Announcer: [00:00:00] Welcome to episode 60 of empowEAR Audiology with Dr. Carrie Spangler.

Carrie: [00:00:14] Welcome to the empowEAR Audiology Podcast, a production of the 3C Digital Media Network. I am your host, Dr. Carrie Spangler, a passionate, deaf and hard of hearing audiologist. Each episode will bring an empowering message surrounding audiology and beyond. Thank you for spending time with me today, and let's get started with today's episode. Welcome everyone. It is Educational Audiology Awareness Week and this is going to be from October 16th through the 20th and it's 2023. And it is an honor to be able to coordinate with the Educational Audiology Association leadership to spread awareness. The goal of the Educational Audiology Awareness Week is to foster public awareness and knowledge of educational audiology services, including the benefits that these essential services provide children, their caregivers and other professionals. And the mission is to educate our stakeholders by enhancing interprofessional perception of educational audiology and strengthening community knowledge through promotion, outreach and advocacy efforts. And today on the EmpowEAR Audiology Podcast, I have leadership from the Educational Audiology Association. Joining me today, I have Dr. Tori Ashton, who is the president elect of EAA, and Dr. Kathi Riley, who is the vice president of Advocacy. And I'm just going to share a little bit about both of them, and I'm going to welcome them onto the podcast.

Carrie: [00:01:57] So we have Tori, who will be starting her ninth year as an educational audiologist with a cooperative educational service agency number 4 in Wisconsin. She provides services to 12 school districts within a 60 mile radius. Tori started as one of the Wisconsin state reps for EAA and then became the VP of Membership and Public Relations for three years, and she is currently the president elect for EAA. And I also have Kathi with me, who was an educational audiologist for 34 years in Delaware, where she provided services to students at the Delaware School for the Deaf and provided outreach and consult services across this tiny state through Delaware statewide program for the deaf, hard of hearing, and deaf blind. She now teaches educational audiology and oil rehab at the university level. Kathi has been an EAA state rep for Delaware for many years and she joined the advocacy committee a number of years ago and accepted the role as VP for Advocacy two years ago. So Kathi and Tori, welcome to the podcast and I'm so excited to collaborate for Audiology Educational Audiology Awareness Week.

Tori: [00:03:19] Hello.

Kathi: [00:03:21] Thank you.

Carrie: [00:03:22] Thanks for being here. What an exciting week as we kick off this week and just to kind of get the conversation started, I thought I would ask Tori or I mean, Kathi, how did the idea of Educational Audiology Awareness Week come about?

Kathi: [00:03:42] Well, it actually happened very organically. We had a member who on our community page, our listserv posted a request for ideas and templates for creating a PowerPoint. She was asked to do a professional development activity for her school district and she was looking for some ideas. That then led to several responses and one member kind of sparked this idea that we could create a national EAA day or a week to promote our profession. So the idea was approved by the board, and then a subcommittee was set up for this project and it was placed under the advocacy umbrella.

Carrie: [00:04:29] All right. And that's how you've been really involved in this. And Tori for listeners who might not know what the Educational Audiology Association is, can you share a little bit about this great group?

Tori: [00:04:43] Yeah. So we are an international organization that consists of audiology or audiologists as well as related hearing professionals. So that could be speech language pathologists, our teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing. We provide a full spectrum of hearing services to children, primarily those in educational settings.

Carrie: [00:05:05] Okay. And so when we have an educational audiology week and we're really focusing on that, how is that different than maybe a pediatric audiologist or a clinical audiologist? I feel like there's so many different roles that audiologists can play, but what is kind of that difference with education?

Tori: [00:05:26] Sure. So the difference mainly is or I feel is the location that we work in. So for educational, obviously we're primarily in the schools. Um. You know, we do a lot of similar things to clinical or pediatric, but there's also things that we do that aren't done at the clinic. So we might assess how a student is hearing in a classroom, um, provide accommodations and modifications for them so that they're successful in those classroom settings. Um, we also help schools with hearing screenings and promoting good listening environments with classrooms. Um, and then just making sure our students have the full access to their education. Where clinical is more in the clinic testing, hearing, fitting the hearing aids. There is um, collaboration between the two, but also a lot of cross of what we do. Kathi, i f you have anything you want to add to that?

Kathi: [00:06:29] Sure. You know, I think one of the issues is that programs, most of them do not have strong educator national background provided in terms of educational audiology. So the learning curve is very steep from being a clinical audiologist to being an educational audiologist. Educational audiology requires you not only to know all of your audiology, but also to understand the entire education system and how it works. We all know both regular and special ed law. We focus on classroom acoustics and how the environment impacts access to instruction. We coach teachers on effective teaching strategies. We manage and fit their hearing assistive technologies across the school day, which might look different in different environments. We take data on the effectiveness of those and we make recommendations for changes to their IEP or 504. We sit in on those meetings and we are an advocate for the student.

Carrie: [00:07:41] And does a student legally need to have an educational audiologist on their team, or is this just something that might be nice to add?

Tori: [00:07:56] I mean, legally it is in IDEA that they have access to educational audiologists. Um, each state does have different criteria that to for a child to receive an IEP or to qualify for a 504, you do have to go through the steps and show the evidence that they do need those added supports. Um, but legally, yes, they can all have access to it if they qualify for it.

Kathi: [00:08:24] Right. Right. That makes.

Carrie: [00:08:26] Sense. Go ahead, Kathi.

Kathi: [00:08:27] We are also working on strengthening the regulations around children who have 504s and their access to educational audiology. Educational audiology is by far the least utilized service that appears in IDEA. And there's a misconception that it is only a medically based service rather than an educational service. So we are working hard as an organization to change that perception and part of our EAA awareness week is to get the word out about who we are and what we do.

