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41: Transition & STEM Careers with Cara Wilmot and Debbie Gilliam
436 Plays1 year ago
Cara and Debbie discuss the transition & career summer programs available for DHH students through NITD Regional Stem Center, as well as other information for preparing students for STEM careers.
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Transcript
Check out the NRSC @AIDB summer programing page for applications that are now open: https://www.aidb.org/Page/3934
Reach out to learn about our national programs like robotics and MELD. https://www.aidb.org/nrsc
If you are not in one of the states we support, check out the National Deaf Center on Postsecondary Outcomes to see what summer programs are offered in your area: https://nationaldeafcenter.org/resources/transition/summer-programming/
CSD Leans has some ready made STEM kits to check out that are fully accessible with deaf role models: https://csdlearns.com/toolkits/
Deaf Kids Code has a free Coding curriculum: https://www.deafkidscode.org/
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Transcript
Introduction to Todd Pod and College Prep Discussion
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the Todd Pod, a podcast to support itinerant teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing, SLPs, and other deaf education professionals. I'm Deanna Barlow from Listening Fund, and today we're talking about preparing students for college with Kara Wilmot and Debbie Gilliam. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having us. Thank you.
00:00:23
Speaker
Yes, very excited to be here. Can you tell everyone a little about yourself?
Kara Wilmot's Role and Teaching Experience
00:00:27
Speaker
Sure. My name is Carol Wilmot and I live in Jacksonville, Florida. I was an itinerant teacher for 10 years here in Duval County Public Schools where I did a lot of soul searching because when I first started, nobody could really tell me what an itinerant teacher was.
00:00:41
Speaker
So I took on a lot of leadership roles, did a lot of investigation, and helped define in Florida what an itinerant teacher was. And through that research, I was actually able to help write the expanded skills standards for Florida teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing. In other states, they're known as the expanded core curriculum. Before I became an itinerant teacher, I actually taught middle school. So I had done a lot of transition training as a middle school teacher, and many of my
00:01:06
Speaker
itinerant colleagues had not had that experience. So I kind of took over the leadership of working with all the secondary students in training my itinerant colleagues how to teach transition. Then I had to leave itinerant because I was promoted up to the program specialist for Duval County. And as that role
00:01:25
Speaker
I did a lot of professional development and outreach and continuing program development, which led to some other positions at the state level. And through the state level work, I was actually able to work with NRSC, the NTID Regional STEM Center at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind.
00:01:43
Speaker
and just loved the programming that they were offering. Some of my students got to go participate in seeing those students get to go and immerse themselves in STEM opportunities. I went to Marine Lab. My students got to use IXL and just all the benefits from it. I was really excited when I was invited to join the team and help expand this programming into Florida.
00:02:02
Speaker
That's awesome. I love having people on who come from like different backgrounds who like were things before itinerant and after itinerant and like state level and like middle school transition. It's so nice because you know, everyone like itinerant just requires you wear so many hats. So like when you can talk to people who have expertise in certain areas, I find that
00:02:21
Speaker
So helpful, especially like older kids is not my specialty. So whenever I could talk to someone like you, I'm like, Oh, please tell me everything. Like I need that. How about you, Debbie?
Debbie Gilliam's Educational Journey
00:02:31
Speaker
Okay. So my name is Debbie Gilliam. I like Cara. I feel like I have a diverse background in the field of education. I'm starting my 28th year.
00:02:41
Speaker
Wow, congratulations. Yeah, thank you. I started out as a high school social studies teacher at Alabama School for the Deaf and I was in that role for 16 years and absolutely loved it. Then I transferred to our adult ed facility and I was an adult ed teacher preparing students for the workplace for five years.
00:03:03
Speaker
After that, I became an outreach provider and an instructional coach. And that was very interesting. I got to travel all over the state helping teachers and students. And currently in my role is I am the NRSC STEM Academy director, which just basically means that I coordinate STEM Academy in Alabama, CARA coordinates in Florida, and I oversee both programs.
