For veteran Listening and Spoken Language Provider (LSLP) Kari Weinheimer, working at Ohio Valley Voices is more than a job. It’s an opportunity to use her creative gifts to transform lives, one child at a time.
Since first joining the OVV team in 2014, Kari has worked as an LSLP in the Learning Center and Preschool Program, as well as an Academic Teacher in the Learning Center. In her current role, she serves as an LSLP in the Learning Center’s hybrid classroom.
Kari always knew she wanted to work with children. Growing up in West Chester, Ohio, she regularly found herself babysitting and camp counseling. Then, after taking an American Sign Language course in high school, she became interested in deaf education and deaf culture.
This passion led her to Bowling Green State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Deaf Education with a focus on Mild to Moderate Intervention. While attending BGSU, she had the good fortune to see both sides of deaf education—sign and speech.
Upon graduating, Kari worked as a nanny while also helping to open a daycare for children with special needs. It proved to be a demanding but impressive start to her career.
After serving as the daycare center’s assistant director for two years, Kari was eager to make use of her deaf education degree. It felt like fate when Kari’s mother told her about an online job posting at an organization called Ohio Valley Voices. Although she originally interviewed to be a toddler aide, she came back as soon as a teaching position was available—what became her first post at OVV.
Kari has made some amazing memories since joining the OVV family eight years ago. When asked to choose her favorite, she struggles to pick just one. However, the Annual Winter Program and Graduation Ceremony are certainly top contenders. She loves seeing the students beam with pride as they speak onstage at both events. She also fondly remembers the pandemic graduation caravan organized by the OVV staff and families in the spring of 2022. “The kids loved seeing the staff drive by their houses,” she recalls. “We decorated our cars and traveled all over Ohio and even journeyed to Indiana!”
With good memories come challenges. Kari admits that being a Listening and Spoken Language Provider isn’t easy. It requires sacrifice and perseverance. And yet, the challenging nature of the work is precisely what makes it so rewarding. Kari goes to great lengths to make sure that every student gets the tools they need to succeed—tools which in turn allow the students to “reach milestones that they have worked so hard for, and interact, play, and use their language to share moments with me and their peers.”
Outside of OVV, Kari enjoys spending time with her her Goldendoodle Kali and her friends and family members, including her twin brother, two older sisters, and two-year-old niece, Palmer. Kari’s extracurricular passions include crafting and bargain hunting, and she looks forward to traveling more now that the pandemic is nearing its end.
Kari says that OVV has played a tremendous role in her life these past eight years. “The community and sense of family just pull you in,” she says. “I love that I can use my creativity throughout the day to teach to every student’s individuality.”