And when it was time to go get my master's, I really didn't know what to do. And my father always told me, you know, what about speech and language therapy? And I said, no, you know, I don't have the science background, and I don't want to do that. And one day, you know, I broke my leg, and I sat there pondering my life. And I realized that, you know, everything that I wanted to do was right in front of me. And so, speech and language therapy was really such a natural fit for me, because I grew up speaking Hebrew at home. And in Montreal, you know, Canada, we study in French, actually, and then we learn English as a second language. So, I grew up in a trilingual environment, and was always very fascinated by languages. And it wasn't until later that I met my husband, who's Colombian, that I learned Spanish. And going back to that day where I decided to pursue my master's in speech and language therapy, I was living in New York at the time. And the bilingual focus of the program at Teachers College Columbia University was very interesting to me, and what basically inspired me to get into the field of speech and language therapy. So, I graduated from Columbia with a bilingual and bicultural focus. A few years later, I moved to Miami. When I got to Miami, I basically realized that there was really that need to create a private practice that had that bilingual and bicultural focus.
Kadie: Did you move for that reason, or was it for other reasons outside of speech opportunities?
Moran: So, when we were living in New York for a while, and my husband was working a lot with Latin America, and so Miami was just a better hub for us because of his travels. But really, if I look back on it, everything kind of led there. Everything led to me being in Miami. And even though I'm not a native Spanish speaker, I've developed my Spanish over the last few years well enough that I can do therapy in Miami, and I could really use what I learned about bilingual language development in Miami, because most children that I come into contact with in Miami, I would say probably 95% of the children that I come to, they're bilingual. Most of them are Spanish speaking. But since I also do therapy in Hebrew and French, I do get those phone calls of a family who moved to Miami from France or from Israel or a Haitian Creole family. So I do get those types of phone calls as well. But I would say even more than New York, Miami to me is the most bilingual place I've been in.
Kadie: And so whenever you finished your master's in speech pathology, did you pursue work outside of private practice first or jump right into doing your own business?
Moran: I did. So I started my fellowship, my CFY in New York. And then at that point, we moved to Miami. So I finished my CFY in somebody else's private practice in Miami. And then I had my children. So I have two young children. They were born in Miami. And when it was time for me to go back to work, I kind of had the option of going back to the private practice where I work. But at that point, I really felt a need to develop my own private practice because coming from New York, the standards that I had for the quality of care were very, very high. And I found myself in Florida, looking around and not seeing that same standard. So I really wanted to start something of my own. While my children are young, the private practice allows me to build slowly. So as I'm building, my kids are growing. And when they will be older, hopefully my practice will be very established.
Kadie: How long have you been in business now?
Moran: I would say I've been in business in Miami about maybe two to three years. The first part of my journey was me working with private patients. So as I was explaining, I have a niche in my practice where I work a lot with bilingual children on language disorders or delays. And that's kind of what I dedicated myself to. So I started by seeing private patients at home and also in their schools.
Kadie: We spoke earlier, and I'd love to hear more about the Sheckle Hill Community Day School where you started their language enrichment program.
Moran: I was working in one of the private schools in the area. The school was, you know, they grant me access to their students that need services. And last summer, I was approached by the school to develop a pilot program for the preschool. So basically, the school identified a need for enriching their students' language. And they basically brought in a speech and language therapist into the classroom to develop a language enrichment class for the students. So they're not necessarily disordered. They're not necessarily on an IEP. It's more just an enrichment program.
Kadie: So do you not necessarily need parent consent? It's more just an awesome feature that the school wants to offer?
Moran: Exactly. So this is a general ed classroom. All the students, I would say, in each class, there's, say, about 17 students. And maybe two or three of those students are eventually kind of flagged for maybe a speech and language concern. But the majority of the students are either, you know, average to above average in terms of their language development, but they're bilingual. So most of the students in this classrooms are, first of all, they're between three and five years old. So they're developing language in general. But they're also developing English. So for most of them, they're coming from a Spanish-speaking household. And then their first exposure to English is when they start preschool, let's say, at around 18 months. So when I start seeing them at around age three, they're not delayed. They're perfectly typically developing, but they're still developing language, and they're also developing English. So that's basically how the school identified. And the parents, you know, love this service that's basically being provided to their children by a therapist. So part of what I do is a center-based approach. I go into the classroom, I start with reading a book in English. But the way that I read a book is very different than, you know, maybe a teacher or a librarian would do it. I read it really thinking of language strategies in mind. And then I develop three centers around the book or around the theme that's going on in the classroom at the time that each center has different language goals. So I work with the classroom teacher and the classroom teacher assistant to run these centers. So it's a team-based approach, and that's part of the goal of the program is also to train the teachers on language development and language enrichment strategies.
