When Trey Diedrich starts the school year, he gives his teachers a letter introducing himself.
It talks about his interests: how he loves playing Minecraft and GaGa Ball, a version of dodgeball. But the third sentence in the letter tells his teachers he’s been deaf since he was a baby.
He then walks them through how to best teach to his learning style — visual. Without the ability to hear, his need to observe is amplified.
“If your back is turned, or you’re far away, I will miss what you say,” he tells his teachers.
Though he has cochlear implants, he struggles to localize sound. Background noise, like music, hallway sounds, multiple voices at once and more often compete with whoever is speaking, he writes.
For the 13-year-old boy from Mitchell, the letter is sometimes the only way his teachers know how to help him learn, but it’s often forgotten less than halfway through the year.
South Dakota offers teachers training on how to teach deaf and hard of hearing children only if it’s requested, which means most teachers in the state may not receive that training unless a district has a child with hearing loss.
That leaves students to rely on outreach consultants from the state’s School for the Deaf. Today, there are 11 consultants serving nearly 600 kids.
An Argus Leader investigation found state leaders have regularly ignored the needs of children like Trey for decades, and that leaves these consultants with a heavy workload.
State’s decisions affected deaf
education workforce
When Augustana University’s deaf education degree program stopped enrolling students, its last class in 2016 had a total of two students, enrollment records show.
But the program started seeing a decline well before then, just as state officials decided to change the School for the Deaf from a residential campus to solely offer outreach service support for families and local school districts by 2010.
School officials argued the program’s end mostly had to deal with changes in national education trends for deaf and hard of hearing students as well as a lack of federal special education funding in the state.
But the state’s decisions on how to respond to those trends by opting to close the residential program had a significant workforce impact, said Laurie Daily, Augustana’s education department chair who specializes in special education.
The state only has about 20 certified interpreters and six certified deaf educators working in South Dakota schools.
That’s left students like Trey experiencing shortfalls in his support for an education, while others forced into the mainstream system are often left weighing the choice to leave the state altogether.
Meanwhile, the 11 consultants who remain at the School for the Deaf take on an ever-increasing caseload. When Augustana’s program ended, outreach consultants were serving more than 400 students.
That enrollment is expected to hit 650 by 2021, meaning each consultant serves anywhere from 50 to 60 students statewide, according to the school’s latest projections.
That doesn’t include the number of students served by the school’s audiology program.
‘I feel like I’m doing that
drive-by teaching’
Consultants often struggle to find a balance between going home to their own families and work that never ends, the consultants said.
It’s a workload consultants compared to the plot of the book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” — the demands are never-ending, and consultants must learn to prioritize.
The biggest challenge? Time.
“I don’t know that I can always give everyone everything they need,” said consultant Kerry Ruth, who serves the West River area. “I feel like I have 20 tabs open in my head where I’m like, ‘OK, this is next, but I have to do this.’”
The amount of time spent with each student is based on the amount of support each student needs because each child’s level of hearing loss is different, consultants said.
But some consultants regularly spend three hours in a car to only to visit with a district for about an hour or less at the start of the school year to train teachers on how to handle a deaf or hard of hearing student in class, they said.
“I feel like I’m doing that drive-by teaching,” said consultant Eileen Anderson, who serves the Aberdeen area.
Doing the best they can with what they have
Consultants won’t directly say whether they see students fall through the cracks or whether they feel supported by the state as they should be.
“I really feel like there are times where people don’t know what we do,” Ruth said. “They don’t understand what our role is, whether that is the legislature and sometimes the schools. … I don’t know that I feel a lack of support, as much as I feel a lack of understanding.”
Ruth and her colleagues are more focused on collaborative consultation between different support agencies, school districts and families to make sure that children know they’re supported, consultants said. But even then, sometimes the recommendations they make to districts are only seen as just that, they said.
They’re doing the best they can with what they have, hosting workshops around the state, using online and in-person resources and holding regular activities, like an annual deaf awareness fall carnival in partnership with Augustana and American Sign Language courses.
Yet, it would take an act of legislation to approve hiring more full-time employees to help with the caseload, School for the Deaf Superintendent Marje Kaiser said. The school is working to hire another consultant by March 2020.
Still, students can go weeks without a visit or interaction from the School for the Deaf, even after contacting consultants numerous times about resources and support, parents said.
Some consultants have even changed the way they approach support during South Dakota’s long and frigid winters, like connecting with parents and children through Facebook or Skype or any kind of visual video technology, especially during months when they may only be able to travel four days at a time.
Interpreter qualifications are strict for a reason
Still, the shortage of certified interpreters remains, and strict laws make finding qualified individuals difficult, said Rick Norris, the executive director of InterpreCorps, LLC., one of less than a handful of interpreting companies in the state.
South Dakota was one of the first states to pass laws to enforce interpreter certification. If interpreters don’t have the certification, license and registration through the South Dakota Department of Human Services to receive money for a service, it’s a class 2 misdemeanor, the law states.
And the laws are strict for good reason, Norris said. Norris has interpreted for at least 30 years, including during public testimony at legislative and South Dakota Board of Regents’ meetings.
No one wants someone who isn’t qualified to interpret what’s being said to someone else, especially in education, Norris said. But when there’s an effort to loosen those laws, like at the last legislative session, finding qualified workers has the potential to become even more challenging, like finding a needle in a haystack.
“You would almost think people would have the altruistic motive to do the right thing,” Norris said. “Oftentimes we’re just flabbergasted by some of the decisions made or some of the efforts out there that really just make things more difficult.”
Deaf, hard of hearing
students have to teach their teachers That leaves students like Trey often serving as their own best advocates in school districts with teachers who struggle to help deaf and hard of hearing children learn.
When Trey and his mother Shawna Diedrich tried to educate teachers again this year about why Trey needed pre-written notes, one of the teachers dismissed it, saying Trey had his own notebook, he can write down whatever he wants in it.
Shawna had to step in and help the teacher try to see through a deaf lens, she said. Trey can’t watch his interpreter, listen to the teacher and write at the same time.
If he stops to look down and take notes, that means he’ll miss whatever comes out of his teacher’s mouth, Shawna said.
“He’s missing the next two sentences you’re saying, so he’s done,” Shawna said. “He’s lost, so that scares me a little bit.”