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September 28, 2003

PRESCHOOL serves hearing and deaf children in silent atmosphere

From: Alameda Times-Star, CA - Sept 28, 2003

By Jonathan Drew - ASSOCIATED PRESS

THREE-year-old Mallory Eichler sits quietly on a purple rug, her eyes wide and unblinking. As other children move around the room, Mallory waits with her hands in her lap. It's story time.

Wordlessly, teacher Cindy Kause opens a book, pointing to a picture of a bunny. She places the edge of her hand to her temple, palm facing back, moving two fingers up and down.

Mallory grins and makes the same gesture. "Rabbit," she's saying.

The two are communicating in American Sign Language at the Alice Cogswell Center, a preschool for deaf and hearing children. To achieve its goal of immersing preschoolers in sign language, teachers communicate only with their hands.

At most schools for the deaf, teachers accompany their signs with spoken English.

"The philosophy with the 'voices-off' program is that the deaf children are not at any disadvantage," said Principal Sharon Kellogg. "They truly have equal access to the communication."

Speaking preschools are an increasingly common option for deaf children as more infants are outfitted with amplification devices. By school age, a majority of deaf children join their hearing peers in local school systems.

The hearing children at the Cogswell center have deaf family members, and most already have experience signing.

Instead of calling on students by name, teachers point to the children and sign. When a teacher wants the attention of the entire class, she waves her hands or flickers the lights.

"It's different from teachers who can talk out of the sides of their mouths while they're doing things," said Janet Lineberry, the center's parent liaison. "We have to wait to get eye contact."

To make that easier, classes are kept small. There is a maximum of 12 students in the 3- to 5-year-old group, 10 in the 1[1/2--- to 3-year-old group and six infants in the nursery. Deaf children outnumber hearing children 2-to-1 in most classes.

On a recent morning, 3-year-old Lennette Butler sat on a small plastic chair with a dry brush in hand, watching her teacher unload a plastic crate. Slowly, Sherrette Estes placed plastic jars on the table, each a different color of paint: blue, yellow, red, green, orange and purple.

One by one, Estes paused to identify each color with her hands. Lennette and her eight classmates mimicked her motions.

After Estes placed the final jar on the table, she stopped and pointed. What color was it?

"Orange," Lennette signed, making a shape in front of her face, as if squeezing a piece of fruit.

The air conditioner's persistent, weak rattle and the sound of paper grazing paper could be heard despite the periodic child's cough or scraping of chairs on the floor.

Most schools for the deaf use a method called "total communication" in which words are mouthed or spoken as a sign is formed, said Michael Bello, director of the Learning Center for Deaf Children near Boston. Like the Ohio preschool, his school keeps sign language separate from spoken and written English.

"We believe that language acquisition is critical for the cognitive growth of children and that the only way to do that is through a purely gestural language," he said.

Bello said his program and the one at Alice Cogswell are rare at a time when 80 percent of all deaf children are taught in mainstream schools.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 encouraged mainstreaming deaf students, saying special-education children should be with other students as much as possible.

Hearing aid and cochlear implant technology makes this integration possible, said K. Todd Houston, the executive director of the Washington-based Alexander Graham Bell Foundation.

"Those children who can hear better and develop spoken language tend to have higher reading levels," he said. "That's why mainstreaming them is critical and not putting them in a separate school that focuses on signing."

Houston said mainstreaming and speech acquisition should occur as early as possible, instead of teaching signs. Without exposure to speech, it's much easier for deaf children to fall behind their hearing peers in terms of literacy.

"You work on spoken language first and get as far as you can," he said.

But Kellogg argues that deaf children who learn in a speaking environment are at a constant disadvantage.

"If you have a deaf child in a classroom where everyone is talking, no matter how good the amplifications are, they will miss something; they won't have full access," she said.

The Cogswell center, which opened two years ago, is located in a renovated dormitory at the Ohio School for the Deaf. Enrollment at the school, which serves kindergarten through 12th-graders, averages about 150 students, and more than Deaf children pay no fees to attend the state-subsidized preschool during the academic year, while hearing children pay a fee. All students must pay to attend the summer program.

Josh Hawley's 4-year-old daughter, Callie, who is not deaf, was able to converse with her deaf grandparents a few months after enrolling in the center at age 2.

"She divides her stuffed animals into deaf stuffed animals and ones who can hear," Hawley said. "She'll tell me that this stuffed animal can't talk to that one and she has to translate."

Three-year-old Noah Beyer-Hermsen recently received a signing lesson from classmate Lynette.

He was spreading glossy yellow paint onto a brown grocery bag, the sum of his brush strokes resembling a plump dinosaur. He paused to proclaim that the color of his painting was "yellow," but he attempted the sign using too many fingers.

To his left, Lennette grabbed his hand and pushed down the extra digit, helping him to form the proper gesture. With his thumb and forefinger extended and three fingers down, Noah smiled, displaying the y-shaped "yellow" sign.

Later, Noah stood up to indicate he was finished. Estes placed his work on a metal rack near the windowsill and asked what he'd do once it was dry.

"I'm going to give mine to my mom," Noah signed.

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