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School’s closing creates new opportunities to celebrate deaf culture | The Platform | STLtoday
Thursday will be the last regular school day at Gallaudet School for the Deaf. When the building on South Grand Boulevard in St. Louis goes dark after a summer session, it will mark the first time since 1879 that St. Louis will be without a freestanding public school devoted exclusively to educating deaf, hard-of-hearing and non-verbal children.
Slightly fewer than 70 children are enrolled at the school. They range from pre-kindergarten to age 17. Starting in the fall, they will be assigned to three schools. Middle school-aged and high school-aged children will be assigned to
McKinley Classical Leadership Academy, a magnet school on the near south side. Elementary schoolchildren, meanwhile, will go the Ames Visual and Performing Arts School in Old North St. Louis, which also is a magnet school.
Mullanphy School in the Shaw Neighborhood will offer early childhood education to students who historically have started their school careers at Gallaudet.
Education of the deaf and hard-of-hearing long has been heading away from a cloistered, protective environment, increasingly moving to integrated mainstream schools where students can learn with their brothers and sisters and neighborhood kids to broaden their experience in the world.
St. Louis County’s Special School District, for example, sees its mission as supporting and helping students succeed in their home schools, Karen Carter, coordinator for deaf and hard-of-hearing education told us.
Chip Jones, associate superintendent of St. Louis Public Schools in charge of special education, characterizes the closing as transferring the best from Gallaudet into the three new host schools, with continuity of staff and a richer educational experience for children who had been attending Gallaudet.
Teachers, parents and children at McKinley, Ames and Mullanphy stand to benefit the most.
They are heirs to part of St. Louis’ rich history of deaf culture. They are successors to a special school that has educated generations of children — and even hosted a reception for Helen Keller when she came to St. Louis to attend the 1904 World’s Fair, the year she graduated from Radcliffe College.
Carrie McDaniel has been assistant principal at Gallaudet for seven years. She has been around the school her whole life: her parents are deaf and her mother is an alumna.
She supports Gallaudet’s closing, saying that it was inevitable, but she laments the loss of a cultural center, a protective place where people feel they can be themselves.
“It’s an amazing world,” she says. “When the hands go up, the beauty of the language just explodes.”
Dr. Gayle Santucci has been an audiologist at Gallaudet for 10 years. She, too, thinks it will be good for the students to become more integrated with their peers. They are excited about the move, she says, which has been presented in a positive light.
She asks teachers at the new schools to prepare themselves for children who are “open, warm and loving — and so excited when they learn new things.”
She asks the larger school communities to welcome these children, “embrace them — their differences as well as their similarities.”
The best way to begin a new chapter in deaf education in St. Louis is with open hearts.
Thursday will be the last regular school day at Gallaudet School for the Deaf. When the building on South Grand Boulevard in St. Louis goes dark after a summer session, it will mark the first time since 1879 that St. Louis will be without a freestanding public school devoted exclusively to educating deaf, hard-of-hearing and non-verbal children.
Slightly fewer than 70 children are enrolled at the school. They range from pre-kindergarten to age 17. Starting in the fall, they will be assigned to three schools. Middle school-aged and high school-aged children will be assigned to
McKinley Classical Leadership Academy, a magnet school on the near south side. Elementary schoolchildren, meanwhile, will go the Ames Visual and Performing Arts School in Old North St. Louis, which also is a magnet school.
Mullanphy School in the Shaw Neighborhood will offer early childhood education to students who historically have started their school careers at Gallaudet.
Education of the deaf and hard-of-hearing long has been heading away from a cloistered, protective environment, increasingly moving to integrated mainstream schools where students can learn with their brothers and sisters and neighborhood kids to broaden their experience in the world.
St. Louis County’s Special School District, for example, sees its mission as supporting and helping students succeed in their home schools, Karen Carter, coordinator for deaf and hard-of-hearing education told us.
Chip Jones, associate superintendent of St. Louis Public Schools in charge of special education, characterizes the closing as transferring the best from Gallaudet into the three new host schools, with continuity of staff and a richer educational experience for children who had been attending Gallaudet.
Teachers, parents and children at McKinley, Ames and Mullanphy stand to benefit the most.
They are heirs to part of St. Louis’ rich history of deaf culture. They are successors to a special school that has educated generations of children — and even hosted a reception for Helen Keller when she came to St. Louis to attend the 1904 World’s Fair, the year she graduated from Radcliffe College.
Carrie McDaniel has been assistant principal at Gallaudet for seven years. She has been around the school her whole life: her parents are deaf and her mother is an alumna.
She supports Gallaudet’s closing, saying that it was inevitable, but she laments the loss of a cultural center, a protective place where people feel they can be themselves.
“It’s an amazing world,” she says. “When the hands go up, the beauty of the language just explodes.”
Dr. Gayle Santucci has been an audiologist at Gallaudet for 10 years. She, too, thinks it will be good for the students to become more integrated with their peers. They are excited about the move, she says, which has been presented in a positive light.
She asks teachers at the new schools to prepare themselves for children who are “open, warm and loving — and so excited when they learn new things.”
She asks the larger school communities to welcome these children, “embrace them — their differences as well as their similarities.”
The best way to begin a new chapter in deaf education in St. Louis is with open hearts.