Dr.Connie Mayer is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at York University in Toronto, Canada where she works in the graduate programs in Education, and Linguistics & Applied Linguistics, and in the teacher preparation program in the education of Deaf and Hard of Hearing (D/HH) students. Prior to joining York, Dr. Mayer worked for more than twenty years in the field as a consultant, administrator and teacher at both schools for the deaf and in school boards. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education and the American Annals of the Deaf, and is currently an Associate Editor for the Volta Review. Her current research focuses on literacy development in D/HH learners with cochlear implants, early literacy and early intervention, sign bilingualism, and models of teacher education. She has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters, and presented at more than 100 national and international conferences. In 2007, her article "Can the Linguistic Interdependence Theory support a Bilingual-Bicultural Model of Literacy Education for Deaf Students?" published in the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education was selected by Oxford University Press as one of the seminal papers published in the past century.