Miss-Delectable
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Hearing with nature's aid
The kids from the Roseville school had come to Dodge Nature Center in West St. Paul to make friends with kids in the nature center's preschool program, to climb in the tree house there, and to learn about the center's resident farm animals. In other words, to have fun.
Staff of the nature center and Northern Voices -- the small Roseville school that teaches deaf children to speak with the aid of cochlear implants -- had larger goals.
"You can only teach so much in the classroom," said teacher Tanya Gahler. "You can bring in plastic bugs and plastic bug-catchers. But here, I can pre-teach that language, and then they can come here and see the real thing."
Gahler's colleagues at Northern Voices say the school's partnership with the nature center is a one-of-a-kind relationship in the state. Deaf students, ages 3 to 5, go monthly to the nature center, where nature is used to reinforce the intense language instruction they receive as the school prepares them for mainstream education.
The partnership is funded by a $8,000 grant from the OSilas Foundation and will continue through December.
"Many of our kids have never really experienced nature in this way, so it's really introducing them," said the school's fundraising director, Erin Rein-Loavenbruck. "And they're getting to use all of their senses -- hearing, tasting, everything."
Dodge Director Jill Davis King said her center's early education philosophy is expressed in the book "Last Child in the Woods," by Richard Louv, which is about wellness in nature.
"When you have health issues, special needs and so on, there is something about being in the natural world that helps children process differently, brings people to a different place in order to learn. That's one of the things that we believe here at the preschool," she said.
Rebecca Wandrei, a teacher-naturalist at Dodge, said the nature center's own students are pretty familiar with the natural world and serve as peer models for kids from other schools who don't have as much daily interaction with the natural world.
Plus, the partnership introduces deaf students to hearing students, and vice-versa, and both groups can benefit.
"Even while playing, there is language in everything that they do," Rein-Loavenbruck said. " ... They think they're playing, but they're learning."
And not simply learning language skills. Both the hearing and the deaf children are learning that there are all kinds of different kids in the world.
Rein-Loavenbruck said she has often seen a hearing child ask one of the deaf students about their hearing aids. "Oh, that's what helps me hear," the deaf student will typically say. "Oh, OK," the hearing kid will say -- and then they just get on with playing around.
At first, Wandrei said, she thought it might be more complicated to teach deaf students alongside the nature center's own students. But it hasn't worked out that way.
"Really, we didn't have to change anything" with the teaching approach, she said. "It's been really smooth. Everyone's having so much fun."
Last week's event was the third time the students from Northern Voices had joined the Dodge students. The first time, they studied a pond and animals such as frogs and toads. The second time, they went to a community garden and picked raspberries. Last week, they were studying insects and looking at pigs and sheep.
As a teacher and as someone who grew up hard of hearing, Gahler said, she appreciates the opportunity because her students have good language models in the hearing kids.
"You mostly hear them talking on the playground," she said. " ... I think they hear a good model and it helps the kids [at the nature center] be so much more accepting about differences."
The kids from the Roseville school had come to Dodge Nature Center in West St. Paul to make friends with kids in the nature center's preschool program, to climb in the tree house there, and to learn about the center's resident farm animals. In other words, to have fun.
Staff of the nature center and Northern Voices -- the small Roseville school that teaches deaf children to speak with the aid of cochlear implants -- had larger goals.
"You can only teach so much in the classroom," said teacher Tanya Gahler. "You can bring in plastic bugs and plastic bug-catchers. But here, I can pre-teach that language, and then they can come here and see the real thing."
Gahler's colleagues at Northern Voices say the school's partnership with the nature center is a one-of-a-kind relationship in the state. Deaf students, ages 3 to 5, go monthly to the nature center, where nature is used to reinforce the intense language instruction they receive as the school prepares them for mainstream education.
The partnership is funded by a $8,000 grant from the OSilas Foundation and will continue through December.
"Many of our kids have never really experienced nature in this way, so it's really introducing them," said the school's fundraising director, Erin Rein-Loavenbruck. "And they're getting to use all of their senses -- hearing, tasting, everything."
Dodge Director Jill Davis King said her center's early education philosophy is expressed in the book "Last Child in the Woods," by Richard Louv, which is about wellness in nature.
"When you have health issues, special needs and so on, there is something about being in the natural world that helps children process differently, brings people to a different place in order to learn. That's one of the things that we believe here at the preschool," she said.
Rebecca Wandrei, a teacher-naturalist at Dodge, said the nature center's own students are pretty familiar with the natural world and serve as peer models for kids from other schools who don't have as much daily interaction with the natural world.
Plus, the partnership introduces deaf students to hearing students, and vice-versa, and both groups can benefit.
"Even while playing, there is language in everything that they do," Rein-Loavenbruck said. " ... They think they're playing, but they're learning."
And not simply learning language skills. Both the hearing and the deaf children are learning that there are all kinds of different kids in the world.
Rein-Loavenbruck said she has often seen a hearing child ask one of the deaf students about their hearing aids. "Oh, that's what helps me hear," the deaf student will typically say. "Oh, OK," the hearing kid will say -- and then they just get on with playing around.
At first, Wandrei said, she thought it might be more complicated to teach deaf students alongside the nature center's own students. But it hasn't worked out that way.
"Really, we didn't have to change anything" with the teaching approach, she said. "It's been really smooth. Everyone's having so much fun."
Last week's event was the third time the students from Northern Voices had joined the Dodge students. The first time, they studied a pond and animals such as frogs and toads. The second time, they went to a community garden and picked raspberries. Last week, they were studying insects and looking at pigs and sheep.
As a teacher and as someone who grew up hard of hearing, Gahler said, she appreciates the opportunity because her students have good language models in the hearing kids.
"You mostly hear them talking on the playground," she said. " ... I think they hear a good model and it helps the kids [at the nature center] be so much more accepting about differences."