“I always knew I wanted to work in a field where I could help others,” says Megan Stercula. As one of OVV’s longest-serving Listening and Spoken Language Providers, she has dedicated her life to doing just that.
Megan grew up in Carlisle, Ohio and attended the University of Cincinnati, majoring in Communication Sciences and Disorders with the plan of becoming a speech pathologist. In college, she took American Sign Language classes and became interested in deaf culture, but it was only after getting hired at OVV as a Toddler Program Aide that she became acquainted with the oral education philosophy.
Describing her first impression of OVV’s program, Megan says, “I was immediately amazed with everything about Ohio Valley Voices—the young children who were born deaf learning to speak, the children who were getting ready to graduate and were having conversations just like their hearing peers, and the families who were so resilient and invested in their child’s hearing journey.”
Megan was so stirred by the OVV mission that she chose to pursue Listening and Spoken Language (LSL) as a career—a decision that required going back to school. Thankfully, Megan had the support of her OVV supervisors, Julie Sill and Carey Ratliff, to help her find the right graduate school.
With their guidance and encouragement, Megan relocated to Los Angeles to study at the John Tracy Clinic, one of the few graduate programs in the country devoted to the Listening and Spoken Language methodology. Following completion of the program, she moved once again—this time to Houston, Texas, where she spent a year working as a deaf educator in a public preschool.
But even as Megan bounced around the country, OVV was never far from her heart. “I compared everywhere I taught to Ohio Valley Voices, and I truly felt it was one of a kind,” she says. “I always knew I would come back to OVV.”
Finally, in 2015, Megan did return. Since then, she has assumed a variety of different roles at the center, including Listening and Spoken Language Teacher, Parent-Infant Advisor, Toddler Program Therapist and Teacher, and Learning Center Coordinator.
According to Megan, occupying these various positions has given her a more holistic understanding of OVV’s mission. Above all, though, it has made her a better LSL provider.
“I am grateful for the many positions I have held at OVV, because I feel it has allowed me to see how hard everyone at OVV works in each position and how important each role is in helping a child succeed and a family feel supported,” she reflects. “Being able to work with families at each stage in their journey at OVV has given me the opportunity to be a better therapist and to better support families.”
For the 2021-2022 academic year, Megan has resumed her role as a LSL Provider in the Learning Center (LC). There, her years of accumulated wisdom and experience come in handy as she works closely with the LC children to build their verbal communication skills.
“[In the Learning Center], I teach children how to listen and speak through the use of their cochlear implants and hearing aids,” she says. “We work on auditory discrimination, memory and comprehension skills, individualized speech targets, and language targets that vary from learning one- and two-word phrases to complex sentences of ten or more words.”
Megan says that, despite the challenging nature of oral education, she finds the work immensely rewarding. There’s nothing better than witnessing a student progress after so much hard work and sacrifice. “I love working on new language targets and seeing my kids carry those over into conversations with their peers and families!” she says.
As the children’s communication skills improve, so does their confidence. Megan elaborates:
“The most rewarding aspect of working at OVV is watching the children’s and families’ confidence grow through the years. Children become confident not only in their communication skills, but also in wearing their devices. (Diazepam) They learn to become their own advocates. Parents also become confident in being powerful advocates for their child and carrying over language skills at home.”
The years of intensive language therapy pay off at the annual graduation ceremony, where OVV’s young grads celebrate their accomplishments and embark on the next step of their speaking journeys—entering mainstream schools. For Megan, it’s a milestone imbued with deep satisfaction.
“One of the greatest moments is watching the children you have seen from the beginning of their time at OVV stand up on the stage at graduation and have the confidence to tell a large audience who they are, who they love, where they will go to school, and what they want to be when they grow up,” she says. “I always look out into the audience at the children’s families during graduation speeches, and the joy, pride, relief, and sense of accomplishment they have in that moment is so powerful.”
When she’s not working at OVV, Megan loves going to Cincinnati Bearcat games, flipping houses with her husband Tony, and spending time with her one-year-old son Vinny. Reflecting on motherhood, she says that the experience of raising a child has instilled in her a greater appreciation for the perseverance of OVV’s families.
“I feel like I’ve kind of grown up here at OVV—starting fresh out of college at twenty-two and now raising my family as I continue to teach,” she says. “The families I’ve worked with over the years have all had an impact on my life. As a new parent, I have gained a much better understanding of the amount of resilience and strength the families and kiddos at OVV possess.”
To Megan, it is clear that OVV effects real, meaningful change in the lives of children, and she remains as passionate as ever about contributing to that process of incremental but lasting transformation.
“Ohio Valley Voices is truly a place where miracles happen and lives are changed,” she says. “Every day there is something to celebrate—whether it’s a child responding to their first sound, understanding their first word, speaking their first word, or chatting away down the hallway.”