Deaf Awareness Month

National Deaf Awareness Month traces back to the World Federation of the Deaf's International Week of the Deaf, first observed in 1958, and it traditionally closes with the International Week of Deaf People and the International Day of Sign Languages in the final days of September. It's fitting that this is also where our own September series lands. Here's everything we covered. Find the post below, all in one convenient spot: blog.bethebrightest.com/category/deaf-hard-of-hearing.

The Recap

• The kickoff post laid out why DHH competence belongs on every practitioner's radar, not just specialists'
• Our Bright Conversations episode with Germaine Graham, M.S., CCC-SLP of Deafinitely Communicating covered bilingual, family-centered therapy - building ASL and spoken English side by side and keeping goals functional
• We broke down five no-cost habits - from making eye contact before speaking to defaulting to visual redundancy- that change outcomes without changing your budget.
• Our course spotlight on Using Curriculum to Support School-Age DHH Students with Sydney Bassard, MSP, CCC-SLP, of The Listening SLP (plus a free bonus handout) took the conversation from therapy room to classroom, covering real curriculum access and adaptation.
• Our Deaf Culture 101 primer covered the terminology and etiquette: Deaf vs. deaf, retiring "hearing impaired," attention-getting, eye contact, and interpreter etiquette - things that most training programs skip.
• Dr. Jasmine Simmons shared her story, and we are looking forward to watching and cheering as she continues her journey to see the world! If you have not done so, please go read her story and check out the children's books she authored.

The Common Thread

Every piece this month pointed at the same idea from a different angle: DHH-informed practice isn't a single skill you either have or don't. It's a stack of smaller, learnable pieces: the right terminology, the right classroom habits, the right curriculum decisions, the right family partnership. Each one makes the others more effective.

Two Things Worth Keeping Open Past September

If you only bookmark a few things from this month, make it these: the Bright Conversations episode with Germaine Graham, for the family-centered, bilingual foundation of this work, and the course with Sydney Bassard, for turning that foundation into curriculum decisions you can use on Monday. Both are linked below and available anytime. 

Deaf Awareness Month may close out September, but the caseloads and classrooms this content is built for don't take the rest of the year off.

Thank You for Following Along

Awareness months are useful because they create a moment to focus, but the actual goal is that the habits stick well past the calendar page. A month from now, the terminology, the classroom habits, and the curriculum lens from this series should be quietly built into how you already work, not a set of posts you remember fondly and then set aside.