 What support did I see as helpful during French, I remember getting that everyone else would be listening to their audio on a tape and I would have always my French teacher read my French audio to me. My hearing loss wasn't as severe then so I think if I was in school now I would need more support now than I needed then. I remember in university accessing the disability support office and using that for a year but then not really anymore after that. I didn't find, you know, they had a note taker that would take notes in class but I found my own notes are more thorough and then what if the two note takers notes contradicted each other I didn't know who's to follow so I ended up just using my own notes and discontinuing that support. Knowing what I know now what additional supports would I have liked to have seen. I think probably something that I do try to do more now that I didn't necessarily have then was the social aspect. I wasn't, didn't really ever have a super close best friend peer that I confided everything in and I know my mom was more that person for me. Sorry, I have the background noise. I remember as an adult hearing of a lady that for her child she skiked flashlights in a car so that when it was dark and they had friends in the car. Her daughter could lip read her friends. And I thought that was a pretty cool idea. So yeah I think socially is probably where I would have benefited more. As a professional in the field but accommodations would I like to see I wish there was a default contact email contact listed for everyone for parents and all that sort of stuff. Because a lot of times if someone has an accent or something like that I can't understand and then sometimes I think the phone conversation went well and I apparently didn't so then I clearly miss her. Um, I, yeah, I wish that more of the continuing ed things had closed captioning sometimes even the expert and sack the colleges they don't have captioning on things and then. I think oh I want to participate in that and then I realized by the end of it that I haven't really caught much of it so I'm not really sure if it was worth it to participate. I think, sorry, I'm going down I'm reading off what I wrote before. What can consultants do to improve our service. I think my for myself is self advocacy so even I know personally this is still something I'm working on that I need to be talking more to schools and parents about email being easier for me using my own DM system more all that sort of stuff. Yeah, I think just realizing that that's something that even as an adult. People with three months struggle with that it's still something that we need to continually work with the students on and that I need to work more with the students and maybe other people are doing it more than me. About why, what is your motivation for not using it that they do because they don't want to inconvenience someone how it affects them socially things like that. Another part is technology so I'm somebody who gave out my app I'm pretty early in my school career and it isn't till this year that I started using it again and realize how much easier it is when I use it for example I'm listening using a Roger to this webcast right now. And then I think another part is the sort of family piece of it that I know we are contracted through school but that I was lucky I had a lot of family support who helped me with you know things but even knowing that there are things like it's easier for me to hear if I'm towards the front of the vehicle my seat in the van was always in the back of the vehicle because I was one of older kids so that's just where I had to sit but you know my family had known if I sat in the front where I could read everyone better they probably would have allowed for that and I just think of things like that that I was talking to a parent of a child and you know that our hearing loss and it's good year was not was towards the window and yeah so did want to provide more support for families that outside of school what can they be doing to help their child. I think that's it for me I was trying not to go over time. It did start a little bit late in my apology apologies for that. We're going to be hearing from Melanie monahan now Melanie is working in eastern edge RCSD so she has a large geographic area and we're going to switch places here as as gracefully as we can so. Hi I'm Melanie so you'll have to excuse me I have a court so I'm going to do my best to speak loudly. And Carly feel free to read about me if I'm not clear so I'll start now. I wear cochlear implant in my left ear cochlear and nucleus band and I use the voucher phone act DM technology. I'm using the voucher slot right now. Question two. In elementary school. I had a full time educational assistant. And I know my parents had advocate for all of the supports that I received. She knew a scientist that English. And she acted as a part time interpreter. And she also supported me in the class. I was pulled at least once a day for one on one work. In junior and high school. My educational assistant provided occasional in class support. One period a day. At this time I had a couple of revision cochlear implant surgeries. So I spent a lot of high school not hearing very well. In high school we experimented with no taking. We are a motivational assistant with tape notes on a laptop. And I reviewed them on a second laptop in real time. I enjoyed this because it gave me more independence. I didn't have to sit right beside her in class. In terms of an FM system. I had a sound field system in elementary school. And then various personal systems in