Language First Learning Library

Course description: Advocates for Deaf Education need to recalibrate our advocacy goals and efforts. As long as we keep our primary focus on K-12 education, deaf students will continue to struggle academically with impoverished language input during critical period of language acquisition— typically ages of 0-8/11, depending on whom you ask. This phenomenon compels us to stand back and transform Deaf Education through our concentrated advocacy with other national/state organizations. To lend support for an advocacy effort, the national advocates need to get on the same page if we are to be successful in transforming Deaf Education. This requires a deeper understanding of why language acquisition and development have huge impacts on our deaf students’ academic skills. And till then, we also need to become cognizant of the impacts that our Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) Act has on every facet of a Deaf child/student’s life thereafter, most particularly their language acquisition and development. From the minute that a newborn becomes identified as deaf, EHDI and IDEA policies dictate their development. This presentation will touch on both issues comprehensively.

Agenda:

15 minutes: Discussion of why we must advocate for language acquisition

30 minutes: Overview of language acquisition, language development, and literacy

15 minutes: LEADK data from California

10 minutes: Overview of policy formation, implementation, and evaluation/analysis

30 minutes: Overview of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention policy

5 minutes: Concluding remarks

Learner outcomes:

Participants will be able to:

1. Delineate the advocacy needs for deaf children's language acquisition and development

2. Recognize the linkages between language acquisition and policy directives

3. Articulate the impacts of critical period of language acquisition, despite the policy directives, on K-12 Deaf Education