BRYAN, Texas — September is Deaf Awareness Month and as school districts work to get back in the swing of things, they still make time to embrace and educate students about the impairment.
Over at Waco ISD, they held an open forum discussion about sign language interpretation on Wednesday morning. Kristina Hickman, with RDSPD, shared how talking about ways to include their community is the key to helping everyone understand each other.
"Just by providing a sign language interpreter at public events, that allows a deaf individual, a person with a hearing loss who uses sign language say I want to go to this event that I don't need to prepare two weeks in advance for," Hickman said.
At Bowen Elementary in Bryan, they go beyond the conversation with teachers fully immersing students in deaf culture. For 16 years, Jamie Bensack has brought that culture to her classroom, including her two daughters who are also hard of hearing. From watching videos on deaf culture to the signs of holidays, numbers, ABCs, and more filling the large spaces on her classroom walls.
They partner with the Brazos Valley Regional School for The Deaf which works with 31 other districts. Interim Supervisor, Melinda Gandrud explained how they work to fill the gap of connections to make those hard of hearing feel like any other student.
"There's so many free resources to learn signs, to communicate with deaf people," said Gandrud.
"Our kids living in a hearing society, they have learned to communicate with the hearing world. So we don't want the hearing world to not be afraid to communicate with them, there are a lot of ways we can communicate." Bowen interpreter Kathy Sellers said. "They love it they love when they run into people that want to communicate with them."
The Texas Health and Human Services has 26 deaf and hard-of-hearing service specialists across the state.
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