PESDHH Officers would like to offer a message of appreciation to all of those who support our students with hearing loss in education! Often those in our field are overlooked because we do so much "behind the scenes" type of work. This year has given us several great opportunities to meet some of you at workshops and trainings and we have gotten to see first-hand how dedicated you are to your educational teams! Thank you for continuing to do the hard work that it takes to provide the services that our DHH students need!

Last week approximately 30 PESDHH members met for our first-ever Spring workshop. This workshop was designed to be more laid back, as we are all heading into a very busy time of the school year. We also have noted in previous feedback that teachers are interested to see what kinds of resources exist that are designed specifically for DHH students. With this in mind, we developed a workshop where vetted end-of and beginning-of year resources were shared out in "show and tell" fashion. We absolutely could have spent another hour or so sharing and collaborating! If you missed this session or would like to come to a similar event in the future, then stay tuned! We hope to have more sessions like this next year! In the meantime, please check out the Padlet where we saved all the resources that were shared. This link is also on the recently-updated PESDHH website. Links to both the Padlet and the PESDHH website are here:

At the start of the 2024-2025 school year, the PESDHH Officers were determined to roll out some mid-year workshops in addition to the annual Summer Workshop. We had a vision to host at least two and to possibly partner with PaTTAN for a third. Mission Accomplished! We hosted an after-school Fall workshop to learn more about the Communication Plan, we promoted and presented at PATTAN's "Top 5 in 2025" workshop in January, and last week we held our Resources collaboration as described above. We are so excited that these events were well-attended and that we could assist with getting Act 48 credits to those who needed them! We knew that these workshops would come with a cost to cover interpreters and Act 48 fees, but we wanted this first year to be absolutely free to those who attended. This gave us a chance to get our bearings with planning the events and it gave you an opportunity to see and trust that we have great things in store!

Moving into the upcoming school year, we will be implementing Membership Fee to help off-set the cost of the workshops that we plan. PESDHH officers will be meeting in June to determine the fine details for how to organize this next step, but we wanted the announcement to go out about it before school is out, so that you are aware of the change!

The Membership Fee will be $50 for the year. This will be paid when you register for the Summer Workshop in August. The $50 fee will get you entry to the Summer Workshop and the Fall and Spring events (these will be recorded for anyone who can't make the dates). Additionally, the Membership Fee will go towards the cost of interpreters and Act 48 applications. If the $50 fee is not paid in August to cover all three workshops, then the cost for the individual Fall and Spring workshops will be $20 each. At this time, since our organization is small and we don't receive funding from other sources, payment for dues can be made via check or Venmo (see details in the registration form below).

Your PESDHH officers are working out some plans to see what other "perks" your Membership Fee could include, so stay tuned! We are very excited about the upcoming school year! There is so much for us to learn together!

📅📣 Save the Date!

What: PESDHH Summer 2025 Workshop

When: Wednesday August 6, 2025

Where: Virtual

We wanted to get the Registration link out to you before the end of the school year so you won't miss it over Summer Break! Feel free to share with colleagues and fellow PA TODs!

One mission of the PESDHH Officers is to seek meaningful collaboration with organizations who can offer valuable resources to our members. This Spring, we began a partnership with a great small company called ASL Teaching Resources! Cynthia Long is a National Certified interpreter with over 19 years of experience with ASL, over 29 years of experience with education, holds an American Sign Language degree and is the Founder of this amazing website! Cynthia has a passion for supporting our DHH educators and is partnering with us with our workshops when we have interpreting needs, and since we have a passion to support students and families using better educational ASL resources... this partnership is really quite perfect! Please take a look at the ASL Teaching Resources website below!

HELIX is now BRIDGING KNOWLEDGE TO KNOW HOW: Empowering Pennsylvania Educators and Partners. The Conference has moved to the Summer, but it is still being hosted at State College. Click the link (click the photo) to find out more!