Emily Khuong

Emily and her family participated in JTC’s International summer session program.  Recently, Emily reached out to let us know of all the amazing things she has been up to since her time at JTC. 

The Gold Award is the highest honor a girl scout can earn and involves undertaking a service project with a long-lasting impact on the community. For her project, Emily created a series of workshops to inform deaf and hard of hearing students on the transition from high school into college.  “In the summer of my sophomore year, I asked my friends with disabilities about their college experience. I learned that most felt unprepared and nervous to enter college.  It was a drastic change to go from receiving help in the K-12 system, where teachers would monitor their progress, to college where the student was expected to advocate for themselves. I wanted to share the information that I had learned through my research and decided to create a series of workshops so that other hard of hearing and deaf students would have an easier time transitioning into college.” At her workshops, Emily presented information about how high school students could prepare for the change in accommodation offered in high school versus college and presented various strategies one could use to practice self-advocacy. From this project alone, Emily was able to reach approximately 95% of the teachers in Loudoun County, VA who support deaf and hard of hearing students.