Kadie: So how many days a week are you doing this model at the preschool?
Moran: So right now I'm doing this model in the mornings. And last year I had eight classrooms. It was a pilot, so we, you know, really didn't know what to expect. We worked very hard every week. I was developing curriculum. I was writing the program, developing the materials, training the teachers, learning from the teachers and going, you know, based on their feedback and based on what I saw like, oh, you know, this kind of didn't work at all. Let's change it. This worked really well. Let's keep going with this. And then the program was renewed for this year. So this year will be our second year. We have nine classrooms this year, and the program is starting in a few weeks.
Kadie: So I was going to ask that because you had told me how you've been traveling for a couple weeks in your husband's home country. And so I was curious how that worked. So that's perfect timing for you.
Moran: Yes. So, right now, the beginning of the school year, I see my private patients, and right now we're heading into the period of the Jewish high holidays, and so the school is kind of open and closed, and my patients are also kind of, you know, available and not available, so I took this time to come to Colombia, which is where my husband is from, and we've been here a few days, and we'll be here until next week, and once I go back to Miami, the program basically starts full swing, it's weekly until the end of the academic year.
Kadie: I see, and how has that looked, you don't need to tell me numbers as far as what you're getting paid, but I'm sure our listeners are curious on how you set up a contract like this, so are you paid hourly by the school, monthly, in one large chunk, how have you set that up?
Moran: So, again, this was very interesting, because it was kind of brought to me, this wasn't something that, you know, I was looking for, the school initiated this, and we were in talks with each other, we have a very strong relationship, they pay me annually for the program, but I get that in, we could call it monthly installments, but the amount that we agreed to is an annual amount.
Kadie: I see, well, that's just really nice to have something you can rely on every month, and then, like you said, you can incorporate private clients whenever you have time, so is that what your afternoons sometimes entail?
Moran: Right, so my mornings right now, I spend them in the classroom, and right after I'm done with that, I see my private patients until I pick up my children from school. It's been really rewarding, because, you know, when you work with students in therapy, it's usually one-on-one, and it's students that are delayed or have an IEP, and then this is a completely different pace, because it's working in a classroom of 17 children, it's very fast-paced, you have to problem-solve with things that come up in the moment, and you really adapt the materials to every single student. Like by the end of the year, I knew 144 different students, their levels, their profiles, what their needs were, and I was able to work with the teachers, like in real time, on the ground. So the teacher would come to me and say, can you take a look at Johnny, like, he doesn't seem to understand this concept, and I could give them some strategies and say, okay, well, with Johnny, let's try this, and if that didn't work, we would monitor for a few months, and if that didn't work, then a referral would be made. But for the most part, it's an enrichment program, so it's a stimulation program, and every child, even if they don't have an IEP, and they don't have necessarily a need for individual therapy, they could all use stimulation based on their level.
Kadie: Absolutely. What a nice service that the school is investing in. You mentioned you're in eight or nine classes over the last couple years. How long are you in each classroom in the mornings?
Moran: So every class receives 45 minutes of language stimulation per week.
Kadie: Nice. So you're kind of hopping into maybe two classrooms every day.
Moran: Everybody knows me because I run around with my crate, which is filled with materials, and I go into the, it's called PK3 and PK4. So those are basically the classrooms between the ages of three and five years old.
Kadie: And I just can't imagine the amount of planning that has gone into this. Do you feel this year will run a little bit easier as far as the amount of time to develop this program?
Moran: So that's a great question. Last year, I spent the entire year, every single week, furiously program planning, developing the materials. Because this was a pilot, there is nothing like this out there. So I was just writing the curriculum, the content, developing, laminating, as I'm sure all the speech therapists are laughing, laminating and cutting and gluing and arts and crafts and going to Michael's and going to the Target, the dollar spot, et cetera. So to answer your question, the skeleton is there, but I'm sure even though I have a lot of the plans, I have a lot of the units planned out and the goals and the books chosen, I'm sure a lot of changes will be made because like you said, I adapted to the class. So some classrooms, every class looks completely different. None of the eight classes was like the other. It depends on the teachers. It depends on the students. It depends on the needs of the class. Some classes have more English speaking students than others. So every week, I really work with the teachers to develop this material. So while I do have the skeleton in place, I'm sure a lot of changes will be made as we continue to fit the needs of the class.
