Brianna Wisecup

About Me: 

Hello! I’m Brianna Wisecup.  I live in Glenwood, Iowa.I have a bilateral moderate to severe hearing loss..  I have a bilateral moderate to severe hearing loss.  I use hearing aids in both ears, but also sign when I am with individuals who are Deaf, or prefer to sign. I also use signs with my children. 

Education: 

I attended Cozad Community schools most of my childhood, except for one semester in Broken Bow in 6th grade. I attended 4 years of college at Nebraska Christian College in Papillion. I loved the small atmosphere for each of these locations where teachers were able to focus more on each child and their needs. I wish my hometown school had more awareness for the different technologies that were out there for specific classes (ie the baby dolls that have special alarms for deaf/HoH individuals for health class). My deaf educators were great with working with IEP meetings as well as making sure I was able to be inclusive in classroom activities and hear all that was going on through the FM system. Almost all of my teachers were great with the FM system and was able to include it in the class. 

Work Experiences: 

I currently work with Terracon Consulting Engineering as a dispatcher. I work in the Omaha office, but dispatch for the Sioux City office. I also worked while attending college full time in the cafeteria. Later I managed the cafeteria for one year, before leaving to work at Terracon. Throughout my youth I worked at fast food places as well as lawncare throughout middle school and high school. My favorite job has to be working in the cafeteria at college as I had a wonderful boss and access to food! Terracon is a close second as my boss is really understanding of my situation and attentive to my needs. 

Hobbies and Interests: 

With the little bit of free time between traveling, work, visiting family, and sleeping, I love to do crafts. Whether it is making a scrapbook for my kids, woodworking (making a baby gate for our upstairs entryway) or just getting crafty for our office parties, I love it all. My oldest daughter loves to craft to and will often come help me out. 

Family: 

I am married and have two kids, Aletheia (Ali) who is 3.5 years old and Abigail (Abbie) who is 9 months old. Both my husband and myself had chronic ear infections and tubes growing up and our children are "blessed" with our ears and also have several round of tubes each. They are both troopers and have been powering through them. We are blessed with great doctors at both Methodist and Boystown who give the best care for our family. I am the only one who is hard of hearing in our family as we assume I lost my hearing due to an undetected ear infection between birth and my first birthday. Almost everyone signs in our little family, dad works on learning more with the kids as we teach them. 

Advice: 

You probably hear this a lot, but if you have the choice to learn sign as your child has a hard time hearing, do it. I wish my family would have learned even the basic signs and now, as I am teaching my children signs, all of my family is learning them too. I will teach my nieces signs when I go back to visit them so they are included as well. When the child grows up to a certain age and does not want to sign any more, they will be able to communicate that with you.