2016 Cueing Leadership Award Recipients

The following awardees were selected for their leadership in activities that impact the use and awareness of Cued Speech.

Karen Doenges learned Cued Speech in the summer of 1986. After a year as a Speech-Language Pathologist in education of the deaf in Chicago, she was preparing for a similar position in the Rochester, Minnesota, School District’s Deaf/Hard of Hearing Program. As she would be serving students who communicated in simultaneous spoken/cued English, she attended a two-day Cued Speech workshop at the AGBell Montessori School near Chicago. The advantages of using Cued Speech made sense to her immediately, although she remembers feeling daunted by the task of cueing each and every syllable! After using it with preschool and elementary age students, the advantages of using Cued Speech became more than theoretical when she saw the

impressive test results of her students’ English language and reading levels.

Later, Karen worked closely with Kitri Kyllo to help implement a program for preschool-aged deaf/hard of hearing learners in Intermediate School District 917 in Burnsville, Minnesota. Besides working directly with students, Karen has been a leader in helping professionals and parents understand the language acquisition process and the powerful role that simultaneous spoken/cued English plays for young learners with hearing loss. She also encourages families to provide American Sign Language experiences to their children in order to equip them to be dual language learners.

She has given guest lectures at universities on Cued Speech/Cued Language, informing students in the teacher training program about the existence of Cued Speech and the benefits of cued language on children’s language and literacy skills. She has been a guest lecturer for parents with Minnesota Hands and Voices, and at statewide conferences for Teachers of Deaf/Hard of Hearing and for the Minnesota Speech-Language-Hearing Association, describing the role of cued language in her work with children who have hearing loss.

Penny and Eddie Hakim have been cueing since 1987. They have four children, the oldest of whom is profoundly deaf and uses Cued Speech with a cochlear implant. Eddie and Penny are also grandparents of Abraham and Nitzan’s young son.

Penny has been an NCSA Board member for nine years; she is currently Vice President and a Certified Cued Speech Instructor. She serves on the Louisiana Hands and Voices Board, is a Parent Guide by Your Side and

serves on the Governor's Infant Hearing Advisory Council in Louisiana. Penny loves helping families understand the benefits of Cued Speech and attends IEP meetings as an advocate in support of parents of children who are Deaf/HOH. Penny attends and presents at professional conferences regularly.

Eddie and Penny are the principals of the baby products company, Nuby, Inc. Nuby has adopted NCSA’s Deaf Children's Literacy Project as part of its Corporate Responsibility program. Nuby products carry the DCLP logo and the company provides an annual designated grant for cue camps. Penny has presented to their international sales team on numerous occasions about the NCSA program and the DCLP, which has received donations from Nuby’s international partners.

Suhad Keblawi has been cueing for more than 30 years with her deaf son. In the spring of 1984 her late husband, Dr. Feisal Keblawi, met Dr. Cornett and became excited about beginning Cued Speech with their 4 year old son. Dr. Cornett invited them to his home on a Saturday so Suhad could learn about cueing. He showed them numerous videos; one showed a mother cueing as she asked her young son if he wanted Mozzarella and Parmesan on his pasta. Right then and there Suhad decided: “Yes! That’s it. I want to be able to do that with Nabeel.” Nabeel loved cheeses and had a very

discriminating taste for them, and Suhad knew that with Cued Speech she could tell him all the names of cheeses he liked instead of just signing yellow or white cheese. Later, Nabeel became an avid reader and excelled in his schooling. A favorite memory is Nabeel as young teen sitting with his dad and discussing the subject of quantum physics after reading the book Timeline. Feisal assisted Dr. Cornett in the development of Arabic Cued Speech; Suhad later completed it and updated the chart, created follow up materials and mentored other families in its use. Suhad has become a valued professional in multiple roles locally and at the state and national levels. For more than 20 years, she has been the Lead Cued Language Transliterator for the Fairfax County Public Schools. She is a NCSA-Certified Instructor (InsCert) and a Trainer with Language Matters, Inc. She is a presenter at a variety of conferences around the United States and taught Cued American English classes at Northern VA Community College and currently teaches at other community venues. Suhad is the Virginia state grant coordinator for securing funds for ongoing transliterator training. She is an NCSA Board Member and a 50th Anniversary committee member. Suhad is a leader and model who inspires, comforts, and brings the Cued Speech community together.