Kadie: And as far as your private practice after the preschool hours, do you have to do a lot of marketing for that? Or at this point, are you kind of at capacity to maintain and juggle both?
Moran: So that's an interesting question. I do have to do marketing. However, I'm private pay only. So I do get a lot of calls from families who would like to receive services via Medicaid or their insurance, which I always recommend. I always tell a family, even when they call me, check your insurance first because as you know, therapy is a lengthy process and it's expensive. So if you could get it covered by your insurance, then I'm all for that. So sometimes I market, but I don't get to the people who would like to pay privately. And at this point though, because I'm in a few of these schools in the area that parents are willing and able to pay privately, I do get referrals through word of mouth. And like I said previously, when a family who is looking, let's say for a French clinician or a Hebrew speaking clinician calls me, sometimes there are no other clinicians who speak those languages in the area. And we have to kind of work together and find a way to make it work.
Kadie: As far as evaluations, I'm intrigued because you learn in grad school about how you should evaluate in their primary language. And honestly, I just never had access to those test materials. And it was always a battle with the school district I was originally in. Like, how do I do this ethically? So are those assessments out there and what do you use?
Moran: So that's a wonderful question. We do learn in grad school that particularly when a child is young, if they don't speak English, how can you evaluate them in English? You're basically just looking at, you're penalizing them for not speaking English. You do have to evaluate them in their home language. And this is particularly true for a child who's, let's say, zero to seven years old or zero to five years old. To answer your question, there aren't really, you know, let's say I want to evaluate a child in Hebrew or in French, there really aren't materials made available to me. Because even though if you went to Israel or if you went to France, they may have their own evaluation tools. But those tools were not standardized on bilingual speakers. So I'm very fortunate that I went to the bilingual program at Columbia University. My professor, Professor Kate Crowley is renowned in the field of bilingual and bicultural evaluations. And she really taught us how to conduct dynamic assessment with this population. So using clinical judgment and what I know about bilingual language development, and also what I know about that particular language, being a speaker of that language, I'm able to conduct an evaluation in that way, using those types of methods to determine service eligibility. I really go by my knowledge and my clinical judgment.
Kadie: Absolutely. Yeah, that's a phenomenal answer. Makes perfect sense.
Moran: For therapists who are interested, my professor, Dr. Kate Crowley, she runs the leadership website online, and she has free modules with videos and materials that you can even get free CEUs. So it's called Leaders Project, I will give you that exact website in a minute, I can just look for it, I want to make sure that I'm giving you the right one.
Kadie: We can jump back to that at the end as I look for it. Sure, that would be great. Thank you for that resource. Private practice management in general, what do you use to help you kind of maintain a system for tracking client payments, documenting and maintaining records? What works for you?
Moran: So I'm still developing in this area. Right now, I'm a small practice, parents usually pay me by check or sometimes through Venmo, Zelle and PayPal, these methods of payments. And I have an accountant at the end of the year who helps me.
Kadie: And do you do quarterly taxes then?
Moran: Right, yes. And moving forward, I would like to develop kind of comprehensive ways of getting through this.
Kadie: Yeah, but like you said, I mean, your mornings, you're not having to do that paperwork and note taking for every student. And so really, it's just your afternoons and your private pay. So I love how successful the business sounds while still keeping it simple.
Moran: I try to keep it as simple as possible. For my clients that I work with through therapy, I use my iPad for notes and for progress reports and things of that nature. Really, I'm working directly with the parents or teachers. When you eliminate, when I used to work in private practice for somebody else that was going through Medicaid, the criteria are very different. I take that part out of the equation. I'm still taking data, and I'm still taking notes, and I'm still sharing the progress with parents and teachers, but it looks very different than when you're billing.
Kadie: Absolutely, yes. And like you said, you're having success in finding private pay clients, so I would stick to that therapy model, absolutely. What do you want your business to look like in the upcoming years?
