Publikation in EURO-CIU Dezember 2021
Intensive rehabilitation training and counselling in Bishkek
It was not my first trip to Bishkek, but it was very important for me to meet all the specialists, teachers, parents and children with whom I had regular Online contact over the last couple of months. It was three days of hard work, but very rewarding.
For the first time I held a seminar for specialists from schools for the deaf and hearing impaired children, a target group of professionals who had practically no knowledge about cochlear implants.
Using the example of our centre in St. Petersburg, I demonstrated to these specialists that it is possible to change the negative impact of a severe hearing loss by providing powerful hearing aids and / or cochlear implants accompanied by adequate professional rehabilitation. We discussed various options on how to expand their activities and thus facilitate inclusion of deaf children into the world of hearing. Unfortunately, the majority of the seminar participants were not really interested in the topic of the development of auditory perception and preferred to get practical tips on the development of speech. They did not realize that these advanced technologies also rely on auditory perception in our work. However, some of the teachers were inspired by the opportunity to change something in their work.
I also had a very individual consultation for Marzhana, a little 6-year-old girl. She has been wearing hearing aids for two months and she can understand and express some words in Kyrgyz. However, the phonemic test showed insufficient discrimination of high-frequency speech sounds. The hearing aids are classified as suitable for severe hearing loss, and we considered the possibility of suboptimal fitting. However, there is high risk that her hearing might deteriorate. The girl is very inquisitive, active, keeps her attention well and tries to repeat everything what the teacher does / says. She did an excellent job with the logic task (to decompose a series of pictures of 3 and of 4). She understood the “plot”, repeated it after the teacher, and having listened to the whole story, she understood and showed pictures fitting for some phrases. I recommended cochlear implantation as we can expect the dynamics to be much faster, the development of speech to be more successful.
In the National Center of Maternity and Childhood Care – partner in two projects “Clinic partnership” with the GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) and where cochlear implantation surgeries took place over the last couple of years – the German Embassy funded the equipment of two rooms with the necessary tools and furniture. During my stay in Bishkek, Torge Matthiesen from the German Embassy came to open the rooms together with the ENT doctors of the clinic and the president of the International Association of Hearing Rehabilitation Specialists Anastasia Naimanova. My “contribution” was two suitcases of manuals, books, games and toys which I brought from St. Petersburg (sponsored by the German Embassy).
We conducted nine diagnostic sessions with children from a second group of children, who receive intensive training. We made video recordings of these lessons to help analysing the pedagogical techniques and methods. Three local specialists (the teachers of the intensive course) – Anastasia Naimanova (teacher for deaf children), Irina Karamurzina (speech therapist) and Veronika Belozerova (speech therapist) – attended these sessions.
We also organized fittings of speech processors for three children (Marsel, Ayar, Dayan) together with Dr. Shirin Zhumabaeva and Luisa Mirgijazova.
One day later I held a seminar for specialists “What makes a teacher a professional: the secrets of diagnostics and the possibilities of universal didactic games” (five lesson hours). This seminar was held simultaneously offline and in zoom. It was very well attended (40 participants) and many teachers gave very positive feedback.
We had excellent discussions with Dmitrij and Svetlana Zaiyka (experts in the field of technical support and rehabilitation from Kiev) and teachers of the Parents Association “Hear Together”.
With the team of NCMCC we agreed to meet online regularly to discuss various documents (course plans, extracts, recommendations for parents and specialists) in detail.
Finally, I was very pleased to meet “my little students” Bata, Chingiz and Havsanur – whom I have known for quite some time and whom I taught locally and Online during the last four years, since 2017. I was delighted by their positive development: they speak fluently and understand speech very well. Now they are attending regular schools.
This trip was very intensive and required a lot of energy. But it was more than worthwhile; we have achieved a lot with the local team, and I am determined to come back in the not-too-distant future. I would like to add that this trip was fully supported by the Lehnhardt Foundation, and I would like to thank Monika Lehnhardt-Goriany for this.
Marina Gureva
Surdotherapist in City Children’s Surdological Center in St.-Petersburg, Russia
Member of Lehnhardt Foundation