00:03:33
Speaker
Amazing. So much good information. I can't wait to hear everything you guys have to say about transition and academic transition because I feel like that's a wealth of knowledge. I wish we had something like I'm in New Jersey and we have a lot of programs, but this in particular sounds very interesting to me for what you have done there. So could you tell me a little bit about your role as the academic transition specialist, more about your roles that you do now to support students and teachers?
About the STEM Academy Program
00:03:58
Speaker
Sure. Debbie started the program in Alabama of STEM Academy. STEM Academy is an extension program that was started at Rochester Institute of Technology, National Technical Institute for the Deaf. They have the summer transition program for incoming freshmen. They were having success in having students stay in college for two years that went through this program, so they decided to extend it to high schoolers.
00:04:21
Speaker
And so this program is three weeks, but the students can repeat it. And it is offered to 12 different states. And those states are Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, and Louisiana. And it's three weeks of intensive instruction for high school students where they work on English language arts, American Sign Language, reading,
00:04:48
Speaker
math and emotional intelligence. And even though we do work on American Sign Language, the students do not need to know American Sign Language before they come. It's really great. We had several itinerant students last summer who knew no sign language before they came. But by the end of it, we're able to have some simple conversations. But it was also cool to watch them learn how to communicate the kids that did sign and those that didn't sign.
00:05:07
Speaker
Is that in person or is it online? It is completely in person. We fly them out, pay all expenses for them to come and room and board, all the activities. That's the best part. They're in this very rich language environment. Our students, a lot of times what do they do? They sit at home all summer and what happens to their language?
00:05:28
Speaker
they can have some regression. So this is an opportunity for them to be immersed in language for three weeks at least. They also develop leadership skills. We work on that college readiness. We encourage an interest in STEM fields and the most important. And this is one of the things as an itinerant teacher, I really struggled. How do you find those opportunities for them to meet other deaf and hard of hearing? So many of my students, they were the only one in their school and they never met anybody else. Well, when they come to camp, they can actually meet other deaf and hard of hearing adults.
00:05:57
Speaker
And students are getting those mentors and peers and we know that now is called social capital and building that social capital is so important for students who are deaf and hard of hearing and just to see the growth and. For me that was just made my heart grow every time you know be like oh you have that challenge to oh that's how you deal with it for them to have that opportunity is just.
00:06:18
Speaker
really heartwarming and very important. I also mentioned Marine Lab because we have lots of different opportunities. Just watching the kids figure out how to communicate when I was at this one Marine Lab was just amazing to me.
00:06:30
Speaker
that they were writing back and forth with paper, gesturing. And then by the end, they had their own little systems of communicating and things like that. We had another girl this past summer. This was her first time meeting somebody else at her heart of hearing. And she said, I for the first time feel like I really have a friend I could connect with. And she's like, and this, I can finally say I have a best friend. I've never been able to say I have a best friend. And so just in keeping up with that communication.
00:06:54
Speaker
I would just like to interject that everything that Kara said is absolutely true and you would think that being an academic focused program during the summer
00:07:06
Speaker
that students wouldn't be eager to attend. But this coming summer will be our fourth year, fourth summer doing this. And our first year, we only had 12 students. It was the year that COVID hit. And we limited the number for that reason. And then the next year, we had almost 20. And then last year, we limited it to 24.
00:07:30
Speaker
but we had a waiting list of 24 to 25 kids. So word had gotten out, it's a very popular program. Yeah, I have so many questions. Okay. Because it sounds amazing. I feel like I'm shocked you don't have hundreds of people on the waiting list because it sounds like, I mean, it's free, it's academic, but social also, I feel like there's a ton of kids who would benefit from that. So is this targeted for kids that are usually mainstreamed, like kind of,
00:08:00
Speaker
relatively
Access and Opportunities in STEM Academy
00:08:01
Speaker
age-appropriate and then they just need like a little boost over the summer kind of thing? Well, any student can apply. Again, we serve those 12 states, but we've had a couple of students attend that were special coming from other states. So if there's someone hearing this and they have a student in a different state as a team and we collaborate with our national partner on this NTID as well, we may accept that student if there's availability.
