The Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board, in collaboration with Phonak Canada, hosted the Student Learning Forum for Students with Hearing Loss as part of celebrating May as Speech and Hearing Month. It is a forum dedicated to our students in Grades 7-12 with hearing loss, where they gather to meet other students, learn about assistive technology and other tools/strategies to support them, share their stories, and participate in activities.

The forum is hosted every two years, and this year we welcomed DJ Demers and Peter Stelmacovich to speak to our students.

DJ is an award winning Canadian Comedian, who also wears hearing aids. He has performed on the Conan O’Brien TV Show and won the Comics Competition at the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal. He spent some time entertaining the students with his comedy, but then got serious and suggested they “embrace their differences” and “stay true to themselves.”

Peter is a trained audiologist and is currently the FM and SoundField Product Manager for Phonak Canada. Many of our students use Phonak FM systems everyday. FM systems pick up the voice of a speaker via a body-worn transmitter, then sends this signal to the listener who is wearing a tiny receiver. Peter also has a hearing aid on one ear and a cochlear implant on the other, as well as a hearing ear dog, Flora.

Both guests spoke to our students about their life and living with hearing loss, which inspired our students to share some of their own stories.

This anticipated event was put on by Nadine Munro, Mr. Nichols and Mrs. Royal, who are the hearing resource services team at the board.