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JOHNSON CITY – East Tennessee State University and Waiting to Hear, a local non-profit that supports children who are deaf, are joining forces to provide local children with an opportunity to attend an auditory verbal camp hosted by ETSU to help them further develop their listening, language and literacy skills.
“We’re grateful to partner with the Waiting to Hear Foundation to provide a transformative summer program for these children later this month,” said Dr. Lynn Williams, interim dean of the College of Clinical and Rehabilitative Health Sciences. “Together we can make a meaningful difference in these children’s lives, and we’re honored to work with such a wonderful organization.”
Marie Johnson, the camp’s lead supervisor and a certified listening and spoken language specialist, said the camp is a terrific opportunity to bring the community together while providing graduate students with a valuable chance to see what their profession can do in practice.
“Promoting community is extremely important from all angles,” said Johnson. “For us as professionals, we’re expanding our services, and for our graduate students, they can see the importance of community engagement in our profession.”
Students getting hands-on learning opportunities is at the core of ETSU’s approach to education, and the university works to ensure everyone feels a deep sense of belonging.
“And it helps with building a community between the families,” Johnson said of the camp. “They’re getting to meet other families who have traveled a road similar to them.”
It’s also a great opportunity for the children, who will be able to practice speech- language and communication skills with peers who also have hearing loss.
“Group activities like this really promote the generalization of speech- language and communication skills that perhaps some of these kids are working on in individual therapy,” Johnson said.
The four-day camp, which runs June 26-29, will be held at the Nave Center in Elizabethton, 1000 Jason Witten Way. There are limited openings still available. For more information, contact Marie Johnson at johnsonma@etsu.edu or by calling the Nave Center at (423) 439-4355 by June 20.