00:08:28
Speaker
So it's just students who need a little help academically, socially, whatever it may be, to be successful in a post-secondary college setting or even a workplace setting. Yeah. And does the parent apply for this program or does the school apply for them? The parent applies, the student and the parent applies.
00:08:50
Speaker
Okay, awesome. Yeah, well, we'll definitely like, link all this so that if you're in those states or even potentially not, you can share this information with your families because I can think of like, I know students who are academic, you know, they're in mainstream, they're the only one in their school.
00:09:05
Speaker
But, you know, they just need a little help in a little bit area, like, you know, a little support in reading or they could use they could use some intense social emotional support, perhaps, and just something like that would be amazing for them. And not every family has the means to send their kid to camp for the summer. So or even to like find camp that would be appropriate for them, because then you're worried about the devices and the pools and the whatever for a lot of summer camps, you know, so sounds like it would be a really good opportunity for a lot of people.
00:09:34
Speaker
I will add, we also have some other summer programming and different programming throughout the school year. So we have a robotics camp that's also open that's only one week.
00:09:43
Speaker
So if they're not quite ready for three weeks, they could try out the robotics camp that's a week. And we also have cybersecurity camp that's going to be in South Carolina for a week. And that one is completely open to every student in the US. And all of these are free because we know summer programming and just these different opportunities for these students to come together with other deaf and hard of hearing to build that, you know, that community is very important and immerse themselves and be able to learn with people like them and with those deaf mentors and deaf peers.
00:10:10
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Is there a reason you decided to focus on STEM, like in particular, like preparing for STEM careers?
Benefits of STEM Careers for Deaf Students
00:10:17
Speaker
Yes, because number one, that's the fastest growing career field is STEM. There are more STEM jobs being created every day than non-STEM related fields. In addition, the research shows that students who are deaf and hard of hearing
00:10:31
Speaker
who study and go into a STEM field will earn 30% more over their lifetime career. So it's more financially beneficial for students who are deaf and hard of hearing. And because of the technology, there tends to be more opportunities for them to be able to communicate in the workplace and have that independence and being able to be successful in the workplace.
00:10:51
Speaker
That's awesome. So if our kids, for example, maybe can't go to the program, but we want to support some of the same skills that you're supporting in this camp, are there any of these ideas or skills that we can focus on with our students that you work on that we can help prepare them for these types of careers? So one of the other parts of our job is we do coaching with school districts and schools or even individual teachers. We'll do transition coaching, STEM related.
00:11:18
Speaker
We actually have a whole team that will help work with different people in these different areas. So we have Lynn Dunn who will work with different teachers on English and language arts. We have Harry Wood that will work with robotics and that's actually our national program. And he'll work with middle school and high schools to set up their own robotics teams and they can go to the robotics competitions for that.
00:11:40
Speaker
And even if you only have one or two deaf kids in a school, you could actually help them pair up with some hearing kids to create their own robotics team and still compete. We have mechatronics, engineering, leadership, and deafness, also known as MELD. And that's another program where they can learn about 3D printing and get a 3D printing
00:11:59
Speaker
And just a wealth of other resources if you check out our website. And then just googling STEM, there's so many STEM resources out there. One of my favorite ones is robotics, is teaching about the language of robotics. And there's a cool activity you can do called program a friend or when I was a teacher, an itinerant teacher, I called it program your teacher.
