About Me

(photo credit: George Johnson)

Expressively cueing since 1987 

(photo credit: Fran Rose)

At Cue Camp Cheerio in the late 1980's.

(photo credit: Catharine McNally)

Just one of many cue camps... 

(photo credit: Mary-Beth Rose)

CLEAR 2010

My family: Elk, Mary-Beth, and me

At Steamboat

Aaron is a nationally known cuer and leader in the cueing community. Aaron has worn many hats from teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing to cue camp counselors to editor-in-chief of the On Cue newsletter. Previously Aaron served on the board of directors for the National Cued Speech Association from 2007 to 2010. Currently Aaron is president of Cued Speech of CO and program director of CLEAR Center. He also is on the board of directors for Colorado Hands and Voices and serves as a Hands and Voices guide for parents. In his free time Aaron likes to hike, mountain bike, ski, and snowboard in the mountains of Colorado.

Diagnosed at 18 months, Aaron's parents started learning to cue a month later and he became an expressive cuer at 2 years old with his first word "shoe." At age 6, Aaron's literacy skills were tested to be at the 3rd to 4th grade level and he received cued language transliterator services from pre-school to freshman year of high school. Aaron was mainstreamed fully from preschool to high school and only received services in a resource-room setting from various professionals, most who had learned to cue due to several cuers having already gone through the New Hanover County Public Schools system ahead of Aaron.

Just before Aaron turned 7 he received the N22 cochlear implant and was activated a few months later. Having found auditory success with the cochlear implant, Aaron went through a time of struggle with his identity as a person with hearing loss and focused on the idea that he wasn't deaf, but rather hard of hearing due to the cochlear implant. Since freshman year of high school, Aaron has never officially made requests for accommodations in the educational setting or workplace to this day.

Aaron went on to North Carolina State University for his bachelors of science in Marine Sciences with a concentration in Meteorology. He worked on campus as a research assistant doing phytoplankton cultivation and carrying out data analysis on computer simulations of internal wave generation caused by tidal forcing in the South China Sea. Aaron spent the summer of 2006 doing research at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories as part of the now-defunct Global Change Education Program (funded by the Department of Energy), studying methane emissions from anthropogenic sources across the state of California and generated a digital map that demonstrated the net flux from each county.

Halfway through undergraduate studies at NCSU, Aaron came back to the cueing community with his return to what would now be known as Spring Camp Cheerio. After observing the Gallaudet Protests of 2006-2007, Aaron researched the state of Cued Speech in deaf education and recognized a huge inequity in the amount of research and attention to the benefits of cueing for literacy and language development. Instead of pursuing a graduate degree in the field of Earth Sciences, Aaron decided to go for his masters in deaf education. After two weeks in New York City at Teachers College (of Columbia University) Aaron decided the big city life wasn't for him and moved to the Chicago area to be with his now-wife, Mary-Beth, also a cuer.

Within two months of working at Red Lobster as a server full-time in the suburbs of Chicago, Aaron become a certified trainer and continued so until he went to graduate school at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to gain experience in oral education. He spent three years as an educator in Aurora Public Schools, working with children in grades three through five, seeing much success with his students using evidence-based practices and building strong rapport with them.

Today Aaron is currently working on multiple projects related to Cued Speech and is available for presentations, consultations, and research support.