National Stuttering Awareness Week 2022: Be Part of It!

Transcript

Maya Chupkov:

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I'm Maya Chupkov. And I'm a woman who stutters Welcome to proud stutter, a show about stuttering and embracing verbal diversity in an effort to change how we talk about it. one conversation at a time Welcome to the first bonus episode of proud stutter about National Stuttering Awareness Week. It happens the second week of May every year and is a great opportunity to shine a Global Light on stuttering. I have a ton of exciting things planned. But before we get into that, let's talk about the history behind National Stuttering Awareness Week in 1988. President Ronald Reagan signed a proclamation nationally recognizing the second week of May as National Stuttering Awareness Week, the National Stuttering Association was instrumental in its creation, two longtime members, Paul Castellano and Barbara Hebert Koval organized the drive to win this historic victory for the stuttering community. Stuttering is cool, featured an article about Paul and his run for state representative despite his confidence to speak and not hide his stutter. His experiences on the campaign trail gave him the idea to create a t shirt that says I stutter. So what and started wearing it everywhere He went as someone who has knocked a lot of doors for campaigns. Letting people know I stutter before speaking does wonders to take the pressure off.

So how does this story connect to National Stuttering Awareness Week? Well, Paul's campaign experiences led to his idea of creating a week that would help spread more awareness around stuttering May was already a better speech and hearing month, which made it a perfect fit. It took Paul and Barbara 18 months to get it passed by Congress.

I want to help continue the movement of spreading awareness about stuttering that Paul and Barbra started with the NSA. That is why I am so excited to announce proud stutters advocacy campaign to try to get as many cities in the country to recognize National Stuttering Awareness Week. First stop San Francisco, my home city with help from the Bay Area's stuttering community. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is set to pass a resolution to recognize the second week of May as National Stuttering Awareness Week to help other communities get started on doing a similar effort. I've created a local resolution toolkit that outlines steps to take to get one passed in your community head over to proud stutter.com to download it

To celebrate and create buzz around this campaign proud stutter is organizing a press conference with the Bay Area community on Tuesday, May 3, I will also be hosting several virtual and in person events for the stuttering community. During National Stuttering Awareness Week, head over to proud stutter.com/events To learn more about what we have in store. I am thrilled to celebrate this special week with you all and help spread the word about stuttering in your community.

All right, enough about me. Now I want to share with you all a voicemail we recently got from a speech and language pathologist who also stutters Her name is Debbie. And here's her message.

Debbie:

My name is Debbie Willa. And I have been a speech language pathologist for a little over 35 years and I also stutter. I was bullied as a child in elementary school because of my stuttering. My maiden name was Nutter which of course are on with daughter so it really couldn't get any worse. Fourth grade was the worst year for me because there was a bully in my classroom. He was the ringleader, and he would lead a group chance to mock me. He even got other students to write stutter Nutter on my Valentine's cards, which the teacher read out loud as she passed out the Valentine. So after that the teasing got so bad that I ended up being moved to another classroom in the middle of the year is, this left me with a very skewed view that not only was my stuttering a problem, but that I was the problem too. And the only way to fix the problem was to move me somewhere else. So after fourth grade, I just hid my stuttering at school as best as I could. And sometimes I acted as if I didn't know the answer in class just to avoid talking. But as an adult, I've had some many more positive experiences that led me to develop a more healthy perspective about my stuttering. My only experience with speech therapy in school, which was many years ago, was being pulled out of class once every couple years. To read out loud to the speech therapists are rarely stuttered when I read. So I was just sent back to class and I never really received any speech therapy at all. So when thinking about college in 12th grade, I thought about becoming a speech therapist myself, mostly because I thought I might be able to help myself speak a little better, and maybe help some other people too. So I took a tour at App State in Boone, North Carolina, and wanted to visit the speech language pathology department. I told the clinical director that I had a speech problem and that I stuttered. And he had told me that one of the pioneers who helped develop the field of speech therapy, Dr. Charles Van Riper, was the Veer stutter his entire life. And the director thought I might make a good speech therapist despite my my stuttering. So I was hooked after that, and I worked really hard to become a speech therapy therapist, graduating with a speech therapy degree from App State and then going on to receive my master's in Speech and Hearing science from UNC Chapel Hill. And along the way, I learn to modify my stuttering even though I still have a stutter. I have good days, and I have some more challenging days. And sometimes when I meet people for the first time, they often asked me what I do, and I often thought or when I tell them, I'm a speech language pathologist, but I usually add in that even though I stutter, I have learned that sometimes what we see as our greatest challenge can sometimes become one of our greatest strikes and people usually respond very well to that comment.

Maya:

And that's it for this episode of proud stutter. This episode of proud stutter was produced and edited by me, Maya Chupkov. Our music was composed by a gusto, Denise, and our artwork by Mara zekiel and Noah Chupkov. If you have an idea or want to be part of a future episode, visit us at www dot proud stutter.com. And if you liked the show, you can leave us a review wherever you're listening to this podcast you want to leave us a voicemail, check out our show notes for that the number to call in more importantly, tell your friends to listen to until we meet again. Thanks for listening. Be proud and be you