Hearing-impaired kids learn through SEE

In a program younger than all of its current students, Woodlands Elementary School preschoolers and first- through sixth-graders, who are deaf or hard of hearing, are learning Signing Exact English. All students and staff at the school, however, pick up a SEE new word or phrase every morning like Thursday’s “Olympics.”

Educational interpreter Carolyn Roberts is a Torino 2006 fan and was pumped to show everyone how to sign “Olympics” in her daily appearance with the school’s video bulletin.

Woodlands is the hub of the Kitsap Deaf and Hard of Hearing Program (KDHHP), created three years ago and still growing. Before the Central Kitsap School District launched the program, area students were bused to Seattle to attend classes at the Northwest School for Hearing-Impaired Children. Now, neighboring school districts from the Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas have contracts with CKSD to send their deaf and hearing-impaired students to Woodlands. This allows for concentrated resources, but also for local community involvement.

Last month, KDHHP received a $3,000 grant from the Washington Educational Association Olympic Council for its outreach project.

The WEA Olympic Council was so impressed with the proposal that it awarded more funds than the group had requested, said Connie Syapin, CKSD audiologist. The money will help purchase extra materials for the video lending library and support the other projects planned such as bi-monthly training meetings for parents and quarterly social activities for the students and their families. KDHHP also plans on connecting children with hearing loss and haring-impaired adults from the community for mentorship and to share experiences and potential career paths.

Sherry Schwab, certified teacher of the deaf, already teaches a Monday evening Community Schools SEE course at Ridgetop Junior High School for parents, bus drivers, extended family, general education teachers and other adults who interact with hearing-impaired children on a regular basis.

Syapin knows the importance of such community outreach all too well. She was the driving force behind launching KDHHP.

“My daughter is deaf and I know how important a program (like this) is for young children,” she said.

Syapin’s grandson, Jeremiah Coleman, is one of two students who share the designation of language models and attend preschool with five deaf or hard of hearing 4- and 5-year-olds in Schwab’s morning half-day class at Woodlands. Jeremiah’s mom and Syapin’s daughter, Irene Coleman, works as a language facilitator for a hearing-impaired student at Klahowya Secondary School.

“He could sign before he could talk,” Syapin said.

Having hearing peers in the preschool classroom is important for exposing the deaf and hard of hearing students to interaction with general education classmates.

“Kids learn so much more easily from other children than from adults,” Syapin said.

“One of the challenges is to help those students communicate,” Schwab added.

At this age level there is a lot of gesturing, facial expressions and one to two words signed between kids.

Indeed on Thursday morning, her handful of students were playing with each other and with the teacher and assistants and understood the SEE signs the adults used, but hearing-impaired or not, most had to be coaxed into signing their wishes, instead of just pointing and grimacing.

The KDHHP educators use not only the SEE sign language system, however, but encompass talking as well, for a total communication approach.

Even when talking across the room to each other, hearing teachers will use signs. But they also wear an odd medallion with a tiny microphone snaking up the lanyard. It is an FM (Frequency Modulated) system that transmits the teacher’s voice to small attachments on each student’s hearing aid.

In the beginning of the day, taking each student into the teacher’s room, Syapin checked their hearing aid or cochlear implant batteries. She tested each child’s FM system by telling them to pick out items out of four-picture cards.

While they are still in preschool the youngsters in the first half-day program have hearing classmates Jeremiah and Katrina Herring to play and communicate with.

But for the first- through sixth- grade hearing-impaired students, the system changes a bit. They get to spend some time in general education classrooms with an educational interpreter like Roberts and mingle with their hearing peers at recess, lunch time and special school programs. They also attend class with Marilee Donohoe, another certified teacher of the deaf who transfered to Woodlands this year after six years at Klahowya and Olympic High School.

With a master’s degree in deaf education, Donohoe is proficient in SEE, as well as American Sign Language and Pidgin Sign English (PSE), the latter perhaps best described as the most commonly used

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