junior high school. I particularly remember carrying a speaker and putting an army desk in junior high. I hated this. And I would not do it. So the school installed a permanent speaker on a desk. But I hated that even more. So when the more discreet ear level FM systems came out. I didn't know I want to use it. And I put it away. And I never used it again until a grad school. I also wish that I had been told about it. When I was at BQN. Because the technology was so much better. And smaller. As for other accommodations. I always have preferential seating. Extra time for exams. In a quiet location. Close captioning. Now at the time. Not that everything was captioned. So my educational assistant quite often it would take the movies home. And just do a transcript for self. And my year. She also took notes from you. When I was in class. And I received speech and language services. Throughout elementary school. So in terms of support that I saw as helpful. I was part of a cochlear implant group. As the Glen Rose. In about junior high school. At the time I was one of a few children. In Alberta who had an implant. And families traveled from all over the province. To come to these meetings. It was wonderful of being able to relate to others. Who had the same experiences and challenges. As I did. I was also encouraged to tell my teacher. About my hearing loss. I had the opportunity to meet them. And to work the school. Before the start of the school year. I felt so much better knowing my teacher. Was familiar with me. And hopefully my technology. Before I even set foot in the classroom. However, I found the best support. Was in university. In particular. I had real time captioning. To be honest, I was probably only hearing. Half of what I was hearing. All of you in the garden to high school. On a good day. So my grades went from. High 60 years. Low 70 years. To 80s and 90s. And I think it was finally because. I was getting the same information. As everyone else. In university. I also occasionally used tutors. And tried note takers. But like Albert, I found my own notes were better. I also had extra time for exams. In a private location. So knowing what I know now. I wish I have more educational. I consulted. With a deaf and hard of hearing supports. I think because I was in the smaller community. I didn't get as many visits. I think I would have benefited from. Technology and social support. And also advocating for myself. I think that the skills shops we put on. Are especially great. And I would have benefited from that. And I also wish that we would see him. In the classrooms. Mainstream classrooms. And not just in university. I know that is very expensive though. And I'm just happy to see that. It's being explored. In the states. So as a professional in the field. I would like to see the following accommodations. As you're always seeing my district is really large. So we do quite a bit of. Online conferencing. And I find that challenging sometimes. Because even when I use the vouchers system. Is always dependent on the audio. And I would like to see that. And I would like to see that. So I would like to see that. I would like to see that. And on the same. Is always dependent on the audio. On the other side. So sometimes there's interference. Or their microphone. It's not good. And that makes it very difficult. For me. And I also wish that. Email. Was more widely used. Because. and it takes forever for them to respond or they don't respond. Sometimes I'll text parents, which is fine. And I also try to ask for captioning at webinars and conferences. I've been in my brand tagging a conference in grad school and they asked myself and another deaf student to share a captioning. So we had to attend the same lectures. The other student also preferred using an interpreter, so it didn't work for her as well. More recently, I asked for captioning at the Speech and Agility Canada conference and was initially told no. After I expressed my concerns that they did not have this accommodation, they did provide captioning and that was wonderful. And the final question was three things are critical learnings or skills to become a successful person who has deaf or hard of hearing. So number one from you, was it self-advocacy? This was not something that I developed until well into university. I think this was because I had full-time support all through school and I always had someone who would just kind of step in and solve the problem. So if the F family was deaf, she would take it from the teacher and charge it. So when I went to university, it was daunting to have to do this myself. The second one is technology use. I wish I had more support in using my technology. No one beside my mom and education assistant could really explain to me why it was important and I didn't always want to listen to them. I also wish I had known about the support available to me in university. Specifically, the virtual technology that came out in undergrad and that I could purchase a laptop and do my grant. I don't expect my entire school or university to know this. So this is where deaf and hard of hearing supports can come in. And the final one is family support. Like Amber, I was very lucky to have a supportive family. But outside of school, not a lot was done to accommodate my hearing loss. Not because they didn't want to, but they just didn't know. Yeah, I found large family events to be very challenging and I was very happy to see an article on hearing about me. They're still clear about accommodating your deaf and hard of hearing child. A large family event and that's something that I tried to share with my clients. So that's it for me. Thank you, Melanie. That's great and Melanie writes down ha ha behind all of her comments that are funny. But you don't know that there is a ha ha there. I'm going to introduce Nancy Galhart now. Nancy is a teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing with Edmonton public schools. And she'll give you some information about her supports as well. Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Nancy. And one of the questions after us is to briefly describe our hearing levels and technology. I have no residual hearing in my right ear. And my left ear, the hearing has changed over the years. Initially sort of moderate, severe with some high frequencies. Now I have no high frequencies at all. I wore a by-cross for many years, but now I just wear one hearing aid on my left ear. In terms of educational support, I guess I'm probably the oldest of all of the speakers here. So my educational supports kind of predate some technology. I had a, but in terms of the primary support, my mother was a big advocate. And she was in the schools constantly to make sure that my needs were being met. In the elementary years, I had a woman who, she worked in the role of an SLP. I don't know if she was an SLP. I don't think she was ever formally trained, but that was her role. And she came, I think she came every week when I was younger. And then it grew to two weeks. By the time I was in junior high school, there was another student in the school that I was at. About two years younger. I didn't associate with boys at that time. So she eventually, by the time I got to the end of junior high school, she was in the school and I went to see her on my own during my own recess times because I sort of graduated from the speech things that she was required to do with me. So in secondary school, that lady retired and when I went into high school, my guidance counselor was to go to and I really think it's important that students know who, who their go to person is that if they are struggling, because we as professionals aren't in there as regularly as we would like to be. It's important that they have a trusted adult that they can go and speak with whoever that is in the school might be their family and the family advocates advocates, but it's nice that there's someone in the school that they can talk to as well. In just talking about secondary school someone else mentioned French. I took French all through my high school years. I didn't enjoy French and the listening comprehension portion of my assessment criteria was waived. So I think I was evaluated on everything else but listening comprehension and back in those days they had cassette tapes that they put in the recorder and they played and I just looked at the ceiling and waited for that portion of the class to be finished. So in university fms were just starting to be used and becoming very popular back in the hearing technology that I had did not support working using an FM system. So my biggest thing was to teach exceeding and that's how I coped as I went to university. One thing that I did find in university is that once you had a place where you often sat that became your seat so it became a strategy of mine that anywhere I went I tried to arrive a little bit early so that I would get the seat that was best for me. In terms of the support that were most helpful I would say parents and the itinerant support that I had from the FLP because she became my advocate and my sounding board that back then when we had blackboards and green boards or whatever they were the chalkboards. Teachers wrote and talked at the same time today. A lot less though with the technology that we have now. And something maybe I'll mention now since we're sort of on that subject. One of the things that I find the pet peeve when I go into schools is the document cameras in many ways the technology today is fabulous document cameras are my new pet peeve. Often it's located in different area in the room and the smart board is over there and the teacher. I was in one room. I was in one room and I was looking at the teachers back while she was manipulating things on the document camera. And so my caution my advice to you as professionals is to just pay attention to where those document cameras are. And I think the technology of changing teaching styles and that teachers are especially as you get into the higher grades are more prone to stay at their desk and manipulate what's happening on the screen from their desk and the desk is not usually beside the smart board. So the next question is knowing what I know now what additional support would I have like to seem for learning for testing for social etc. So I'm going to switch access to signing or to sign language. I learned sign language when I was in brownies. But I didn't use it on a regular basis. So it would have been nice to have more deaf and hard of hearing people to socialize with and to have peers. So that's one thing I wished I would have had. I also wish I would have had closed captions. And again today we see technology far advanced than what it was in my time. I don't watch TV without captioning in today's day. Some movies I watch they must have whatever it is the subtitles or the real time captioning. As a professional in this field what would I like to see for accommodations in terms of my work. I'd like more use with FaceTime Skype for phone calls because I can't often hear what's on the phone. So I do struggle with that portion today and we're seeing more and more families who are coming to Canada from other countries with strong accents. And