Angela Kuhn, principal for PreK-8 at the Illinois School for the Deaf, became involved with Cued Speech through the pursuit of two of her teachers seeking a more effective approach for teaching their deaf and hard of hearing students how to read and write in English fluently. The two attended a Cued Speech workshop and were confident that Cued Speech had a place in ISD’s bilingual program. Angela, trusting the teachers’ judgment, reluctantly agreed to their pilot program. After Angela attended a workshop also, she was convinced. For the past six years, they have worked together to make Cued Speech an integral part of the ASL/English bilingual program.

The typically low academic achievement levels of deaf students have frustrated Angela. She believes that Cued Speech is a valuable, but much underutilized, resource for helping deaf children to develop more proficient literacy levels, enabling them to become productive, independent, and valuable members of our society and their own community. Angela has worked tirelessly and diplomatically to support the addition of Cued Speech to an ASL/English bilingual program at the residential school for the deaf, including setting up classes and maintaining data on the progress of the students.

Kitri Larson Kyllo is Assistant Director of the Deaf/Hard of Hearing Program in Intermediate School District 917, Minnesota. She has led a team of professionals who have demonstrated for over 20 years that a public school program can provide a bilingual-access program for learners who are deaf/hard of hearing to acquire skills in both American Sign Language and English/literacy via spoken/cued English. This team of professionals has contributed to the language, reading, writing, academic, listening, and spoken language skill development of numerous learners at all levels — preschool, elementary, and secondary. Kitri considers it a gratifying privilege to have been a part of contributing to the ‘gift’ of literacy for these

wonderful children, many of whom are now adults.

With this experience, Kitri wrote an article in the Fall 2003 Odyssey magazine and the chapter, “A Bilingual (ASL and Cued American English) Program for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students: Theory to Practice” in the textbook, Cued Speech and Cued Language for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children, edited by LaSasso, Crain, and Leybaert, March, 2010, Plural Publishing. The ISD 917 D/HH Program was also featured in a 2007 PBS Reading Rockets episode on literacy.

In conjunction with Karen Doenges, Speech/Language Pathologist, and other professionals in the program, countless presentations on the profound benefits of using Cued Speech have been delivered at the local, state and national level to educational professionals, speech/language pathologists, deaf/hard of hearing teacher training programs, interpreter training programs, parent groups and at cue camps.

Sarina Roffé began cueing in 1979 after attending a Cued Speech Learning vacation at Gallaudet. Several parents of deaf children in Maryland were cueing and she became convinced that cueing was the answer for her family. Their deaf son Simon had poor language despite being diagnosed and aided at age 8 months. His language development just exploded and soon he was talking in sentences. Sarina honors Cued Speech for giving parents the freedom to say whatever they want when communicating with their deaf child and the comfort of knowing they are understood. Cueing gave her the power to be a parent, instead of the mother of a deaf child. Sarina has been

active in the Cued Speech community both professionally and as a volunteer. She considers her most important contributions in supporting Cued Speech to be inspiring other parents to use Cued Speech, leading the NCSA as a past President and now as Executive Director so that it is a nationally recognized organization with equal footing among other deaf-related organizations, writing and presenting about Cued Speech to new audiences, and assuring that Cued Speech services are included in the federal IDEA.

Tom Shull has always loved analyzing language, even as a child. Learning to cue gave him an outlet to explore English in a fascinating new way. He learned about Cued Speech from a lifelong friend whom he met in college, Suzie McGlone, and her family, all of whom cued for sister Amy. Dr. Cornett even referred to the McGlone's as the “Cueingest Family on Earth.” Tom reports that Suzie has inspired many people to cue and makes learning to cue a joy. As Tom was in training to become a transliterator, Earl Fleetwood and Melanie Metzger imparted the importance of equal access for people who are deaf and hard-of-hearing and how Cued Speech makes that possible.

As a transliterator, Tom worked to develop his transliterator skills and knowledge and tried every day to provide equal access to all the students for whom he transliterated. He doesn’t take any credit for their successes, but hopes to have provided consistent, accurate service and never to have been an obstacle in their communication or interactions with others. All of those transliteration situations were part of his job, but they were also part of the lives of deaf people. He feels very fortunate to have been able to be part of them. Transliterating, training transliterators and teaching will always be a passion for Tom. He also works now as a speech-language pathologist in Boston. He is known as a dynamic teacher on both sides of the Atlantic, having worked with both the European and British cueing communities. For him, teaching is important because the impact of what we do spreads exponentially through the parents and service providers we work with and benefits deaf children and families all over the country. In the same

way, Tom in proud of his part in creating and continuing the Daily Cues website and the recent development and teaching of Visual Amharic with the people of Ethiopia.