Study abroad opportunities

One of the most unique opportunities a university can offer to its students is studying abroad. Very few people would have the ability to take a time out of their lives to fully experience another country and culture for three months (and get course credit for it!) after they are finished with college. Here at University of Tulsa we have the Center for Global Education that supports students as they prepare for study abroad that many Deaf Education majors and minors take advantage of (this semester we have a student in Europe and another in South America – next semester Deaf Education majors will be traveling to Australia and New Zealand!). But we also have a unique opportunities for Deaf Education students in specific – the option to study abroad in Siena, Italy where students spend a semester in the Deaf Studies Department at the Siena School for Liberal Arts. Students who take advantage of this opportunity will be enrolled to learn Italian Sign Language as well as Italian Deaf History and Culture. There is a Deaf Education minor currently studying at Siena – you can read about her experiences so far here!

Another opportunity for Deaf Education students to study “abroad” includes a two week trip to study at Gallaudet, the only liberal arts college specifically for Deaf and Hard of Hearing students located in Washington DC. This trip is an opportunity to Deaf Education students to spend two weeks immersed in ASL, Deaf culture, and take advantage of lectures and events occurring on Gallaudet campus.

In the Deaf Education program at TU, we are very proud of these unique opportunities to study in other countries and cultures, using non-native languages. Feel free to contact the faculty to learn more about them!

DEAFKAN!

Here at TU, we are always excited to hear about new and unique opportunities being planned for Deaf and hard of hearing children, especially those in our area. Recently Dr. Baker was at the Kansas School for the Deaf for a training where she learned about an amazing opportunity coming up soon, DEAFKAN. DEAFKAN is the Deaf Kids Art Network, and they will be hosting a theater and arts camp for Deaf and hard of hearing students this summer – the camp runs from July 26th through August 2nd. Later on in the fall, Austin Andrews, Deaf Ninja will be performing with DEAFKAN for Deaf Awareness Week! Check out his storytelling on youtube!

I had a pleasure of meeting the head of this great non-profit organization via email, where she shared with me a little about the mission of DEAFKAN:

“Our motto is “Opening the doors of Deaf culture through performance and art.” We are of the belief that families need to see and experience Deaf culture and sign language in a friendly, inviting way before they really consider embracing Deaf culture for their child. By bringing in Deaf performers and artists (and other professional Deaf adults) to interact with our kids, they will see that there ARE successful, talented, educated Deaf adults and that they have the world at their feet.

Our mission is five-fold:

1. Bring Deaf performers/artists/professionals to deaf and hard of hearing children and their families.
2. Teach art/performance
3. Teach and promote sign language
4. Support families as early as possible in their child’s Deafhood journey through our own programs or by affiliation with other programs.
5. Educate the community about Deaf culture.”

We here at TU are so excited for this opportunity for Deaf and hard of hearing kids to learn more about art and performance and have the opportunities to meet Deaf performers and artists. Learn more about DEAFKAN here or follow them on Facebook. I am sure someday we will be learning about Deaf artists who benefited from this program as children!

Meeting Laurent Clerc’s great, great granddaughter

In our Deaf Education program, Dr. Sharon Baker teaches a course in the spring on Deaf History and Culture. Throughout this course, students learn about the history of Deaf people (primarily but not exclusively in the United States), watch films about Deafness, and learn about cultural norms and practices among Deaf people.

This year, we were excited to learn that the great, great granddaughter of an important figure in Deaf history, Laurent Clerc (for more information on this important figure, click here), is a librarian at the Oklahoma School for the Deaf, and was available to video conference with our students! Those enrolled in the course were joined by some upperclassmen students and Jessica Scott, the other professor in the Deaf Education program.

Sue Galloway was so kind in giving her time to speak to our students. She was able to share some amazing documents of Laurent Clerc’s, including a list of important figures in the United States that he met and a family album) as well as other keepsakes of his. She also shared her story of learning that he was her relative and how this brought her to the field of Deaf Education.

We were so lucky to be able to virtually meet her and learn about her experiences and family! Thanks so much to Sue Galloway for taking the time to join our class!

Student Profile: Shawna Compassi

Today we hear from one of our current students, Shawna Compassi!

What year are you?

Junior

What made you choose deaf education?

My brother and my mother are both hard of hearing. However, my brother, who is 12 now, has been in a rural school with no deaf education professionals. He would have benefitted greatly to have that kind of support.

Why did you choose to study at TU?

I  choose TU because I was raised in the surrounding area and I was drawn to the deaf education program.

What has been your favorite part of the program so far?

