What Can First-Year DHH College Students Teach Us About Transition?

Presentation Slides

Jessica Trussell, Ph.D.
 
Mirroring the state of adult illiteracy in America, deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals should experience functional illiteracy or low literacy (reading and writing abilities equivalent to that of a third or fourth grade student) at a rate of about 14% of the population.  In contrast, DHH individuals experience it at twice that rate. Although there are many negative effects of being low literate (e.g., poor health, increased likelihood of incarceration), one negative consequence is not having the requisite reading or writing skills for employment and college. To combat this issue, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf instituted a summer transition program. Findings from the program will be shared and recommendations for transition from the K-12 setting to the college environment will be given. Participants will use what they learn to write appropriate transition goals.
 
Credits: Act 48, ASHA, Psych
Audience: Teachers who work with students with hearing loss; Speech Therapists

Speaker Bio: Jessica W. Trussell is an assistant professor at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a college of Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.  She has a Bachelor’s of Science from the University of Georgia, focused on communication sciences and disorders and Ph. D. and Master’s Degree from Georgia State University focused on literacy development for deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) students.  Additionally, she is a certified teacher of the DHH with twelve years of experience teaching DHH students from age four to adulthood.  Her belief that all teachers are literacy teachers is the foundation for her research with the Center for Education Research Partnerships regarding content-area (math, science, or social studies) vocabulary instruction, focused on Latin and Greek roots and affixes, as well as reading comprehension strategies, such as prediction and summary writing.