so conversations on the phone I find very difficult. If I can see the person face to face I may have a better chance of understanding what it is that they're saying. I think I'm very very fortunate in my line of work that I do have a designated interpreter so I feel very fortunate. Not everybody is accommodated in that way. And it always comes down to the cost right it's always about money. So the cost of interpreters then lend to frustrations for students and also for me as a professional. In looking at how we can improve our services. I think right now we tend to work a lot with the schools and the teachers. But I believe we need to improve our relationships. If we're only seeing kids three times a year I don't know that we could say that those are relationships that have been developed. So I think we need more frequent time with the students that we're working with. We'd like more contact with the students but also with their families. The opportunity to meet the parents and have them have an opportunity to see the successes that there are as role models for deaf and hard of hearing people. I think that's very important. It would also be nice to have a stronger relationship with our colleagues that work with RCSB. I know some people are very distant in rural areas. It would certainly be nice to have more gatherings and more time together as a team. For me three pieces that I think are critical would be literacy skills, self advocacy skills and identity self identity. And then how to develop relationships or to have relationships. Those pieces I think are critical. If a student has strong literacy skills in math and English and whatnot they will excel in their schooling and be successful. If they can advocate for the things that they need that's an essential piece of their education. And if they develop strong relationships because they're only one person, maybe the only person in the school that is deaf and hard of hearing, it's important that they have that one friend, somebody that they can go to. And also for social supports and family supports. And I'm trying to think about other things but I think that's pretty much it. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today with you. Okay, I think that's where the microphones place, correct? Okay. As I'm listening to Nancy, I thought maybe I should have asked all the mothers of these people to come speak about all the supports that they have advocated to have in place for the these peers of mine. That would be interesting. The next person who's going to speak is Rianne Pernitsky. And Rianne is an educational audiologist as well. And she is speaking, she is working with Edmonton public schools as an educational audiologist. And I'm going to sign it over to you, Rianne. Okay, thank you. Is that really loud? Okay. And so I guess starting off with describing my hearing level, I have a moderately severe hearing loss sloping to severe to profound in both years. My left ear has better discrim. I have noticed over the years my ability to discriminate speech in the right year is decreasing. I was diagnosed at the age of three and my hearing has progressed slowly over the years. I use hearing aids and different many different kinds of DM systems. I have the touch mini mic tabletop. I kind of use whatever I have around me. I like playing around with the different systems. So what educational support did I receive in my education? I had very little support looking back at it now. I did have some. I always had preferential seating in the classes, which meant I was sitting right up at the front. It was helpful, but wasn't helpful to see my peers behind me. I had lots of speech therapy in the school, only until grade two, I believe. And I did work with the school librarian who was the teacher aid. She, I worked with her up till grade three. And I believe I worked with her every other day on reading, spelling, some phonetics. Making sure I understood what was shared in my classes, mostly reviewing information. That was really helpful. That was only until grade three. And she was also the person who would be checking my equipment and would let my parents know if it wasn't working. So she was also a technology person and she was the librarian. So again, she didn't really have any of the special background training and speech, but she happily helped me and we had a really good relationship. And I'm very thankful I had her while I did. I think the other thing that was really good was I had a really supportive school. I felt the teachers were always really supportive of anything that I did ask. And they were really encouraging. I had really good peers in my elementary. I don't recall having any issues. And we just like others mentioned at the beginning of the year, I would talk to the teachers about where I needed to sit and that I had a hearing loss. And I think the biggest thing that I used in elementary was my technology. So I had my hearing aids. I had my FM system. Back then I had the lovely Y chord. So it was great to see technology getting better over the years, but I was one where I had to use it. I couldn't hear very well without it. So what supports did I see helpful? So like I said, that support from Mrs. Landry, the librarian, she was kind of like Nancy touched on it. She was my one person that I could go to if I was having, if I was struggling or not understanding and needed to have that clarification and just having that time to have someone sit and talk with me. So that was really helpful. And I think it would have been helpful if it could have continued on past grade three. And the other thing that