My favorite part of the program is how involved with classrooms, teachers, and students we are.

What are you most looking forward to in your final years in the program?

The thing I’m most looking forward to in the final years of the program is student teaching.

What are your goals for after graduation?

I want to go to graduate school and get my masters degree in elementary education.

What would you tell high school students who are interested in studying deaf education?

Deaf education is a very high need field! It feels so rewarding and the people, language, and culture areso amazing to be a part of!

On leaving the ACE-DHH conference and Gallaudet

Well, the Deaf Education faculty certainly had a wonderful and productive week in Washington DC, at the Association for College Educators of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (ACE-DHH) conference! What a great time, and I am so happy it was on Gallaudet University campus, which I got to visit for the first time! Dr. Baker had already been on campus since last Friday working on the Visual Communication and Sign Language checklist (VCSL), filming ASL directions for implementation of this amazing assessment tool designed to evaluate the communication abilities of young Deaf children. The checklist will be distributed by Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2), a research group sponsored by the National Science Foundation. I (Jessica!) did not arrive until the following week, just a day before the conference began. But we spent that day productively – we had a meeting with some colleagues at Gallaudet and Lamar Universities to discuss a research project we are working on that will hopefully lead to some insights into how to better teach reading to young d/Deaf and hard of hearing children!

Dr. Baker and I were also lucky to get to visit Kendall Demonstration Elementary School – KDES, the elementary school on Gallaudet University’s campus. Although they were busy, as is usual in elementary schools, we were lucky enough to get a tour of the school from one of the administrators. The school itself is beautiful, so many open spaces designed with the visual needs of Deaf children in mind. We also learned that they have a mandatory after school program for all students – which means that the students at KDES are in school until 5:30 every day! Can you imagine the opportunities for cognitive and linguistic growth these children have?

And while we were leaving the school, we saw a flyer stand full of research briefs by VL2, one of which was authored by our very own Dr. Sharon Baker! It is about the importance and impact of fingerspelling on Deaf children, and has been translated into a number of languages. How exciting to see the work we are doing impact people not only across the United States, but across the world! KDES was not our only tour however – the VL2 labs very generously opened their doors to conference attendees, and we were able to see the space and researchers that have made so many contributions to research related to Deafness.

That evening I was very fortunate to be able to attend a very exciting talk with some really excellent people. Dr’s Marlon Kuntze [see picture to the left], Ben Bahan [see picture below on the right] (who should be recognizable to those who learned ASL using the Signing Naturally series – at least the older version!), H-Dirksen Bauman, Beth Benedict and Catherine O’Brien all came for a panel discussion on the concept of “Deaf Gain” –
 the opposite of hearing loss! This discussion explored not only what individual students gain from their Deaf experience (linguistically, culturally, cognitively), but also what the world gains from the contribution of Deaf individuals (notably but not limited to: the football huddle, hand signals in baseball, closed captioning, and much more!) The conversation was lively, and I appreciated being able to see such amazing and creative minds discussing this important way of looking at Deafness.

The next day brought a number of wonderful presentations and opportunities to talk with others in the field. Dr. Baker presented a poster with colleagues from other universities about fingerspelling, a topic that is not frequently discussed in the literature. I attended a session about using Graphic Novels in a summer reading camp for Deaf students by Caroline Guardino of University of North Florida, and came away a lot of ideas that I hope to use in our tutoring program here at TU! I also had the opportunity to reconnect with faces from the past – a student I taught at Alaska State School for Deaf and Hard of Hearing is currently a junior at Gallaudet studying Social Work, and my student teaching supervisor and advisor from my alma mater, Flagler College, was also in attendance. A TU grad from last year, Stephanie Voss, also took time out from her master’s program to visit us on campus!

Gallaudet University Press had a table with lots of books that have recently been published in our field, and needless to say I’ve come away with a wish list a mile long. (That also includes my love of some ASL number handshape clocks for sale in the bookstore!).

We also got to attend the Bilingual Special Interest Group meeting, a further discussion of Deaf Gain and how we can bring the concept of Deaf Gain into classrooms with Deaf children – capitalizing on their strengths and experiences as we teach them in multiple areas, including mathematics, literacy, and technology. These conversations were fascinating and important, and I count myself lucky to have been among colleagues who feel so passionately about these issues.

Finally, I presented this very afternoon on the use of translation during guided reading with Dr. Kuntze (of the Deaf Gain talk!) – we have been watching videos of children who are reading with their teachers and the type of translation they are engaging in – most commonly they are reading word for word, but we have some wonderful instances of children translating phrases and even complete sentences from English into beautiful ASL – a sure sign that students understand what they are reading!