00:12:19
Speaker
It's learning about computational thinking. They have to break down the code of telling a teacher or a friend what to do like they were a robot, which is a really fun activity. You can Google this or we can provide a link. Basically, they write down the code and they have to give directions to the person to do an activity, but they have to be very specific in what they tell them. One step forward, lift up one
00:12:44
Speaker
foot, your hand, put, you know, if they miss a step, their friend can't complete the activity. So now they have to problem solve why they didn't complete the activity. And so they're practicing writing, they're practicing explaining things, they have to listen. There's so many different activities.
00:12:58
Speaker
And this is all without a robot. And then if they really like this activity, then you could even look at working with Lynn Dunn, getting the robot. And she does instruction on how they could even get one of the little dash robots to then practice this in the classroom. But there's all sorts of little activities out there like that. Another really great resource is CSD Learn has some all pre-written STEM toolkits that are online that you could go and start tomorrow.
00:13:23
Speaker
And they're all with captions and ASL, and they have deaf role models and mentors in those programs. Related to STEM Academy, we have seen the past three years significant academic gain and just improvement in social skills and those types of things. So, Karen and I
00:13:43
Speaker
can come and talk to teachers about the features of STEM Academy. Again, this is a three-week program, but what if you're doing and following that model in a year-round school program? Students could definitely benefit from that as well. And monitoring their progress academically, one of the tools we use
00:14:03
Speaker
is IXL. And that's an online learning platform that you may be familiar with. And we provide that for teachers at no cost. Oh, awesome. I love IXL. A lot of itinerant teachers, I know they are like supporting in a role. So I might not be able to like implement a robotics program in the schools that I work in because I'm not like a school district employee. I'm like
00:14:26
Speaker
like contracted in basically,
Supporting Student Involvement in STEM Clubs
00:14:28
Speaker
like through a special services district. But a lot of these schools do have robotics programs, STEM programs, like they have their own programs already running. If I wanted to help my students be more involved in those programs, are there any
00:14:42
Speaker
specific like pre-teaching I can do or any specific accommodations you've noticed are particularly helpful for getting those kids involved in the STEM clubs that are already existing at their school. I would definitely say pre-teaching the vocabulary. Also finding out what their interests are and you know why they might be interested in encouraging them and investigating it and
00:15:02
Speaker
you know, talking through it and setting those goals with them of what they would need to do to be involved with that. Sometimes it's even just working with the parents and working in health transportation, to be honest. A lot of times that's my biggest challenge for some of my students and talking to them about what careers are related to this and, you know, finding out from the school what we need to do to make to be more accommodating, you know, for each student, it could be different, you know, encouraging them, you know, using your FM after school
00:15:30
Speaker
Can you bring your computer to use a Google slide deck and just to use the captions with it to be creative? Are you requesting that interpreter if you need an interpreter teaching them? One of my things that I used to do as an itinerant teacher is
00:15:45
Speaker
I would have them think out their accommodations. Okay, now where do you need them for all these different situations? And then if they have to request them, I would make them fill out the request form because I would tell them in college, you're going to have to do this. But then I would always double check it that they did it, but like teaching them how to do the online request form. And then I would make them copy me because ours was online when I was in the classroom.
00:16:06
Speaker
but they would copy me when they would submit the request form and then I would follow through to make sure that those different accommodations were set up for them to participate. And then sometimes when my students needed help to get on to the extra activity buses or whatever they needed to do to get home. But yeah, in pre-teaching the vocabulary, reading about different, I would do my reading comprehension by reading about STEM-related fields and doing the pre-teaching of the vocabulary related to that.
00:16:32
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like that's a good idea. Sometimes I think of transition as like a separate thing that I work on. Like I don't, I think I could do a better job of like meshing it with the other goals. Like you mentioned, like if they have reading comprehension goals or vocabulary goals of working on that and like together instead of it's like two separate activities because I tend to think like, okay, I'm going to support like the academic stuff and I'm going to do transition. Like I don't,
00:16:56
Speaker
put it together, but that's such a good idea to think like, oh, if I know you want to join Robotics Club and it starts in October, like maybe in September, we can read some books about robotics and do some listening comprehension or do, you know, whatever it is to kind of prepare them for that because then you're kind of killing two birds with one stone and we obviously don't have a lot of time.
