I have always encouraged my children to be open to trying new things and challenging experiences.  I believe the reward is usually worth the hard work and effort. For years, I enjoyed watching my son Sean play hockey.  It looked like such a fun game. When a friend asked me if I wanted to join a “learn to play hockey” program I decided to give it a try.  At the time I didn’t even know how to skate. I quickly fell in love with the game and joined an adult women’s hockey team. Sean helped me to learn positioning and better understand strategy.  He helped me practice my skills on our backyard rink. Soon thereafter, my daughter Katie decided that she wanted to play as well. I ended up being an assistant coach for Katie’s youth hockey teams for five years.  I was with her on the ice at practices and on the bench at games. We spent countless hours in the car and nights in hotels, traveling to her competitions. Hockey was a big part of Sean’s and Katie’s childhood and was a common experience that tied us together.   

The joy and feeling of accomplishment I get from playing hockey is definitely worth the years of effort it took to get here.  Hockey is my happy place. And every now and then, my kids make my day and join me on the ice once again.

Marnie Weinmann

Teacher

Plank North Elementary

I'm sure Marnie would love to hear from you. Feel free to leave a comment.

By the time our third child came around, my husband and I thought we knew all there was to know about raising a baby. And we were right…until 15 months later, when we found out Leah was profoundly deaf. 

As a hearing parent of a deaf child, I came face-to-face with a world that was incredibly foreign to me. I was flooded with questions and decisions that I had not been previously equipped to answer. Do we learn sign language or attend a special school? Do we use hearing aids or the new cochlear implants? She was our child, the same family, the same last name, a sibling, a granddaughter, a niece… but this was something new and different. Every choice we made impacted her life: sign language, speech therapy, cochlear implants, exposure to the” hearing world” through sports, community and her education. Our family and extended family were very involved,  Leah not only “fit in”, but brought us together as we watched her learn sign language and eventually learned to speak so clearly that a stranger wouldn’t even know she was deaf. Each decision we made shaped her into the person she would become.

Reflecting back, I’m not sure I would do anything differently, but perhaps I would have done it better. I would have kept up on my sign language skills and practiced more as a family. As Leah talked more clearly, we all became lazy in our signing, assuming she understood everything. I would have exposed her to more Deaf culture instead of her having to learn that side of herself through her college friends. I wouldn’t have expected her to conform to our “hearing world” so much, but instead let her deafness be part of who she was and embrace it.  

Family means the world to me and, happily, we get to experience this again with two of our five grandchildren who are deaf. Watching the choices Leah and her husband Shaun make with Jonah and Lucy is refreshing. Will they do things differently than their own hearing parents? 

Really, the core of any language is love. And regardless of any choices we made, love transcended both worlds, hearing and deaf. 

Julie Provenzano

Speech Pathologist Teacher

Schlegel Road Elementary