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Renowned St. Joseph's School for the Deaf has students learn through baseball, Yankee Stadium trip - New York Daily News
Sometimes you don't have to go far to find yourself in another world. Sometimes you only have to go five miles, from one corner of the Bronx to another, from one borough landmark to another. Just ask Christian Gonzalez about that. He is an 8-year-old kid with a skinny body and quick mind and a sweet, high-pitched giggle and he was sitting on a bench outside Yankee Stadium on Friday morning, waiting to go on a Stadium tour with six classmates from St. Joseph's School for the Deaf.
Christian had a question, kind of an urgent one, for his teacher, Courtney Feldman. He communicated it in sign language.
"Can I slide into second base?"
Feldman smiled and signed back, saying she didn't think that would be possible. Christian Gonzalez, in a striped blue shirt, looked a bit deflated but took it well and soon he and his fourth-grade mates were in the Great Hall with their teachers, Feldman and Adriana Vasquez, beginning a great one-hour adventure, kids who come from places of deprivation and hardship and a narrowly drawn world, venturing into a massive sporting showplace, shimmering in moneyed splendor.
You never saw wider eyes, or fresher perceptions.
"There are so many chairs," Christian Gonzalez said, as he scanned the three decks of seats.
"There must a billion baseballs here," said Jeffrey Soto Jr., 9, checking out the historic ball collection in the museum.
"I like the spinklers (watering the outfield grass)," said Kaila Gathers, 9, wowed at how far the water sprayed
Elhadji Ndoye reads the Jackie Robinson plaque at Monument Park at Yankee Stadium (Photo by Michael Schwartz for News
The Yankees, of course, are big on their tradition and their history, but they are a startup compared with the St. Joseph's School for the Deaf, which has been educating deaf children in the Bronx since 1869 and has been in its current location, a stately brick building hard by the Hutchinson Parkway and Cross Bronx Expressway, for almost a century.
In the entryway of St. Joseph's, there is a quote from the Christian theologian, John Wesley: "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can."
Feldman - a production assistant for Don Imus in her previous vocational life - aims to do the good she can in Room 330 of St. Joseph's, with a pink rug in the reading corner and three big windows overlooking the Cross Bronx.
"The kids are always amazed at the traffic," Feldman said with a laugh.
Most deaf children face huge linguistic challenges, whether because sign language isn't used at home or because they struggle to read and write spoken languages they can hear scarcely or not at all. The result is a huge shortfall of so-called incidental learning - the kind that goes on when families converse about politics or Wall Street or the Yankees' starting rotation.
So for Feldman and other deaf educators at St. Joseph's, a school of 113 students, the challenge is to not merely teach the academic curriculum, but to fill in so many cultural and sociological blanks. She has learned that students learn best when they are studying a subject they like. So she taught a unit on baseball, introducing students to the game, playing it at recess, then reading and writing and watching films about it.
The Stadium tour was more or less the bow on the baseball unit.
"I thought it would be a fun end of the year trip and good way to bring to life everything we've been learning," Feldman said.
And indeed it was. In the dugout, as 9-year-old Elhadji Ndoye sat quietly where Derek Jeter sits and 10-year-old Noemi Vergara checked out the bat rack, John Williams, 10, couldn't get over the vast expanse of lush green grass.
"The field is so cool," he said.
At the end of the tour, the guide gave all the kids Yankee key chains, which you would've thought were shares in the team. Kevin Flores Verdejo smiled and stood arm-in-arm with Adriana Vasquez and the kids all laughed when about 500 hot dog buns fell off a service cart.
At 11:10, a little school bus pulled up outside Gate 6 and the kids said goodbye, some speaking, most signing, all of them looking happy. Back in their corner of the Bronx, they ate lunch and returned to Room 330 and looked out at the Cross Bronx and wrote and drew pictures about their visit to Yankee Stadium.
Before Courtney Feldman left for home at the end of the day, she saw a card on her desk. It was from John Williams, who wants to be a chef when he grows up and was mighty disappointed the hot dog stands at the Stadium were not open Friday morning.