00:17:14
Speaker
Yeah. And I used to love doing interviews with people. I would have them interview the teacher or interview the activity or interview somebody in that field so that they would practice writing. Now they have to practice talking to somebody and it helps with that goal setting that they're talking and finding out that information that they need to investigate that different concept or idea.
00:17:36
Speaker
So I used to do a lot of interviews and if they weren't comfortable, I was like, it's OK to not call somebody. You know, you have the power of email. You can email people. And so a lot of my students felt comfortable with emails. And if they got comfortable with emails, then we would work up to maybe calling people to do those questions or even going to the school and I would go with them.
00:17:56
Speaker
to have those face-to-face interviews to practice those different skills. Yeah, that's awesome. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about that I didn't touch on yet? I would just say the benefits of summer camp. I mean, there is so much research out there that says summer camp is very beneficial to students with disabilities of all disabilities.
Summer Camps for Personal and Career Development
00:18:16
Speaker
But even kids in general, there's a lot of research out there that says that summer camp supports the transition from high school to post-secondary education and careers.
00:18:26
Speaker
in the three major areas that it supports is the development of personal awareness. It develops their academics and their career awareness, and the kids who attend summer camps are more likely to make a decision to go to college and pursue a specific field. So if they're going to the STEM-related summer camp, they're more likely to pursue a career in STEM.
00:18:47
Speaker
And there's so many benefits to summer camp that it's a much more relaxed atmosphere. Kids can just be kids and they can learn at their own rate. There's not the pressure of, oh, we got to get through page 200 to 278 in three days. They can just relax and learn. There's not the exams. They can just really be where they are and work towards these goals. And it's language rich. They're not having that time of no language.
00:19:10
Speaker
And they can develop who they are in a safe space with mentors and kids like them, which they can't always do during the school year when they're itinerants, you know, being able to talk to somebody else and go, Oh, I didn't even know there were open caption movies. Oh, I didn't even know when I go to the escape room, I could request, you know,
00:19:28
Speaker
that they make sure to give me the written directions before i go in the room i didn't know that when i go to this activity like a play i could have requested an interpreter they don't you know they can have that experience and hear it from somebody else in that really safe environment so even if your students are not in an area that can come to our summer camp i really recommend that they go to the national deaf center on post-secondary outcomes
00:19:51
Speaker
They have a whole page dedicated to summer camps and people are posting different summer camps that are happening across the nation. Yeah, that was going to be my next question of like, what about like, do you have any resources for people who are outside of that geographical area who want to share information with their families about summer camp? But I'll include the link to that. Thank you.
00:20:10
Speaker
Just piggybacking on what Carol was mentioning, we've had students that had no idea what kind of services were available to them through VR. So that's something we now incorporate and discuss in our wellness classes. The students who attend STEM Academy attend, we have five classes, we have reading. And in our reading class, we try to incorporate a novel study, or we do incorporate a novel study, but try to incorporate a book
00:20:38
Speaker
that has a character that is either deaf or hard of hearing. So the students really enjoy that. We have English and math class, wellness and an ASL or communication class. And also upon successful completion of the program, students receive a $5,000 scholarship to NTID.
00:20:59
Speaker
Oh, wow. So if they choose to come back for a second year, of course, that is $10,000. So that's something especially to give the word out to parents. And they also receive a Chromebook. Wow, that's a lot. Could you speak a little more about the VR resources for students that they don't know that they're available? I'm sure a lot of people don't know they're available. Like what is available for people?
