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School for the Deaf's Children's Center opens - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
When students at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf finished performing a song at the grand opening of the school's new Children's Center on Friday, the audience was silent -- but the applause was tremendous.
Rather than clapping their hands together -- which many of the children wouldn't have been able to hear -- those in the audience silently waved their hands in the air, applauding the students and the opening of the $3.6 million center for preschool and kindergarten programs.
"At WPSD, students come first. They're our No. 1 priority," said Donald Rhoten, superintendent of the 260-student school in Edgewood. "We owe it to them, these young kids, to give them the best of everything we possibly can."
The new Children's Center -- located near the entrance to the school's 19-acre campus -- features colorful computer-equipped classrooms, an indoor play area packed with educational toys, a beautifully landscaped "Quiet Garden," a new playground and an outdoor "Children's Village" of miniature city buildings, such as a fire station.
"You would not think it, but the program for 3- to 4-year-olds is the most complicated, the most complex, of any programs we have," Rhoten said.
Teaching deaf children to communicate is often difficult, especially when they have hearing parents, said Marc Marschark, a professor at the Rochester Institute for Technology in New York who helps the school determine if its programs are effective.
The school's use of different teaching techniques, its integration of technology and the programs it offers -- it sends teachers to the homes of deaf children too young to attend preschool so they can start learning to communicate as soon as possible -- puts the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf "beyond cutting edge," Marschark said.
"I brag about this school around the world," he said.
Matt and Erin Campion, of Peters, Washington County, have two children at the school and said the early childhood intervention program helped them overcome the shock of learning that their children are deaf and made sending them to school easier.
"It's a school, but it's also a community," Matt Campion said. "They just really want what's best for your kids."
When students at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf finished performing a song at the grand opening of the school's new Children's Center on Friday, the audience was silent -- but the applause was tremendous.
Rather than clapping their hands together -- which many of the children wouldn't have been able to hear -- those in the audience silently waved their hands in the air, applauding the students and the opening of the $3.6 million center for preschool and kindergarten programs.
"At WPSD, students come first. They're our No. 1 priority," said Donald Rhoten, superintendent of the 260-student school in Edgewood. "We owe it to them, these young kids, to give them the best of everything we possibly can."
The new Children's Center -- located near the entrance to the school's 19-acre campus -- features colorful computer-equipped classrooms, an indoor play area packed with educational toys, a beautifully landscaped "Quiet Garden," a new playground and an outdoor "Children's Village" of miniature city buildings, such as a fire station.
"You would not think it, but the program for 3- to 4-year-olds is the most complicated, the most complex, of any programs we have," Rhoten said.
Teaching deaf children to communicate is often difficult, especially when they have hearing parents, said Marc Marschark, a professor at the Rochester Institute for Technology in New York who helps the school determine if its programs are effective.
The school's use of different teaching techniques, its integration of technology and the programs it offers -- it sends teachers to the homes of deaf children too young to attend preschool so they can start learning to communicate as soon as possible -- puts the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf "beyond cutting edge," Marschark said.
"I brag about this school around the world," he said.
Matt and Erin Campion, of Peters, Washington County, have two children at the school and said the early childhood intervention program helped them overcome the shock of learning that their children are deaf and made sending them to school easier.
"It's a school, but it's also a community," Matt Campion said. "They just really want what's best for your kids."