Moran: So I would love to, since I'm not from the state of Florida, I didn't study here, and I didn't grow up here, I'm still getting kind of known in the area. It's not like when you live somewhere and you go to grad school there, you develop connections with professors and local schools, and people know you. So I would love to get more known in my area. You see a lot in, let's say, Facebook mom groups where a mother will look for a speech therapist for her child, and lots of people start tagging. I'm sure we see that in every state. But when you're less known, you obviously get less tags. So unfortunately, we live in a very social media driven age where people go by tags, or they don't necessarily go by the quality of the service, or they don't know who's tagging. It could be a cousin or a friend, or it's not necessarily a parent that worked with the therapist. So I would love to get more known in the area, particularly with French and Hebrew speaking families. Living in Miami, most therapists are Spanish speaking. And so the fact that I speak Spanish is great, but there's a lot of kind of qualified therapists who can also provide therapy in Spanish. But in terms of Hebrew and French, they're really, I think French, there's none, and Hebrew, there may be a couple. So I would love to be more known, only for the fact that when a family finally reaches me, they tell me, oh, we've been searching like high and dry, like all of Google, we've been searching for days for a therapist who speaks French or Hebrew, and I'm so glad we found you. So I just wish that more people knew about the service that I offer. And to add to that, I also find, I'm sure lots of speech therapists can identify with this feeling, but I also have to find myself constantly educating, not just parents, but teachers and administrators and even psychologists about the scope of practice of a speech and language therapist when it comes to language because everybody kind of thinks that we work on articulation, but nobody really understands what a speech therapist does when it comes to language. So often many referrals are missed and students are being referred to, let's say tutors or reading specialists, where in reality they would benefit from seeing a therapist who works on language development. And that's really an area that's missing, I think in the field in general and in Miami particularly.
Kadie: Yes, I think you're absolutely correct. And like you were talking about with the Facebook groups and just who you know, I mean, it is a big part of it all. So hopefully as time goes on, you meet more and more people and get more and more word of mouth referrals, I'm sure it will continue to grow and reputation will just kind of become well-known of who you are and what you do.
Moran: Thank you, I hope so. It helps also that my entire bilingual, bicultural focus that I dedicate my practice to, I also live. So my children currently are five and three years old and we raise them trilingually. So I speak to my children in Hebrew and their father speaks to them in Spanish and they learn English in school. So when a parent of a bilingual child asks a question about their child, I'm able to provide an answer, not only from a clinical perspective, but also from a very personal perspective with my own experiences, with my own children. So that part has been very useful for parents and teachers and administrators to understand.
Kadie: How interesting, yes. I think that they would find your personal experience so intriguing and relevant and they like to be able to relate to someone.
Moran: Right, I tell parents often, you have to make sure if you have concerns about your child that you have to be seen by a therapist who understands bilingual language development. Because with my own children, I use this as an example, at 18 months, if you would have evaluated them in English, they would have looked severely delayed. You had to kind of pull the vocabulary that they had in Hebrew and in Spanish and in English, kind of pull it together, put the puzzle together and look at the whole picture. So it's very, this cause is very dear to my heart and it's very personal for me and really it's my passion.
Kadie: Yeah, I think just from speaking to you for this brief time on the podcast, I can tell it's your passion and who wouldn't want to find a therapist that they truly love what they're doing. Any last words that you wanted to share before we finish up?
Moran: First of all, I wanted to circle back to the website that I was referring to before. If you want to learn about bilingual and bicultural evaluations, my professor, Dr. Kate Crowley, runs a website called leadersproject.org. You can find free CEUs, video modules and other content regarding bilingual evaluations and also Cleft Palate, that's number one. And I just find private practice very fulfilling. It's very challenging. It's not for the faint of heart. I have the luxury that I can grow my practice slowly, but I highly recommend to anybody who has an area of passion or has a more entrepreneurial kind of side to pursue this, jump in and develop that niche because many times I get phone calls for parents looking for a stuttering expert or for a literacy expert and there is a need out there.
Kadie: Absolutely. Well, that is just great words of wisdom and it's very motivating to hear your story. So I just want to take the time to be sure to thank you for not only telling us a great personal journey through private practice, but also to thank you for taking time out of your family vacation and jumping through every hoop imaginable to make this happen.
Moran: It's been a pleasure. If anybody wants to follow me on Instagram, my handle is speakupslp and my website is speakupbilingual.com. So if ever you were interested to see what my preschool program looks like or what my children's language development are like since they're trilingual, you're more than happy, you're more than invited to follow me and ask me any questions. I would love to help anybody who has private practice questions or questions about bilingual language development. And it would be a pleasure of mine to connect with other speech therapists in the field.
Kadie: Perfect. Well, I'm going to follow you from our ClinicNote Instagram and Facebook right now. So thank you again and have a great rest of your day.
Kadie: Thank you for joining me and listening to Clinic Chats, the speech therapist's private practice podcast. If you have a moment, please leave a five-star review for Clinic Chats to help other SLPs find our podcast. If you'd like to share your own personal journey through private practice, please email me kadie@clinicnote.com. That's K-A-I-D-E at clinicnote.com.