Happy June! Child’s Voice has started summer with our annual Golf outing on June 6. It was an amazing day of golf and giving. I was stationed on Hole #1 so I was able to meet and chat with all of the golfers who came through, and I loved hearing how everyone was affiliated with Child’s Voice. We had: current parents, alumni parents, alumni students, staff family and friends, friends and family of current and alumni students, vendor representatives, corporate friends, and friends of corporate friends! Along with our incredibly hard working and talented staff and volunteers, it was a really wonderful group of people on the course that day. All of us at Child’s Voice are grateful for the support and love we feel from our community.
The rest of the month of June consists of EI therapy sessions and toddler groups, Audiology clinic visits, and the school’s Extended School Year (ESY) program which starts June 20. We are excited to have some new staff and student faces this summer and anticipate a few more for the upcoming school year. ESY is a really fun time for the kids at Child’s Voice — we have on and off campus field trips and great activities planned. I am most excited to host the UIC Women’s Basketball team for an onsite field trip. It will be so fun for our students to see college athletes in their school. I am excited to see them learn some basketball skills too…we have some very talented little athletes! As we all know, hearing loss does not stop our kids from playing hard and having big dreams. So, it is important for them to have representation and role models in the professional world.
If you know a young child with hearing loss who is interested in basketball or any other sport, tell them about Tamika Catchings. She is a former WNBA star player and champion and an Olympic gold medal basketball player who has hearing loss. Her list of athletic and personal achievements is incredibly impressive. While I was looking up Tamika’s stats I went down the internet rabbit hole of professional athletes with hearing loss. There are way more than I knew about.
As I read I thought about all of the students at Child’s Voice and wondered what they will grow up to be. I cannot wait to see the incredible things our kids will do in their lives. So, if you have time to do a search of your own, have fun and remember to set your expectations high for children with hearing loss just like we do at Child’s Voice.
