An Illinois School For the Deaf principal was recently honored at the National Cued Speech Association’s 50th anniversary.
Angela Kuhn served as the Mistress of Ceremonies and was awarded the the 2016 Cued Speech Leadership Award earlier this month in Falls Church, Virginia.
“It was really nice to be honored for the work we do, trying to incorporate cued speech into our bilingual program at ISD. It means that the work we are doing is being recognized,” says Kuhn.
Kuhn has 15 years of experience at ISD, but only recently started incorporating Cued Speech at the school.
“Cued speech is a visual system for representing English. We started incorporating Englihs into our already established program. There are some programs, mostly on the esat coast, that have strictly cued speech programs. There is another program in Minnesota that uses cued speech and ASL. As far as residential schools for the deaf, I believe ISD is the only one using cued speech consistently,” says Kuhn.
Kuhn notes that some students have improved their written language and reading comprehension, thanks to Cued Speech.
She hopes the methods become more widely accepted in conjunction with ASL and sign language programs in the future.