VR Services and Transition Support
00:21:23
Speaker
So the occasional rehabilitation offers pre-employment transition services, also known as pre-ex. And so every state is required to allocate 15% of their funding to youth services. So any student, I think it's age
00:21:38
Speaker
14 through 21 enrolled in some type of education has the right to pre-employment transition services. So what we do really complements pre-employment transition services. And I think every student should be referred as soon as they turn 14 for those services. And they can all be repeated as many times as they need, but they address self-advocacy. They support workplace readiness.
00:22:04
Speaker
investigating post-secondary options, work-based learning opportunities where they can actually get job experience. And I forget the fifth, but that could be a whole episode if you could invite somebody from VR. And they're just wonderful services and they really help support students and their evidence based on transition, what our students need. And so they really can help you be a team in providing those transition services that every deaf, hard of hearing student needs.
00:22:30
Speaker
and it's actually underutilized by students who are deaf and hard of hearing and I know there is a
00:22:35
Speaker
every state has a committee that is working with the National Deaf Center on post-secondary outcomes to improve their access to VR services. And that's definitely something to find out is who is on their team that's working with the National Deaf Center on post-secondary outcomes. Yeah, I've mentioned vocational rehabilitation services a few times on the podcast, because I feel like that's something people just forget is there. And they also a lot of like, this is a misconception, I think, but they think if a student is doing well academically, that they don't need
00:23:02
Speaker
VR services. And it's not like it's a perfect fit for everybody, but that's definitely not an exclusion. Anyone can benefit from them. We actually just had a meeting at my work about VR just being like, hey, we should refer more kids because more people can benefit from this. We have a program for kids who are in program, and then we have all the mainstream kids. So I feel like sometimes
00:23:22
Speaker
the kids in the program get referred but maybe not always the mainstream kids. And it's helpful to remember that even if they're going to go to college, they can still benefit from talking to a VR person about what's available to them. Yes. One of the things that they do is explore post-secondary options. So you get to try different jobs and learn about different jobs so that when you make that decision for that post-secondary option, it's the one that's the best fit.
00:23:43
Speaker
We forget that there's a whole spectrum of different options after high school, not just four-year BA. I mean, there's certificates, there's AA programs, bachelors, masters, you know, and our students have the right to explore all those different options and get that additional support they need so that they make the best decisions possible.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. For itinerant teachers, what can they do tomorrow to help support their kids? If we can share information about the programs, we can encourage them to join these clubs that are offered at their schools. Is there anything else that we can do in our sessions to help them have a nice, smooth transition from high school to college that maybe we haven't thought of before, coming from a STEM perspective, that we can help?
00:24:32
Speaker
you know, support them in our sessions outside of like all these very cool extra things. I would say number one, read about different STEM careers would be the first thing and do reading comprehension activities with those and just explore them and try out some STEM activities.
Engaging STEM Activities for Students
00:24:48
Speaker
If you actually follow RIT, NTID's outreach,
00:24:54
Speaker
website, they have some cool STEM activities you can join into. Like they have every year a competition where the kids can build the tallest structure with spaghetti and marshmallows. They have another one where it's an egg drop activity that you guys could practice in between to get ready to participate in these. And there's some, the next big idea are some of the different ones that are on that outreach website that they do a competition every year. So you could practice and get ready. And then when the competition comes up, your students could join that.
00:25:22
Speaker
Um, trying that CSD learns toolkits and going through some of those and learning with the kids about STEM and then contacting us at NRC. Um, Debbie and I and our team will do consult and help you brainstorm very specific ideas that can do with your, that you could do with your students, even at the itinerant level.
00:25:41
Speaker
And also assess your students, you know, do a self-determination or career assessment and find out what they're interested in, because it really needs to be student-led. You never know what it is until you do that assessment. I had a student who told me, I want to be a snake. I want to go into something with snakes. And I was like, what career can you do with snakes? And he literally is in Miami now, collecting boa constructors because they're an invasive animal. Never would have thought of that as a career. I had another student who was interested in fish farming.
00:26:11
Speaker
And I didn't even think that was a career, but we researched it and he actually is a fish farmer and a park ranger. And so through going to school to be a fish farmer, he also became.
