The Center for Hearing and Speech
Houston, Texas
The Center for Hearing and Speech (CHS), a full-service
Houston nonprofit, provides four primary resources (education,
speech pathology services, audiology clinic and family services)
to children with mild to profound hearing losses. CHS celebrates
Better Hearing and Speech Month (BHSM) this May through outreach
activities to the Greater Houston community.
Each day in May we will post new facts related to CHS, hearing
impairments, cochlear implants and more on social media networks,
like Twitter and Facebook. We have provided ideas for individual
and school participation in BHSM through press releases and
e-newsletters. These ideas include taking part in the ASHA
drawing contest, studying hearing vocabulary and reading hearing
education books through a lesson plan provided by a teacher from
CHS' Melinda Webb School, taking tours of CHS, writing state
legislators and coloring CHS' one-of-a-kind BHSM logo.
In addition to creating more community awareness about BHSM,
special events and activities will take place right here at CHS.
A few CHS students will get the chance to do a special
presentation at a local elementary school, where a former CHS
student attends, to inform other children about hearing loss and
an audiologist will accompany them to explain about hearing aids
and cochlear implants. As many of the CHS students have been
getting ready for BHSM, their excitement has been captured in the
coloring pages that will cover our hallways and on a video
submitted for the ASHA BHSM video contest.
The most unique event will kick off BHSM at CHS, an
English-immersion class for first-year immigrants at a local
middle school will take a special field trip here to wrap up
their year-long study on communication obstacles. Much like CHS
students, these students have the common goal of working to
achieve success in mainstream society, despite communication
barriers.
To wrap up BHSM, CHS opens its doors to the Houston community
on May 29 by holding a free hearing screening for children
0-18.
Through filming the BHSM video and observing the children play
and learn, it continues to amaze me how these children who were
born deaf, are now communicating and learning as if they
didn't have a hearing impairment at all.
Submitted by:
Brooke Hluza