High School Engineering CTE Students Help Deaf Student

Your Mini Grant Donations Change Lives!

When you donate to AEF’s Teacher Mini Grant program, you never know just how many lives will be impacted. Such is the case with a mini grant that led high school engineering students to help an elementary deaf student.

At a recent staff meeting, Island High School Special Education teacher Viki Egyed shared that the new Career Technology Education (CTE) teacher at Island HS, Jeannie Llewellyn, had a 3D printer and that the students in her Engineering and Design class were eager to take on special projects to challenge their skills. Mary Grace Basco, a Teacher for Deaf/Hard of Hearing, was present at that meeting and she was facing a challenge of her own.

One of her youngest students has cochlear implants (small, complex electronic devices that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing). This very active kindergartener was unaware when the transmitter part of her implants slipped from the proper place on her head, which caused her to lose auditory input. Ms. Basco’s goal was to teach this student how to place her transmitter back on her head whenever it fell off. Practicing by placing a toy transmitter device on a doll or teddy bear would be the first step in the student learning to correctly reposition the device on her own head.

Ms. Egyed’s announcement at the meeting started a domino of connections. Ms. Egyed introduced Ms. Basco to Ms. Llewellyn, the CTE Engineering & Design teacher at Island HS. Ms. Llewellyn invited Ms. Basco to visit her classroom to explain how cochlear implants work and to describe what she needed. In a few weeks, Island engineering students, under the guidance of Ms. Llewellyn, fabricated toy-like cochlear implants for Ms. Basco’s student. Soon after, the young student was successfully placing the toy transmitter onto a teddy bear’s head. Ms. Basco said, “From this play therapy, I anticipate that the student will soon be transferring the skill to properly reposition her own transmitter."

An AEF Mini Grant for Ms. Llewellyn helped fund the cost of materials that enabled her students to develop their engineering and designing skills that helped this young student. Island students expect to produce more 3D projects that may be requested by Alameda educators. The collaboration between the high school students sharing their technical skills to support a young, deaf student is heartwarming.

Because of you, this type of collaboration was able to happen. When you donate to AEF Teacher Mini Grants, you never know just how many lives you will impact.

Note: CTE integrates strong academic standards into pathway courses while also providing hands-on learning designed to prepare students with 21st century job skills. The CTE program at AUSD is under the direction of Felicia Vargas.

Read the related article in the Alameda Sun here.