00:26:22
Speaker
a park ranger and he's out in the open and outdoors. Cause when I would ask him, what do you want to do? He's like, I just want to be outside. I just want to be outside. And so, you know, just talking to the kids, following their lead, finding out what they're interested in and reading about that, doing those reading comprehension can lead you to some of the
Encouraging Career Exploration with Teacher Support
00:26:38
Speaker
wildest things. And there's so many different jobs that you may not even know about until you investigated with your student. I think I learned just as much from my students as they did from me when we did career exploration and looking into that.
00:26:50
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like a lot of times when I talk to kids about that, they just say like, I don't know. Like they just they just have no idea. Granted, they're like 14. So like valid. Like I also did not know. But I like the idea of just like reading about different careers, like different people or like areas of science just like to open their eyes to like what are some of the possibilities because
00:27:12
Speaker
If you don't want to be like a doctor, lawyer, teacher, like what else or what your parents do, like what what other choices are there, you know, and there's a million things, obviously, but I feel like that's a good tip to just like if they're giving you an I don't know.
00:27:25
Speaker
then just start reading about some different stuff and see what sparks an interest and what doesn't and kind of prune from there. Yeah, I used MapIt a lot from the Describe and Caption Media program. There's a program called MapIt is what I used to be able to do that exploration with my students. Now there's an updated version through the National Deaf Center, which is Deaf-verse. Both of them are designed for deaf and hard of hearing students and they are transition programs that help set goals
00:27:55
Speaker
investigate, it will show students strengths and challenges and things they might be interested in. And that was a lot of the time where I started was with MAPIT, which is still available. It's a little dated looking, but it's still a great program and it got us to jump off somewhere. And I know a lot of teachers are also using the deaf first these days, which is another very similar program that gives you a place to jump off and start exploring.
00:28:20
Speaker
Do you know what makes it like specific to deaf and hard of hearing students? So it's written from the deaf and hard of hearing perspective by deaf and hard of hearing adults. It has the captions, it has the sign language, it has addresses deaf and hard of hearing accommodations, you know, and those unique components that our students need. And, you know, it has the whole spectrum of needs from all the different amplification, different communication styles and things like that. So it's nice that it is from their perspective from a deaf adult.
00:28:48
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Sounds great. You'll have to send me links for all these things so I can link them all in the show notes for everybody to look at. Is there any other resources you wanted to share with itinerant teachers at the Deaf and Hard of Hearing?
00:29:01
Speaker
I know you mentioned a lot already, so there'll be lots of links in the show notes, but is there anything else that we haven't touched on yet that you wanted to share? There is also Deaf Kids Code, which has a free curriculum you can download to teach kids about coding, which is another fun way to start with investigating STEM, and there's so many jobs with that. I actually have a student. He was happy to be able to do a program.
00:29:25
Speaker
at our local community college and it didn't even require a degree. It was just a certificate and he was able to jump right in, get a job. He worked from home and is doing really well with that. And so, you know, just get out there and look for some different STEM opportunities. It's nice that we're having more and more developed for students who are deaf and hard of hearing. Check out our website from aidb.org backslash NRC. We have a ton of different resources to investigate. And like I said, contact us and we can help you
00:29:54
Speaker
find those different resources. And also follow us on social media. Where are you most active? Instagram, Facebook, TikTok? Facebook and Instagram, but definitely Facebook because we're going to be posting everything that we're doing and all those activities. We have videos that students can see and parents can see of actual events that we're hosting. Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure that'd be helpful to send along with the flyer so that way parents know that it's like legit.
00:30:23
Speaker
Okay, awesome. Thank you so much for sharing all of that great information today and all of those resources. I think that'll be super helpful for teachers who want to help their kids transition into some of these great career options. As always, the transcript will be linked below along with all of the links from today. And I'll see you next week. Bye. Thank you. Thank you.