was helpful was I had another peer in my school that had hearing loss. She was a grade above me. We really didn't know each other and we knew of each other, but we weren't connected in any way. But it was kind of helpful knowing that I wasn't the only one in the school who had hearing loss. That was just for elementary junior high, high school, I believe I was the only one. Knowing what I know now about additional supports, what would have I liked to have seen? Number one, skill shops. So like Melanie said, I would have liked the opportunities to meet other people with hearing loss. And when I first learned about the skill shop, I had goosebumps. Just thinking about what a great opportunity it would have been and how good it is to put kids together and they can share their experiences. And I feel like, you know, it goes back to building yourself advocacy and self determination. And I think that would have helped boost my confidence and just knowing what you could ask for and that it was okay to ask for help or ask for different things. The other thing I think would have been really helpful is extra time for exams or having time to preview and, you know, having not blocked in my schedule. I had full schedules. I had no, my extra time was at home. So I spent a lot of times, I spent hours doing extra work in the evenings just trying to fill in things. And back then I thought that's just what everybody did. But now I realize how much extra work I was doing on my own. So I mean, on the plus side, I think it did help to develop my strong work habits now. But it would have been nice to maybe just enjoy childhood a little bit more. So extra time, having notes ahead of time or handouts and skill shops would have been, I think, really beneficial for me. As a professional in the field, what accommodations would I like to see, like Amber and Melanie and Nancy. I'd have to agree with the captioning is really important and using emails to communicate is easier. I feel like the position that I'm in right now has been the most accommodating to understanding my needs. And mostly because the individuals I work with understand that. I think previous workplaces, they didn't always grasp the full extent of how much I struggled at times, even though it looked like I wasn't. And I think that goes back to myself as well as being able to share to others what I need and what I can and can't hear. What can consultants do to improve our service? Or I think I touched on what are the three things do you believe are critical learnings or skills in order to become a successful person. It's going to be that self advocacy. You have to know knowing what you can ask for to make it easier for you is important. And a lot of people just aren't even aware of what they can ask for or what could be helpful. So I think that is an important thing and something that we need to continue working on with our kids from kindergarten up to grade 12 because it changes. And the other main thing is to be successful is if you use technology and it's helpful for you is using it consistently. We see or I see a lot the mild and the moderate and the unilateral hearing loss kiddos. They are not consistent users and we can just see how much they do struggle. We have our severe profound people like myself. I can't function without my hearing aids. So I'm always wearing my hearing aids. But for those other kids where they feel like they're hearing but they're not hearing. They just I think the consistent technology would go a long way to help them. And I think important thing that Nancy touched on as well. What can we do to improve our service. I think family support and education is a big thing. You know although we work for the schools. I feel that we need to work with sharing our information with the families as well. I feel like if the family support awareness isn't there no matter how awesome that school is it's going to fall apart at some point for that child. And so we need to have that support full circle so that they can just carry on and you know a lot of time I think parents are when the child is initially diagnosed. They're shared all this information and it's so overwhelming. And I think sometimes people just assume that parents know this. But they either haven't been able to retain it or they didn't understand it. And a lot of times they just think their child is fine or it's okay and they just don't really understand. And I think perhaps maybe we can help with explaining a little bit more and showing parents why they need to do these certain things. That's why we recommend and why schools are doing that. So I do think family support and education is also something that's really important. I don't know if that can be included in our service a little bit more than it has been but that was something that kind of stuck out to me as well. And like Nancy said, building those relationships with the child themselves. And I think that's all that I was going to share for today. I will sign off. Thank you. So the last person and that was great. I really enjoyed your comments. The last person we are having speak is Sandra Vandenhoek. And Sandra is an educational audiologist as well. A lot of them. And she works out of Calgary Board of Education. And Sandra is going to talk more about as an adult learner and she'll explain the reason why she's speaking about that. So Sandra. Hi everyone. Can you hear me okay? Does it sound okay? Okay, great. So I have a severe to profound hearing loss in both ears. I have a cochlear implant in one ear and a hearing aid in the other. And I was born with normal hearing. Around preschool