2014 National Association of the Deaf Conference
By Philippe Montalette
As it was my first experience to be part of the national board of directors, I found the experience valuable. Every morning at 7:00 am, the board met, Monday through Friday, finishing up around midnight. We made sure that everything went smoothly.
More than 1,500 attendees were at the NAD’s biennial conference. There were over 100 volunteers who were instrumental in its success. 90 presenters in 50 workshops provided attendees with important information, tips, updates, and news. With over 70 exhibitors, people enjoyed the browsing for the three days in the Exhibit Hall.
The first NAD@Night event was the opening ceremony at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, which was truly a symbolic representation of America’s 50th anniversary of the civil rights movement. Another NAD@Night event was the first ever community forum, which allowed attendees to have dialogue with each other on many issues affecting our community. After the forum ended, attendees left feeling inspired to make real change with deep understanding of core and current issues in the deaf and hard of hearing community.
The third NAD@Night event was the college bowl finals, which are always a favorite among the attendees. The six teams that started the competition were the Southwest Collegiate Institute for the Deaf (SWCID), University of Texas, University of Minnesota, National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), Gallaudet University, and California State University – Northridge (CSUN). Three teams made it into the finals and the final score was NTID/RIT 79, Gallaudet University 77, and CSUN 75, respectively. It was a very close competition and all teams did a phenomenal job!
The Council of Representatives (COR) had over 150 delegates representing the deaf and hard of hearing community, and voted on the top 5 priorities: Preservation and Advocacy of Relay Services (PARS); FEMA Communication to Deaf and Hard of Hearing; Preservation of Mental Health Services that Meet the Needs of Deaf People; Defining and Supporting the Education Strategy Team’s Focus for 2014-2016; Outreach to Deaf Youth including mainstream school students, and voted for the new NAD Board of Directors.
President’s Corner
For the movie, “Beyond the Embers: Vol. 1” produced by ASL Films, we have confirmed two locations for the September 12 and 13 showings.
To view the trailer, click on this link: https://vimeo.com92960667. It will first be shown at the Jean Massieu School for the Deaf (JMS) Auditorium in Salt Lake City, on Friday, September 12. The movie will begin at 8 pm. The second showing, on Saturday, September 13, will be at the Southern Utah Deaf & Hard of Hearing Programs (SUDHHP) Center at St. George. This showing will begin at 7 pm. The flyers are on page 8 and 9. You can purchase your tickets online. Please share this information with your friends through Facebook and other social media. Thank you for your support of UAD!
I had a wonderful experience at the NAD conference in Atlanta. It taught me how the value of volunteering could make impact of our local, state or national level. The NAD board did a great job as a team and worked together very well. I decided to continue to serve as a board member, as treasurer, for the next two years. Our next biennial conference will be in Phoenix, Arizona, July 5 to 9, 2016. Be sure to attend this conference as it is just the next state over!
We encourage you to join UAD as a member and give your support to UAD; this strengthens the organization. UAD needs your voice and your opinion to help us move forward in the future
Philippe Montalette
President, pmontalette@me.com
Obituary
July 8, 2014 – Bruce Eyre passed away in Bountiful, Utah. Bruce attended the school for the Deaf in Ogden, Utah, where he learned carpentry, printing, barbering and shoe shop. He especially enjoyed machine shop. He went to Weber State and learned the trade of machinist. He enjoyed doing magic tricks, pantomime, bowling and especially playing horse shoes. His wife, Vera, predeceased him October 25, 2013. Funeral was held in West Jordan with interment at Redwood Memorial Mortuary.
Wedding Anniversary Celebrated
July 11, 2014 – An old fashioned potluck gathering was held at the Salt Lake 2nd ASL Ward in Taylorsville to honor the 50th wedding anniversary of Betty and Von Jones of St. George. The couple was married and sealed at the Salt Lake LDS Temple March 6, 1964, with a reception at the Park Stake Center and a honeymoon to San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico. Their progeny includes children Kimberlee and Tyron, seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren. After 45 years at Sun Lithograph, Von took an early retirement; it was the only job he ever held. Betty worked as an ASL/PSE/SEE interpreter and as an ASL teacher. She continues to freelance. The Joneses moved to St. George twelve years ago after thirty eight years in the Salt Lake City area. They have enjoyed camping, fishing and traveling, especially on cruises. They do miss their friends “up north.”
2014 National Association for the Deaf Conference
By J.R. Goff
The National Association of the Deaf convention was a great opportunity for me to learn and understand the passion of current Deaf/ASL politics. NAD was established for the purpose of preservation of ASL and improving deaf education and those are the VERY same values that we are currently fighting for, in this dispensation. Out of all the delegates attending NAD, 65% were “first timers,” with a pink ‘slip’ connected to their name tag. The passion is there and it’s a movement for civil rights. We saw Martin Luther King’s original churches where the civil rights movement originated. I felt goosebumps and chills while sitting and watching it happen. Now is time for us all to send a message to those out in the community that we are frogs sitting in a pot of cold water, on a burning stove. We need to act and act FAST on NAD’s vision and get the community more involved, especially the bi-lingual and bi-cultural youth. AGB is the burning stove.
August 2014 Holidays
3 National Watermelon Day
10 National S’mores Day
13 Left Hander’s Day
30 National Marshmallow Toasting Day
Jean Massieu School News
Michelle Tanner
July has ended and the new school year is almost upon us. The summer has been busy with a number of summer camps. Each camp was well attended and children enjoyed the time spent learning with friends.