Carrie: [00:09:05] But that makes a lot of sense.  In addition to the advocacy that we do as educational audiologist for students who are deaf and hard of hearing, who have maybe auditory processing, different auditory needs within the classroom, educational audiologist are also concerned about ALL kids who are learning in the classroom. And I know through the advocacy work that EAA has done, you have been working on a couple of different projects that really promote access for any child that is being educated. Do you want to share a little bit about some of those other projects that EAA is working on?

Kathi: [00:09:53] Sure, um, part of our role in the advocacy committee is to create resource documents that provide best practice or best guidance, best practice guidance for educational audiologists in a wide variety of situations and responsibilities that we encounter. And we hope that those members then can use those documents to advocate for specific practices and share that with administrators, teachers, school professionals. So one of the things we've been working a lot on lately is hearing screening importance, and ASHA is actually rewriting their guidelines for the practice portal. So we've been involved in that. And oversight of the hearing screening program is one of the responsibilities that is written into IDEA for audiology. So we've been working a lot on that arena, especially on a document that explains the legal rights of hearing screening for children with significant disabilities who are often overlooked or marked as could not test. We also have another subcommittee that's working on classroom acoustics. So we have a committee that has not only audiologists but researchers and an architect and an acoustical engineer. And we are working hard to update classroom acoustic regulations across the US. So part of that work we created a one page document that explains the components of acoustics and how it decreases auditory access for deaf and hard of hearing children, as well as other children with special learning needs, such as kids with auditory processing disorders, children who are English language learners, children who have attention issues, and a whole host of other kids. So we're really proud of that and we hope that educational audiologists will share that with their school teams.

Carrie: [00:12:00] That mean educational audiologists really wear quite a few hats when you think about it in the school and educational setting from the advocacy piece to actually working directly with students and teachers and teams and parents and everyone that is involved. So it's exciting to be in the schools and be an educational audiologist and this week is so amazing because we get to really promote everything that we are doing. And one of the things that I thought we could talk about next would be what are some of these activities that we have planned for Educational Audiology Week? Does somebody want to just share some of the excitement that's going to be happening this week?

Tori: [00:12:52] Yeah, I can touch on. So for like social media, we are encouraging, you know, all educational audiologists to share on their social media throughout the week. Um, you know, whether it's sharing those advocacy documents that we have, um, different graphics that might be posted up by EAA if they reshare them and just kind of getting the word out that way. Along with that, We do have two primary hashtags that people can use when they're making their posts. We have hashtags for #EdAuDweek and then at #EdAuDadvocacy.

Kathi: [00:13:31] Right? The other things that we're working on is a Zoom background that educational audiologist will be able to download. And we actually have come up with three of them. One is for Educational Audiology Week, and then the other two are simply Educational Audiology Association and those are going to be approved by the board hopefully next week and then they'll be posted on our. You'll be able to, to find them by using the QR code that we have created. So the educational audiology QR code right now that page is blank, but we are working on getting everything uploaded into that. Unfortunately, Facebook has really restricted who can have a ribbon. So you know that frame for Facebook, you have to be an approved and recognized organization. So that won't be able to happen this year, but we hope to have it in the upcoming years because we do expect this to be an annual event in the third week of October.

Carrie: [00:14:48] Okay. So that was another question. Is this going to be an annual event? And Kathi, you just said that it will be. So that is that is exciting, too. For the activities. Do you guys have different topics that you're going to kind of be sharing out on social media every day that really highlight educational audiologist or educational audiology week or that a surprise for all of us to see this week?

Kathi: [00:15:17] We actually are targeting different groups every day. So our infographics will be hopefully valuable to a variety of stakeholders. So school administrators, parents, clinical audiologists. I actually forget what the other two are. But we have a different we have a different focus for every single day. And we have different team members from this subcommittee who are putting together the resources for that.

Carrie: [00:15:50] Well, what a great way to share out and for educational audiologists to have access to important resources to share with their school teams and families and whoever they might might might need to raise that awareness about for educational audiology during that week. Is there anything else that you guys can think of that you want to share as we kick off Educational Audiology Awareness Week?

Tori: [00:16:18] I think we're all just very excited about it. This is something new and a great way for us to obviously bring what educational audiology is more out there to everyone, you know, whether it's our schools, our families, just explaining what we do and then how we can support schools and our students.

Carrie: [00:16:41] And how would people make sure that they're getting that information if they maybe if they're not a member of EAA, how can they find membership information and how can they make sure they stay in the loo this week as we kick off Educational Audiology Awareness Week?

Tori: [00:17:01] And they can always go to our website which edaud.org. And there's all kinds of information not only about this week and what will be taking place and different links to our um, you know, like our zoom backgrounds like Kathi mentioned and those different. Outreach advocacy documents, but also about our membership and who we are and just more information about us as an organization.

Kathi: [00:17:31] And don't forget social media. So we have a team that works on social media. And so there will be posts on all of our social media sites. So that's a great way to take a quick look at what's there and download it and share it with colleagues.

Carrie: [00:17:51] Yeah, share it, put the hashtag out there for everyone and it would be a great way to promote. So Tori and Kathi, thank you for joining today for the kickoff of the Educational Audiology Awareness Week. And we're just hoping that all of our members and hopefully new members really join us and promoting everything that we have to offer as educational audiologist in the schools. So thank you.

Tori: [00:18:20] Thank you.

Kathi: [00:18:21] Thank you.

Announcer: [00:18:22] Thank you for listening. This has been a production of the 3C Digital Media Network.