Lunch & Learn: At Home Language Development

Kristine Ratliff has a B.A. and M.Ed. from The Ohio State University in Deaf Education. She started her teaching career in 1998 at Frontier Local Schools in Southeast Ohio, teaching 3rd-5th grade students in a self-contained Total Communication classroom. She then jumped into the world of itinerant teaching with the Hopewell SERRC (Now SST14) in Hillsboro, Ohio. There, she served a 5-county service district, working with kids grades K-12. In 2001, an opportunity arose to come back to Columbus; and Kris moved back to teach with the Franklin County ESC program, which was housed in Dublin City Schools.  She taught in a self-contained Total Communication classroom at Wyandot Elementary School in Dublin. When the Franklin County program moved to Upper Arlington, Kris stayed on with Dublin City Schools, first teaching in a classroom at Davis Middle School, and then moving to itinerant teaching 13 years ago. In 2011, Kris went back for additional training in Auditory Verbal techniques, earning a Certificate of Auditory Learning from the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill, through their First Years program. In 2013, Kris earned her Listening and Spoken Language Specialist-Auditory Verbal Education certification from the AG Bell Association. She continues to teach itinerantly in Dublin City Schools, serving the Pre-K to 12th grade population.     

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Julie Stewart, M.S., is an ASL Specialist at Ohio School for the Deaf. She has experience of ten years classroom teaching and six years as an educational consultant supporting the educational team working with deaf/hard of hearing students in Ohio. Her research interests include language development of children using American Sign Language and/or spoken English, early literacy and development and integration of strategies to increase successful outcomes for students.