age I was diagnosed with a mild hearing loss. And by the time I graduated from high school I had severe to profound hearing loss. And I did not receive educational supports until university. So I went to elementary, junior high, high school in Ottawa, in Catholic school. So I'm not sure why that happened. I did not know that educational audiologists or teachers of the deaf existed. So I only started to use a personal FM system consistently when I was in university in the undergraduate program for communication disorders at the University of Western Ontario. And at UWO I met my first friend with hearing loss and that's Peter Stomakovich who works for Phonak. So he was a year ahead of me and he taught me everything he knew. So I had to catch up quickly and I learned to advocate for myself only as an adult. So until then my coping skills were a little bit dysfunctional. I blocked my way through a lot of situations and my grades were pretty good as long as I had a textbook. But in university when the curriculum stopped following the text I was in big trouble. And that's when I started to investigate FM systems. So I'm going to focus on the last question that Sarah asked. What things do you believe are critical learnings or skills in order to become successful? And because I learned these skills as an adult they are fresh in my mind. The first is to self-advocate and that's obvious. But I think it's really important to aim high because things get watered down over time. And I have experienced perfection when it comes to a teacher using an FM transmitter effectively. And oddly enough I didn't experience this in university or in the audiology program. The teacher who showed me perfection was possible was a monk in a meditation retreat. And he showed me that as long as someone is aware it's possible to do everything right. And that experience had a lasting impression on me because I know what's possible. And I want that for our student. So I have the courage to aim high and I think it does take courage. Another critical learning for me was to drop the stories. So when I was younger I had the experience of feeling excluded in family and in group situations. But that's not true anymore. For the most part in groups I feel included. And the technology makes it easier and easier. But one time recently in a group situation the group forgot about me because of the situation. The logistics had changed. And all of a sudden I was right back in elementary school emotionally. I didn't say anything in the moment because I was really upset. But then after the fact I told them all and I was sobbing, bawling. And there were 20 people in the group and they were really taken aback. And I had to explain that I was responding that way because of my history. So I realized that all of a sudden all of my similar past experiences were with me and were coloring the situation. And this prevented me from adapting and responding to what was going on right now. So I really learned from that situation. And I can't promise that it won't ever happen again. But I'm trying to make a conscious effort to drop the old stories. Things that don't apply anymore. Another aspect of success is to accept help. It's awkward sometimes to be the one who's slowing things down with a pass around microphone. I noticed that this week when I did a peer in service with a student and we talked about using pass around microphones. The students who want to help besides their close friends are sometimes the students that are socially awkward. And maybe those students want to help because they want to be friends. And then also sometimes when people offer to help they make a really big deal about it and it can feel uncomfortable too. And so my student and I had a discussion about the art of accepting help. And I think ideally we should accept help gracefully and gratefully even if it's uncomfortable. And then my last learning is I think it's really important to have the ability to rally the troops. So it's important for to get fellow students to be part of your team. So there's my paper here. So my personal experience with pass around microphones. It works really well when the group becomes involved when it's part of the group culture. And so it's the group that makes it work. It's not the teacher or the student. It's the group that makes the effort. So when I'm in groups I ask for help explicitly. And when I'm talking to groups on behalf of students or with students I ask those groups for help. And when they start to respond I thank them and I thank them often. And I try and shape their behavior by telling them what helps and what I appreciate. And I tell them how much it means to me because it's hard to feel like I belong when I can't follow the discussion. And those are my learnings in a nutshell. Sandra those are really powerful words to tell all of us and actually to to end on. And thank you for sharing the dropping the stories piece as well as as rallying the troops. I it just that's what I did when I called off five of you and asked you if you could share your story. And I really really from the bottom of my heart thank you for doing so. We have a couple of minutes to ask any questions. I'm going to look over to Wayne to see one of the people in the room if there are any questions. No. Okay. And I guess the next PLC is actually at the end of November and we have a guest speaker from Colorado. And she'll be speaking on unilateral hearing loss and combinations for those students. So thank you all for attending and thank you again from the bottom of my heart to these people who prepared this presentation. That's it.