The 2020 issue of Odyssey, compiled prior to the COVID 19 pandemic and the worldwide anti-racist protest movement, focuses on how schools, professionals, and families are working together to create and foster inclusive environments for all deaf and hard of hearing children.

This issue looks at how families and professionals in deaf education programs are responding to these needs, how they are ensuring the inclusion of social justice and social-emotional growth along with high academic expectations for deaf and hard of hearing children, the strategies they used, the challenges they faced, and the outcomes they achieved in their quest to enhance inclusion and equity for their children or students.

Seventeen articles, written by a total of 32 professional and parent authors, focus on:

• Deaf, Spanish-speaking family’s story of instilling cultural identity and pride in their children through fluency in multiple languages
• Fostering multilingual development through family language planning
• Gender inclusion in the Clerc Center’s demonstration schools
• Making the arts accessible for children with multiple disabilities
• Military family’s story of diagnosis and supports for two deaf sons who have cochlear implants
• Strategies for increasing social awareness in children on the autism spectrum
• Addressing personal and cultural connections within evidence-based reading instruction
• Family’s journey from diagnosis to appropriate educational environment for their daughter who is deaf-blind with disabilities
• How shared cultural connections help students analyze literature (includes an example of anti-bias education through reading a young adult novel)
• Importance of Deaf Community Cultural Wealth for students with disabilities
• Utilizing Universal Design for Learning with deaf and hard of hearing students
• Hard truths about suspension and social justice in a deaf school
• Retired principal returning to teaching at the university level offers advice to new teachers
• Integrating the principles of social justice into a teacher preparation program
• Role of formative assessment in closing achievement gaps in diverse classrooms
• Perspectives from three inclusive excellence ambassadors on fostering equity and inclusion at the Clerc Center and Gallaudet University
• How embracing diversity and inclusion in our schools empowers everyone

We invite you to share your own stories with us on Twitter and Facebook with the hashtags of #ClercCenter and #DeafEd or to reach out to us at Odyssey@gallaudet.edu with your thoughts.