There have been a number of changes that have occurred over the summer. Contractors have been adding three modular units to house the middle school students for the upcoming school year. This will be accompanied by a long awaited parking lot. The parking lot and modulars should be completed by the start of school. There has also been work on the roof over the northern part of the main building. We are hopeful that this will eliminate leaking into the classrooms. Inside the building the janitorial staff has been cleaning rooms, moving teachers, painting and completing small construction projects.
During the summer there is often a change in staffing. This year is no different. In June Trena Roueche resigned as the Associate Superintendent of the Deaf. Michelle Tanner is assuming this role. Although this is a new position, she will still be highly involved at JMS, as her office will remain in the same location. She will split her time between JMS and KBS. We are currently in the process of interviewing for a new director for JMS. There will be an extensive team involved in the interview process that includes teachers from the school, parents and Deaf community members.
JMS has also hired 3 new teachers!!! We would like to welcome Julie Bustos as the new preschool teacher. She comes to us from the Rochester Technical Institute of the Deaf. David Aranda will be assuming the newly created resource teaching position at JMS. We are delighted to have David fulfill this great need. We will also have a Reading Specialist position filled by Trish Vierra, a returning JMS teacher from several years ago. During her hiatus from JMS she has been a consultant for the Fairview Learning program. We a excited to use her enthusiasm and experience in teaching reading to deaf student to our advantage. We have also filled 5 aide positions, which bring the total of paraprofessionals at JMS to 10. We are thrilled to have continual growth at JMS.
In the way of information, JMS now has approximately 115 students, 18 teachers (10 hearing & 8 deaf), 10 aides (all deaf), 1 school psychologist, 3 speech teachers, 2 nurses, 5 interpreters, 3 custodial staff, 1 secretary and 1 director.
With all the great staff at JMS and the delightful student body, we are looking forward to a great year!!!!
5th Annual Cycling Heroes Against Abuse Coming Soon!
Sego Lily is thrilled to announce the 5th annual bike event coming soon!
When: Saturday, September 6th
Time: 8:00am-12:00pm
Where: Foxboro Regional Park 1100 North Skipton Drive North Salt Lake, UT 84087
What will we do? Ride bikes up the Legacy Parkway Bike Trail or walk/run 5k for a good cause!
Cost: $25 individual; $50 for family/team
To register go to: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/cyclingheroes2014
Why come? To come together to fight for a SAFER community!
Raffle tickets to win a FREE bike! Prizes!
Let’s work together to keep our community safe!
Ayas Hussain, Outreach Program Coordinator
Bike Event Chair, Ayas@slcad.org
Deaf PIP Update
Paula Pittman
We have just finished compiling the numbers for our annual report to the legislature, and we have seen some growth in our PIP Program! Last year we served a total of 378 children in PIP. This year we served 440 children and their families, averaging 23 referrals a month this past year. We have been busy! But we all feel privileged to have the opportunity to partner with families and watch our deaf and hard of hearing babies grow and develop new skills and abilities each and every day.
We are looking forward to an exciting year in PIP! We said goodbye to April Trocki, one of our Deaf Mentors who recently moved out of state, but we have just completed interviews for new Deaf Mentors and a new Orientation Specialist, and will be hiring three new Deaf Mentors and an ASL/English Orientation Specialist in the next two weeks.
We also were sad to say goodbye to Bettina Espinosa, one of our Parent Advisors who served the West Valley area. Bettina has accepted a position as a preschool teacher in the Jordan district. We are sad to see her go, but are happy that she found a position that she is so excited about. Diane Larsen, who has been working for us as a part-time Parent Advisor, will be taking Bettina’s place and coming on board full-time. We are excited that we had someone on our team who was interested in stepping into this position. We also were fortunate to hire a part-time Parent Advisor for Duchesne County, Alyse Arthur. Alyse is a former preschool teacher at USDB and recently moved to Duchesne County. We are fortunate to have her on our team!
Because of our increased numbers this year, we are fortunate to have received another full time Parent Advisor position in PIP to serve the Jordan district, one of the fastest growing districts in Utah. We are still searching for a person to fill this position, but hope to have interviews for this position in the next two weeks.
We will have three major focuses this year in PIP. Our first will be to strengthen and improve our Deaf Mentor Program. We have been moving along well, but this year we want to offer some new things to families and improve and broaden the services we are currently providing. Second will be to continue to add components to the Baby and Toddler Online Tracking System (BTOTS) and refine the system so that it will provide us instant reports on the status of every child served through the Deaf PIP Program. Our current Executive Assistant, Susan Westergard, will be shifting her responsibilities to provide in depth monitoring of the BTOTS system and the data that we have put into the system in our PIP Program. As she shifts, we will be bringing on a new full-time Executive Assistant to assist us in all of the aspects of PIP. Our third focus for this year will be to bring back the Language Orientation process to our program. This aspect of our program has been on hold for the past year because we have struggled to find someone to fill the position of ASL/English Orientation Specialist. We feel confident that we have found the right person for this job. There is such benefit in families meeting adults who are deaf or hard of hearing early in their PIP experience. We look forward to getting the Language Orientation Process going once again.
We are happy to report that this year we will once again have ASL/English and LSL Toddler Groups across the Wasatch Front, and we will be bringing back ASL Story Time in conjunction with Barnes and Noble. We will continue providing Listening Time, which was a pilot program for us last year, to families in our program who are interested. We will be hosting two of the events that parents enjoy the most, the Parent Retreat and PIP Family Camp. So as we begin a new school year, we look back and are thrilled with the accomplishments we had during 2012-2013, and we look forward to a great year in 2014-2015! Thank you all for your support of Deaf PIP!
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