The 2019 FEDHH (Florida Educators for Students who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing) Conference will be held on November 15-16, 2019 at The Shores Resort and Spa in Daytona Beach Shores.
The conference will focus on professional development and collaboration of individuals who work with students who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. Concurrent sessions and exhibits will allow participants to personalize their learning of principles, strategies, and instructional tools that will enable them to provide effective services to their students. The conference is also a great place for participants to network and collaborate with other professionals in the field and to provide support for our professional community.
The Florida Department of Education/Bureau of Exceptional Education and Student Services (BEESS) has graciously allowed one (1) paid registration per county. In order to obtain your county code for redemption, please contact your district DHH Coordinator.
This year we joyfully welcome two keynote speakers!
Friday, November 15
Dr. Laurene E. Simms is Professor of the Department of Education at Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C. After graduating from the Indiana School for the Deaf, Indianapolis, Indiana, she received a B.S. Degree in Elementary Education from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and a M.Ed. in Deaf Education from Western Maryland College, Westminster, Maryland. She received a Ph.D. Degree in Language, Reading, and Culture from the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona. As an ASL and English Bilingual Education consultant and a former elementary teacher, Laurene has hands-on experience in the implementation of a bilingual and multicultural educational environment for diverse Deaf and Hard of Hearing children and is an acknowledged expert on the topic of using ASL and English as the languages of instruction.
Friday Keynote Presentation:
A Journey of Transformational Teaching
Across the country, recent incidents have highlighted the need to foster a greater consensus on the work to be done in education. This presentation will address transformational learning opportunities for educators to begin to re-examine their expectations and teaching paradigms. Opportunities of this kind do not start with learners in the classroom, but with individual educators reflecting how their upbringing, beliefs, and biases impact ways of knowing and teaching. With that in mind, a caring relationship with each child must precede teaching. Today is a critical time for educators to reflect on how they can provide a space to expand upon the true meaning of empathy, hope, and agency through teaching.
Saturday, November 16
Dr. 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 fourteen 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 creation.
Saturday Keynote Presentation:
Purposeful Texts & Purposeful Planning: Raising the Bar for Reading Instruction
Preparing deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students to be college and career ready has led to a shift in how reading is taught in schools. Students are now expected to engage in evidence-based thinking and build knowledge using mostly non-fiction works. To keep pace with these demands, teachers of the DHH must incorporate instructional practices that require their DHH students to process words and text at a high level. In a workshop format, we will review and rehearse teaching practices in reading subskills (vocabulary, decoding, phonology, fluency) as well as reading comprehension that have research support and incorporate high levels of processing. Also, we will investigate a framework for vetting a reading instructional practice that does not have research support. Reading practices that benefit DHH students of all ages and who use spoken or signed language will be reviewed.
Please note the agenda may be subject to change.
The Shores Resort and Spa has graciously discounted the room rates for our event. Book a room under the 'Florida Educators for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Conference' for $129.00 per night if booked before October 24, 2019. Parking fee and resort fee is waived when hotel is booked under this event.
Note: When you book your hotel room with the above link a notification will pop up indicating an additional $20 resort fee will be added. The $129 nightly rate includes this $20 resort fee.
For additional information, please visit https://www.fedhh.org/fedhh-conference
Florida Educators for Students who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing