The FRIEND Academy stand for Family Resources, Information & Education for Navigating the Deaf/Hard of hearing journey.  It was created to support family members and caretakers and to provide everything they need to understand and thrive through the journey of taking care of a child with hearing loss.

The Professional Academy is geared towards teachers. interpreters, SLPs, Audiologists and school administrators while the FRIEND Academy is geared toward family members.  Many of the trainings overlap in both, however there are some exclusive trainings for the classroom and exclusive trainings for the home environment.  Both academies offer the same monthly meetups and both have the same toolbox.  Each academy has different power hours.  When a professional purchases the Professional Academy, they have the opportunity to gift all the families on their caseload the FRIEND Academy.  At that point, the sponsoring professional also has access to the family trainings.  This is a great way for teachers and families to partner together and identify which trainings meet the needs of individual students, allowing the full IEP team to come together and support each other. 

No!  You can purchase the FRIEND academy as a monthly membership.  Cancel any time!

The Online Itinerant believes in parents as partners in education!  We want to equip you with activities and tools to help generalize skills and partner with your IEP team members to support your child.  The Toolbox is a great way to work on skills at home.