I am writing this post from the Reagan National Airport in DC, reflecting on what an amazing time we had this week. Although it was very busy, it is so wonderful to be among passionate, committed educators who work with Deaf students (and those who are working with people who want to become teachers of Deaf students!). Although our work day to day in Tulsa can feel far away from others in the field, it is wonderful to know that we have colleagues that share our perspectives and experiences (and others who challenge these perspectives and experiences!). Monday, it’s back to classes and the reading clinic, but with a fresh perspective and new ideas from some amazing colleagues.

Reading clinic underway!

So it has been a week since the free reading clinic for Deaf and Hard of Hearing students started at the University of Tulsa, and things are going great so far! We’ve had lots of excited students and tutors hard at work on improving reading skills using a variety of strategies!

First of all, we had to start with some assessments, which you can see being given by one of our awesome tutors in the photograph to the right of the page! She is giving an assessment of reading comprehension so that as we move forward in the reading clinic, she can make sure that she is giving her student activities and books that are appropriate for her reading ability. It is so important that when you work with children who are developing their reading skill, whether they are Deaf, hearing or hard of hearing, that you are choosing books that are motivating for them, but also books that are at just the right level – not too hard, not too easy, but as Goldilocks might put it, just right.

 

The students in our clinic have a variety of needs, including communication and language

as well as literacy. We also have students enrolled from between the ages of six and sixteen. To the right you can see a picture of one of our tutors working with one of older students using American Sign Language. All of the tutors enrolled who work in our clinic have taken at least through level 3 (and are currently enrolled in level 4) of American Sign Language courses, and have also taken courses about the education of Deaf and hard of hearing students.

And it’s not all assessments and work in our program either! Below, see some pictures of our tutors playing word creation and fluency games with their students. Alphabet soup, anyone?

Interested in learning more about our literacy clinic? Feel free to get in touch with the clinic supervisor, Jessica Scott – jessica-scott@utulsa.edu

We will post more updates on our clinic as the semester continues on. Thanks to all the tutors working with students, and parents and teachers who support us and provide much needed

transportation for students between their homes or schools and our clinic on University of Tulsa’s campus!

Reblog – 10 things you should never say to a Deaf person

Reblog – 10 things you should never say to a Deaf person

What do you think about this list? Anything you would add? Take away?

Student Profiles: Erin Hoefer

 Here is the second of our regular installments profiling a current student enrolled in the Deaf Education program at TU. Today we meet Erin Hoefer!

What year are you?

Junior

What made you choose deaf education?

It’s not only a professional choice, but a personal journey in understanding my own hearing loss

Why did you choose to study at TU?

I moved to Tulsa to study at TU when I learned of the Deaf Ed program. We knew we wanted to move to OK

from Japan. When investigating schools, I searched deaf programs and came up on TU. I knew that’s where we needed to go.

What has been your favorite part of the program so far?

The language and literacy development information is fascinating, especially dispelling the myths of language delay that happens in children that use visual language.

What are you most looking forward to in your final years in the program?

Student teaching and improving my ASL skills. Out of student teaching I hope to improve my planning skills and be an effective communicator for any needs in the class.

What are your goals for after graduation?  

To hopefully teach Deaf and hard of hearing students at the middle or high school levels, particularly in language arts

What would you tell high school students who are interested in studying deaf education?

It’s an amazing field with many opportunities.  You’re not limited to just one area of study, it’s multi faceted education.  It’s unique, and provides support and advocacy to a  group of people that aren’t always understood.  Take the chance, you’ll find it unbelievable what you and deaf children are capable of.

Scholarship for TU’s Deaf Education program

Dr. Sharon Baker, the head of the TU Deaf Education program, has received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs to provide tuition support for students majoring in Deaf Education who are in their junior and senior years. This funding will continue to support students for the next five years, with 2018 being the final year of funding.

Students who receive the Deaf Education grant must fulfill a service obligation by teaching deaf and hard of hearing students in high-needs areas upon completion of their bachelor’s degree.

This funding comes from a Personnel Preparation grant, which are funded to train teachers in chronic shortage areas, and educators of the deaf and hard of hearing are among the highest need areas. The teacher shortage is further compounded by the small number of Deaf Education teacher preparation programs in the U.S. Currently, only 80 university programs are preparing teachers to work with deaf and hard of hearing children. As a result, it has been estimated that for every 56 deaf and hard of hearing children who need a teacher, we are preparing one.

The Deaf Education program is pleased to be able to support our upperclassmen majoring in Deaf Education in this way!