The Training

Who is eligible to take advantage of this AV Training?

Any interested individual or group.

Professionals benefiting from this are early intervention service providers, speech-language pathologists, audiologists, teachers of the deaf, aural (re)habilitationists, early childhood specialists, university instructors, clinical directors/coordinators, coordinators or consultants for hearing impaired programs as well as special education directors.

This includes parent groups, public school systems, private clinical practices, cochlear implant centers, universities, speech and hearing centers, hospitals, and schools for deaf children.

How long is this AV training?

Ellen Rhoades can give a dynamic one-day presentation that will focus on the AV Approach, including its theoretical antecedents, research premises, philosophical foundation, current research findings, and resultant lifestyle. By the very nature of her own deafness, she is startling testimony to what can be accomplished for deaf children.

However, to provide more in-depth understanding of what is involved in the provision of an intensive AV intervention program, several days of AV immersion are needed that include in-depth discussions on management of programmatic components as well as AV objectives, activities, strategies, techniques.

A Developmental AVTSM workshop just for young children, i.e., infants and preschoolers, can be effectively presented over a period of three days. But to be trained for a wider age range of children, a five-day workshop is suggested. Of course, the longer the training period, the more effective will be its outcome.

Sometime during the last one or two days of each workshop, the trainer typically demonstrates a variety of AV strategies and techniques with children in your area. Typically, parents are only too eager to permit their children to participate for this purpose. However, these live therapy sessions are suggested for workshops with no more than 8 participating professionals in attendance, either in an observation area or an adjoining room.

Is there any follow-up to this AV Training?

Yes! For those who participate in at least three training days, one person is designated to establish an ongoing mentoring relationship with Ellen Rhoades. Communication will be ongoing via e-mails, faxes, phone calls and videotape. The one being mentored can continually send her questions and concerns to Ellen who responds with concrete suggestions. This period of mentoring may take as long as one or several years. This mentoring service is part of Ellen’s AV Training.

What can I learn from this AV Training?

You can learn how to implement an intensive AV intervention program that is based on these sound principles:

	a Developmental AVTSM cognitively-oriented and auditory comprehension-based "road map" with printed guidelines
	a systematically positive multi-disciplinary collaborative labor-intensive team approach
	objective-oriented strategies and techniques that are family-focused yet child-driven
	a standardized assessment protocol based on accountability
	a research-based fast-track service delivery system based on four levels of competencies in five communication skills
	observe how the trainer implements effective AV strategies and techniques in live therapy sessions with local children

If a group of professionals take advantage of your workshop, how can parents participate?

When professionals realize how much parents are an integral part of this Auditory Verbal approach, they open up the training week to include one evening presentation. This evening meeting, with advance notice, will bring in parents who want to meet a hearing and speaking deaf person. Impressed, these parents will want their own children to hear and speak and this means that more profoundly deaf children will be given cochlear implants. A meeting such as this is a good way to launch a program’s new AV intervention services.

I’m a parent of a deaf child and I would like the professionals in my child’s school to take advantage of this AV Training. How can I make this happen?

Contact your school’s Hearing Impaired Coordinator or Special Education Director. Request that the school’s professional staff learn about the AV Approach and how to implement it for children with hearing loss. Present the cost effectiveness and cost benefit of the AV Approach for the school in addition to the human potential optimization for the children and their families.

Give this person information about Developmental AVTSM. Then, send Ellen Rhoades the name, title, e-mail and fax numbers of your school's Hearing Impaired Coordinator or Special Education Director. Ellen Rhoades will contact them.