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Rock Hill teacher helps spruce up SC school for deaf, blind | The Herald - Rock Hill, SC
Years passed and chances of renovating a student dorm at the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind slimmed. It badly needed updating, but a shrinking budget forced the school to focus on more pressing needs. Revamping the building where 18 deaf girls live during the week fell farther down a priority list.
Then Bryan Coburn stopped by.
The Northwestern High School computer science and pre-engineering teacher and current state Teacher of the Year visited in November along with fellow members of Leadership South Carolina, a public service organization that brings together business and community leaders from across the state as volunteers. The group saw the dorm and heard about the school's underfunded hopes to add more technology.
The dorm "just looks so institutionalized," Coburn said. "This is where they spend most of their teenage years. I just can't imagine having to sit around and look at the dank institutional walls.
"You could see the little technology they have and what a difference it makes for them. I said, 'These kids already have so many disadvantages, we can't walk by this and not do something.'"
Last week Leadership S.C. returned with tools, brushes and 100 gallons of paint. And more good news: They're just $15,000 shy of their $55,000 fundraising target to buy 14 digital, interactive white boards for classrooms.
The screens, about the size of standard chalk boards, can play video and audio and surf the Web. They also have touch-screen capability so students and teachers can write on them.
The school has, in the last two years, added 52 of the boards. Interim Superintendent Maggie Park hopes to eventually outfit every classroom and dorm with one.
The boards, teachers and students said, have vastly improved education at the school.
Teachers can adjust the screens' contrast and magnify lessons so students who are visually impaired but not blind can better see them. They can listen to speeches, songs and other audio programs. Students who are deaf and hard of hearing can watch videos and interact with the boards.
"It allows teachers to be very creative in what they do," Park said.
"You can take anything and project it on that screen," said Vicki Banks, who has taught visually impaired students at the school for 13 years. "It's really made adapting materials so much easier. The boards have changed things dramatically."
School changes lives
The 274 students enrolled at the School for the Deaf and the Blind come from across the state. Seventy percent of them live on campus during the week; busses take them home on Friday afternoons to spend the weekend with their families then bring them back on Sunday evenings.
James Ivey said the school has changed his life.
At 2, Ivey was diagnosed with severe sensorineural hearing loss, an irreversible condition which left him hard of hearing but not deaf.
James is smart, said Ivey's father, Freddy, and performed well in elementary school.
When he was 12, James' mother died of cancer. Struggling with the loss, he fell behind in school. Catching up was even tougher because he didn't hear well enough to understand the lessons, Freddy Ivey said. His father applied to enroll James at the School for the Deaf and the Blind.
In seventh grade, James began taking a bus from his house in Rock Hill to the school, 70 miles away.
"He's really flourished over there," Freddy Ivey said. "We're really proud of him."
James, 16, is on the school's football team. The 11th-grader has lots of friends, knows sign language and is close to scoring straight As.
"Now I take time to focus on education," he signed through an interpreter.
Last year, James was crowned Mr. Deaf Teen South Carolina and traveled to Baltimore to compete in the national pageant against students from across the nation.
Recently, his father said, James broke his school's record for pogo stick jumps. The record was 1,400 continuous jumps. James' new record: 4,500.
"Putting him in that school is the best thing I could've done for him," Freddy Ivey said. "Without it, I don't know if he'd be lost. I really can't express how important it is. It's been vital to his development and education."
Years passed and chances of renovating a student dorm at the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind slimmed. It badly needed updating, but a shrinking budget forced the school to focus on more pressing needs. Revamping the building where 18 deaf girls live during the week fell farther down a priority list.
Then Bryan Coburn stopped by.
The Northwestern High School computer science and pre-engineering teacher and current state Teacher of the Year visited in November along with fellow members of Leadership South Carolina, a public service organization that brings together business and community leaders from across the state as volunteers. The group saw the dorm and heard about the school's underfunded hopes to add more technology.
The dorm "just looks so institutionalized," Coburn said. "This is where they spend most of their teenage years. I just can't imagine having to sit around and look at the dank institutional walls.
"You could see the little technology they have and what a difference it makes for them. I said, 'These kids already have so many disadvantages, we can't walk by this and not do something.'"
Last week Leadership S.C. returned with tools, brushes and 100 gallons of paint. And more good news: They're just $15,000 shy of their $55,000 fundraising target to buy 14 digital, interactive white boards for classrooms.
The screens, about the size of standard chalk boards, can play video and audio and surf the Web. They also have touch-screen capability so students and teachers can write on them.
The school has, in the last two years, added 52 of the boards. Interim Superintendent Maggie Park hopes to eventually outfit every classroom and dorm with one.
The boards, teachers and students said, have vastly improved education at the school.
Teachers can adjust the screens' contrast and magnify lessons so students who are visually impaired but not blind can better see them. They can listen to speeches, songs and other audio programs. Students who are deaf and hard of hearing can watch videos and interact with the boards.
"It allows teachers to be very creative in what they do," Park said.
"You can take anything and project it on that screen," said Vicki Banks, who has taught visually impaired students at the school for 13 years. "It's really made adapting materials so much easier. The boards have changed things dramatically."
School changes lives
The 274 students enrolled at the School for the Deaf and the Blind come from across the state. Seventy percent of them live on campus during the week; busses take them home on Friday afternoons to spend the weekend with their families then bring them back on Sunday evenings.
James Ivey said the school has changed his life.
At 2, Ivey was diagnosed with severe sensorineural hearing loss, an irreversible condition which left him hard of hearing but not deaf.
James is smart, said Ivey's father, Freddy, and performed well in elementary school.
When he was 12, James' mother died of cancer. Struggling with the loss, he fell behind in school. Catching up was even tougher because he didn't hear well enough to understand the lessons, Freddy Ivey said. His father applied to enroll James at the School for the Deaf and the Blind.
In seventh grade, James began taking a bus from his house in Rock Hill to the school, 70 miles away.
"He's really flourished over there," Freddy Ivey said. "We're really proud of him."
James, 16, is on the school's football team. The 11th-grader has lots of friends, knows sign language and is close to scoring straight As.
"Now I take time to focus on education," he signed through an interpreter.
Last year, James was crowned Mr. Deaf Teen South Carolina and traveled to Baltimore to compete in the national pageant against students from across the nation.
Recently, his father said, James broke his school's record for pogo stick jumps. The record was 1,400 continuous jumps. James' new record: 4,500.
"Putting him in that school is the best thing I could've done for him," Freddy Ivey said. "Without it, I don't know if he'd be lost. I really can't express how important it is. It's been vital to his development and education."