Monday, December 8, 2008

Amanda and School

Busy couple of days!  Amanda received an honor roll 
award last Thursday.  She often gets positive behavior 
recognition, but seldom realizes the same academic 
triumph.  So we were quite pleased, and of course 
attended the award ceremony.

The next day, parent teacher-teacher conferences 
were held.  Amanda is in 8th grade and rotates for 
8 periods among 7 teachers plus a speech therapist 
(4 times weekly) and an audiologist (once a week.)

Mr. Zarembka-Math         Ms. Maxwell-English                                   

Ms. Chute-Family Life         Mr. Branton-History


Mr. Tarpay-Science               Ms. Caustin-Speech & Language

                                                                  
Mrs. Gleicher-Reading


Her Adapted Physical Education teacher,  Ms. Hoffee was unavailable as was the
Audiologist, Ms. Rogan, so unfortunately, we didn't get pictures of them.  However, we maintain regular contact with them so we know how she's doing, but I would've liked pictures.

All of Amanda's core academic teachers (English, Reading, Science, History and Math) are deaf.  Since the focus of the school is on instruction through ASL, the SLP and the Audiologist support what instruction she is getting in the classroom.  

Amanda has only been activated less than four months and had NEVER EVER heard anything prior to implantation.  Hearing aids did not benefit her although she wore them diligently, especially in her early years hoping to hear something.  She began asking for an implant at age 10 and after major insurance battles, was finally approved for surgery just before she turned 14.

Both the SLP and the Audiologist have noticed improvement in speech production this school year.  And since her last mapping, we have all noticed a very positive effect on what she is able to hear.  She is increasing her accuracy and consistency in being able to distinguish between individual phonemes, words, phrases and sentences.

And she's immensely able to hear the ruckus that goes on in deaf classrooms.  In fact she sometimes acts as an interpreter for students trying to get deaf teachers attention. The student will yell out and Amanda will let the teacher know the student wants them. THAT would never have happened before.  So it's an interesting way to measure progress, but progress it is.

9 comments:

Charlotte said...

Firstly Yay for amanda for her achivements at school. She has such a postive attiude.

Secondly, thank you for your comments on my blog. I am glad to have made your day.

Oh Happy belated birthday, meant to tell you few days ago but things got in the way, sorry! so Glad you all had great time in disneyland (i never been!!)

Lots of hugs

Anonymous said...

wow! Amanda has many teachers! They can help her, I believe that she would able hear as well in the future :)

Keep it going!

Betty

Www.lozsmedicsljourney.blogspot.co.uk said...

aw glad she is making progress with her implant and school!

leah said...

Wow- congratulations on honor roll! I am glad we are still in the pre-teacher days sometimes- we only have one audiologist and one speech therapist to deal with (g)!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations to Amanda for her honor roll award - that is FANTASTIC!

I'm so happy that her CI has been helping her move forward with speech improvement ... it sounds like it's been such a positive experience all the way around. :)

Way to go, Amanda!!

~ Wendi

Jennifer Bruno Conde said...

CHARLOTTE: Yes, definitely Yay for Amanda's academic success. She barely squeaked onto the honor roll, but → squeak by she did. ←

It was great having my day by the wee hours of the morning so that the rest of the day was just frosting on the cake.

Speaking of cake...thanks for the Birthday Wishes! I was hoping you guys would be coming out this summer so we could go to Disneyland. We're still hoping it works out! ✈

BETTY: Amanda is hearing more things all the time! Woo hoo! ✾

LAURA: Yes! We are happy she's progressing, too! ✰

LEAH: Your day will come when you get to have lots and lots of teachers. Enjoy the "relative calmness" while you can. ❥

WENDI: Sure has been a looooonnnngggg road, but overall we are very pleased with her early results! ∇∆

Katie-Louise's blog said...

Brilliant Achievement Amanda, *high five!*

Keep up the good work!

anyway, Happy xmas to both of you!

have a great time,

Amanda, be good! so, you don't have to be on santa naughty list, hehe

take care

katie-louise x

Shari said...

I'm so happy to see the improvements she's been making in school and that positiveness she has really moved her forward.

I am realy impressed, because she has never heard sound before. That's great news and shows that with persistence and determination, anyone can be successful CI receipients post-lingually.

Go, Amanda, go!!

Jennifer Bruno Conde said...

Katie-Louise,

I got your message on my Sidekick while Amanda was sitting next to me. She thought it was funny about her being naughty. ☹

Merry Christmas to you too! I'm sure we'll have plenty more times to say it on facebook!

Shari,

Yep! Amanda is proving a lot of naysayers wrong. Yesterday her speech teacher said she could tell the difference between, "See you later" and "You make me mad." Since they are both 4 syllables, she was asked how she could distinguish the two.

Amanda said, "See you later" is all one continuous flow, while "You make me mad" has 4 segments.

Not bad!

Jennifer ♡