In the learning process, most students come to a point where they begin to understand the theory and concepts, but are not yet quite able to fully apply them. Our Mobile Missions were created to help the participants in our Vietnam Deaf Education Program get over the hump, so to speak, to where they are implementing the things they have learned directly from our summer training sessions or indirectly from peers enrolled.
Each Mobile Mission we conduct targets participating schools and hospitals in our Vietnam Deaf Education Program but the host sites often nvite other programs to take part as well. I decided long ago that the benefit of reaching more people than we would otherwise about how to help young children with hearing loss, offsets the challenge in coming in not always fully knowing our audience.
Jacque has been working with technicians. The paricipants are proving to be knowledgable about certain tests but not others…for instance, some are versed in ABR while others in VRA. That has created a lively learning environment where the participants are sharing knowledge with each other as well as learning from Jacque. As we have seen here in the past, there is a broad trend of hearing aids and cochlear implants being set too conservatively. This is limiting the potential for a child to access the sounds in the range of speech. So Jacque has been helping the technicians in this area.
This afternoon, Judy, Lea, and Jim hosted a Parent Group session involving about 15 children with hearing loss and their families. The director of the therapy department here at Children’s Hospital volunteered to take center stage with some families and engage in therapy sessions while our professionals coached and offered advice on strategies and tactics. Later, she was beaming as she sought me out to tell me how much she had learned from the day’s events and that she felt like she had a clearer path for how and why to apply different strategies to help the child. It was an awesome feeling and such a credit to Judy, Jim, and Lea to see this woman so happy.
Each day, our team has been transported between the hotel and hospital in a van provided by Children’s Hospital 1. A few times this week, our ride was not a van but rather an ambulance. Our driver must have gotten tired of the traffic on the way home today as he flipped on the ambulance siren. The sea of traffic parted in response and we just sailed on to the hotel in record time. We got a kick out of that experience, for sure.