2021.01.04
Pulling a burgundy suitcase, Jia-Jia, an Auditory Verbal Teacher at the South District Center of Children’s Hearing Foundation, boarded the Tze-Chiang Train from Kaohsiung to Chiayi at 8 o’clock in the morning. After arriving at Chiayi Railway Station, she went straight to the taxi at the door, preparing to start a whole day of service at the Chiayi workstation.
The establishment of the workstation is due to the lack of early treatment resources in Yunlin and Chiayi area, making it difficult for many families of children with hearing loss to have access to assistance. In fact, as long as the children with hearing loss can seize the prime time of the early intervention, they have better chances to speak fluently. In order help families that are live in remote area or in special conditions and encourage early treatment, CHF officially set up a workstation in July 2019. Teachers from the Southern District Center come to the workstation to provide auditory-verbal intervention services once a week. Let’s visit the Chiayi workstation and check out what Jia-Jia is going to share with us!
Q What is the service area of Chiayi Workstation?
The service area includesfamilies of children with hearing loss in Chiayi, Yunlin, and Changhua. Currently, another colleague and I visit the Chiayi workstations once every two weeks.
Q Is there any difference between serving at the Chiayi workstation and in the center of the Southern District?
In terms of the environment, teaching aids and human resources, the overall resources of the workstation are not as complete as those of the Southern District Center. It will affect the lesson preparation and teaching. For example, due to limited luggage capacity, the variety of teaching aids is limited. But we believe that the most urgent task of the workstation is for children to start aural (re)habilitation as early as possible. In this way, in the future when transportation or resources are no longer an issue, they won’t miss the opportunity to move ahead and receive better services.
Q Preparing lessons and teaching requires more thought than usual, and the commute must consume more physical strength. What motivates you to persist?
In the past, many parents of children with hearing loss have given up on treatment because they lived too far away from our service base. In contacting them, I could feel the potential of the child and the willingness of parents, only to give up due to limitation of their conditions. So when I meet families studying in the Southern District Center even if they live remotely, I feel very happy. Now we can step out and pass on the happiness of learning, this makes me full of motivation!
Q Did you have any impressive on the children while serving at the Chiayi workstation?
When a child was in class in the Southern District, he could barely concentrate for 20-30 minutes and then drained of energy. Later, he was transferred to the Chiayi workstation to attend classes. Once he entered the classroom and waved his hand to say hello. I thought it was just an accident or imitation, but when I said goodbye to him after the class, he immediately turned and waved at me. That means that his ability to identify the direction of sounds and understand vocabularies goes further! Thanks to the reduced distance of commute, children can maintain better state during classes, and that reflects on the results of learning. I believe our efforts are worthwhile!
(This article was published in Children’s Hearing Foundation Biannual Journal NO.38 Telepractice Ready Go!)
