1st Deaf Education Conference

DTV News August 5, 2016 in ASL 3 Subscribers Subscribe

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[TRANSCRIPT]

Kriston Pumphrey

Now is an exciting time for the deaf community, with the recent celebration of ADAâ€™s 26th anniversary and Senator Harkinâ€™s speech at the Democratic National Convention. The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) is prioritizing their focus to end language and cultural deprivation, and there is tremendous support for an innovative space for deaf educators and supporters at the National Deaf Education Conference (NDEC).

This conference focuses on teaching practices and will become a forum to discuss new ideas that are happening in the classroom! Itâ€™s where educators of deaf and hard of hearing children, teacher assistants, educational interpreters and many more can come together to showcase their work and share ideas, collaborate with colleagues to generate new approaches, and learn incredible things!

During the conference that took place alongside NAD 2016 conference in Phoenix, Arizona, DTV News had the opportunity to interview the conference co-chairs, Dr. Patrick Graham, who teaches at Western Oregon University and Tawny Holmes, an Education Policy Counsel for NAD.

From my understanding, this is the first time hosting this conference in conjunction with NAD. How exciting! NDEC certainly adds a whole new element to the NAD conference. So if you donâ€™t mind, could you explain the purpose behind setting up this conference?

Sure, both Tawny and I were sitting together at the Early Hearing Detection & Intervention (EHDI) conference in Jacksonville, Florida two years ago. While we were there, many people approached us expressing sentiments and a need for a deaf education conference. A space where deaf educators can gather to brainstorm, exchange ideas and collaborate together. This led to both Tawny and I discussing why this is important. From there we reached out to the National Association of the Deaf and interestingly, Chris Wagner, explained that back in 1880 NAD was originally founded with a focus on deaf education as a result of the Milan conference.

I would like to add, with Patrickâ€™s focus on the deaf education prep program, he has seen and met a lot of individuals on a community level whereas my job requires me to travel across the country visiting different schools, whether they are mainstreamed programs or schools for the Deaf. Iâ€™ve had the privilege to learn and see firsthand what different schools are doing, including different conferences, all of which I would often share on instagram- @deafeducation. As a result, I had a lot of people asking for more information. It wasnâ€™t really my place, nor did I have all of the answers. We have a lot of incredible teachers out there doing amazing work within their classrooms and I want to be able to bring all that to one place. Not only that, I also wanted to make sure that mainstreamed programs are not excluded. We have a lot of great conferences designed specifically for deaf schools but not so much for mainstream programs. On a state level there may be some but they are not run by Deaf people. So our goal is to bring all these different components together in order to make this happen.

So, well, honestly Iâ€™m a bit surprised that there hasnâ€™t been anything like this until now.

Well, there are many different kinds of deaf education conferences- CEASD for administrators and ACE-DHH, thatâ€™s for college program prep, are a few. There is also CAID, the Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf, but lately their focus has been mainly college educators which is not our goal here. A unique aspect of NDEC is that not only do we invite teachers to provide workshops, we welcome the general deaf community who support education to participate as well. Everyone is here in one space. There are a lot of great conferences out there with very specific areas of focus, and here we strive to bring everyone together- teachers; administrators, school counselors, psychologists, audiologists, speech therapists, ASL specialists...everyone! And all parents and family members are welcome! Thatâ€™s what makes this conference unique.

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