"Dear Courtney and Adriana," the card read. "Thank you for (the) Yankees trip. You are my friends. Love John."
Sometimes you don't have to go far to find yourself in another world. Sometimes you only have to go five miles, from one corner of the Bronx to another, from one borough landmark to another. Just ask Christian Gonzalez about that. He is an 8-year-old kid with a skinny body and quick mind and a sweet, high-pitched giggle and he was sitting on a bench outside Yankee Stadium on Friday morning, waiting to go on a Stadium tour with six classmates from St. Joseph's School for the Deaf.
Christian had a question, kind of an urgent one, for his teacher, Courtney Feldman. He communicated it in sign language.
"Can I slide into second base?"
Feldman smiled and signed back, saying she didn't think that would be possible. Christian Gonzalez, in a striped blue shirt, looked a bit deflated but took it well and soon he and his fourth-grade mates were in the Great Hall with their teachers, Feldman and Adriana Vasquez, beginning a great one-hour adventure, kids who come from places of deprivation and hardship and a narrowly drawn world, venturing into a massive sporting showplace, shimmering in moneyed splendor.
You never saw wider eyes, or fresher perceptions.
"There are so many chairs," Christian Gonzalez said, as he scanned the three decks of seats.
"There must a billion baseballs here," said Jeffrey Soto Jr., 9, checking out the historic ball collection in the museum.
"I like the spinklers (watering the outfield grass)," said Kaila Gathers, 9, wowed at how far the water sprayed
Elhadji Ndoye reads the Jackie Robinson plaque at Monument Park at Yankee Stadium (Photo by Michael Schwartz for News
The Yankees, of course, are big on their tradition and their history, but they are a startup compared with the St. Joseph's School for the Deaf, which has been educating deaf children in the Bronx since 1869 and has been in its current location, a stately brick building hard by the Hutchinson Parkway and Cross Bronx Expressway, for almost a century.
In the entryway of St. Joseph's, there is a quote from the Christian theologian, John Wesley: "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can."
Feldman - a production assistant for Don Imus in her previous vocational life - aims to do the good she can in Room 330 of St. Joseph's, with a pink rug in the reading corner and three big windows overlooking the Cross Bronx.
"The kids are always amazed at the traffic," Feldman said with a laugh.
Most deaf children face huge linguistic challenges, whether because sign language isn't used at home or because they struggle to read and write spoken languages they can hear scarcely or not at all. The result is a huge shortfall of so-called incidental learning - the kind that goes on when families converse about politics or Wall Street or the Yankees' starting rotation.
So for Feldman and other deaf educators at St. Joseph's, a school of 113 students, the challenge is to not merely teach the academic curriculum, but to fill in so many cultural and sociological blanks. She has learned that students learn best when they are studying a subject they like. So she taught a unit on baseball, introducing students to the game, playing it at recess, then reading and writing and watching films about it.
The Stadium tour was more or less the bow on the baseball unit.
"I thought it would be a fun end of the year trip and good way to bring to life everything we've been learning," Feldman said.
And indeed it was. In the dugout, as 9-year-old Elhadji Ndoye sat quietly where Derek Jeter sits and 10-year-old Noemi Vergara checked out the bat rack, John Williams, 10, couldn't get over the vast expanse of lush green grass.
"The field is so cool," he said.
At the end of the tour, the guide gave all the kids Yankee key chains, which you would've thought were shares in the team. Kevin Flores Verdejo smiled and stood arm-in-arm with Adriana Vasquez and the kids all laughed when about 500 hot dog buns fell off a service cart.
At 11:10, a little school bus pulled up outside Gate 6 and the kids said goodbye, some speaking, most signing, all of them looking happy. Back in their corner of the Bronx, they ate lunch and returned to Room 330 and looked out at the Cross Bronx and wrote and drew pictures about their visit to Yankee Stadium.
Before Courtney Feldman left for home at the end of the day, she saw a card on her desk. It was from John Williams, who wants to be a chef when he grows up and was mighty disappointed the hot dog stands at the Stadium were not open Friday morning.
"Dear Courtney and Adriana," the card read. "Thank you for (the) Yankees trip. You are my friends. Love John."