Nurturing Future Specialists
Since our humble beginnings, Telethon Speech & Hearing has grown into a centre of excellence for assisting children with hearing loss and speech and language difficulties. The spirits of our tenacious founders have been a source of inspiration and motivation to our growing team and remain part of our family-centred philosophy to this day.
A word of thanks from this year’s McCudden Familly Scholarship recipient and Teacher of the Deaf, Amy Ricciardi.
My name is Amy Ricciardi and I’m a Special Education Teacher of many years. I started my journey at Telethon Speech & Hearing in the Outpost Program in February 2021. I have worked with many children with complex needs however working with deaf and hard of hearing children was something I didn’t have a lot of knowledge about. There are so many avenues to explore in this field and working at Telethon Speech & Hearing has opened my mind up to broaden my skills.
At the beginning of this year, I was very lucky to be granted a scholarship to help with my studies to become a qualified teacher of the deaf. I have since been studying my “Masters of Special and Inclusive Education” with the University of Newcastle and I am specialising in the units on Deaf Education. I have been studying to my heart’s content and to my surprise on August 29, I was invited to a special afternoon tea at Telethon Speech & Hearing with the McCudden family. This name rang a bell to me, but I wasn’t 100% sure, so I asked Deputy Principal, Geoff Reader to fill me in with the details. He said that the scholarship that I was given was named in honour of the McCudden Family - Vincent McCudden and Marie Kormendy - who have a strong history with the development of speech and hearing, and TSH all those years ago. I read up about the McCuddens and was truly inspired by the work they did.
After a day at work with students and teachers at Outpost school, Northshore Christian College, I drove into the Telethon Speech & Hearing centre in Wembley eager to meet Vince and his family. I was accompanied by Geoff Reader (Deputy Principal), Janene Hall (Principal), and Mark Fitzpatrick (CEO). You would think I’d be feeling nervous, but I wasn’t simply because I was surrounded by a bunch of beautiful people.
When Vince arrived alongside his daughter Grania and TSH’s First Principal, Karen Venard (who is also a teacher of deaf) we got straight into business chatting about my studies, my future dreams, Vince’s past teaching experiences and so much more. I honestly felt truly blessed to have been in a room with a bunch of such incredible human beings. I would like to take this opportunity to say a HUGE thank you to TSH for always giving families, children and staff the opportunity to learn and grow in a positive way every day. To be the first person in WA to be granted a McCudden Scholarship is nothing short of amazing. I am so very lucky!
Origins of a Dream
Learn more about our founding teachers, families and friends of Telethon Speech & Hearing by reading more about our history:
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© 2022 Telethon Speech & Hearing Ltd.
Telethon Speech & Hearing acknowledges and thanks all individuals and organisations for their support of our centre, including: Channel 7 Telethon Trust, Channel 7 and The West Australian
