Welcome to the all about audiology podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Lilach Saperstein. I’m an educational audiologist and the reason I make these podcasts is for you. When parents are informed, educated and empowered, they are the best advocates for their kid and if you are listening to this, I’m really glad you’re here. And if you know someone who is going through this journey who has a new diagnosis or a child with a hearing loss or is in any way connected to today’s topic, please send them this podcast.

Today’s topic is about sign language and deaf education, language deprivation and brain development. These are big and important topics. If the ultimate goal is to provide auditory access for the development of language in order to access learning and communication, then if speech is not the route towards that, we need to examine why we are leaving out a major modality which is sign language. I know that this can be a bit of a difficult topic and for some people this might hit a nerve but I really hope that you’ll listen. I invite you to join in our no judgment zone, you can join the Facebook group where we can continue the conversation and I’d love to hear your input on our conversation.

I’m about to play an interview for you that I had with a wonderful speech language pathologist named Kimberly Sanzo. Kimberly is a speech language pathologist at a residential school for the deaf. She received her masters from Gallaudet University and she is fluent in ASL. The majority of her current work is with deaf children who experienced language deprivation. We are going to talk about that a lot. She spends her free time raising awareness about the detrimental effects of language deprivation on brain development. Kimberly and I had a really honest and passionate conversation. We both have a lot in agreement about the information that needs to get to parents and to cochlear implant users. I’m Dr. Lilach Saperstein and this is the All About Audiology podcast.

Dr. Lilach Saperstein: “Welcome Kimberly to the All About Audiology podcast.”

Kimberly Sanzo: “Thank you. Thank you for having me.”

LS: “I’m really glad to have you here because you are the expert in language deprivation for children who are deaf or hard of hearing and I think you are going to be able to share so many ideas and resources with us. And most importantly advice for parents, so to start can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey?”

KS: “Sure. So I went to graduate school at Gallaudet University and at the time that I was there I wasn’t as big a proponent of ASL as I am now. I still believed that some kids didn’t need it and others did. It wasn’t until I started working at the school for the deaf in Connecticut where I saw first hand what happens when children are not given early access to sign language that I really kind of realized and revised my beliefs that every deaf child needs access to sign language, a fully fledged language not a sign system. That was kind of where I started my whole social media campaign and creating Instagram and Facebook accounts to raise this awareness because a lot of people don’t realize how important this is.”

LS: “Okay so I’m going to ask you to tell us and define some of the things you just said.”

KS: “Sure.”

LS: “Number one, tell our listeners if they don’t know,