For Libertyville High School student Maritza Rios, it was like a version of the dream many children have in which they go to school and find they are wearing their pajamas when everyone else is dressed. Only in real life, she came to gym class one recent day dressed in her gym uniform, only to find the other students in their street clothes.
“It was so embarrassing. I had to go back and change again,” Rios said.
Actually Rios, 15, of Zion did not say those words. She moved her hands in sign language to an interpreter, who spoke for her. Rios is deaf.
The gym class misunderstanding illustrates a problem deaf children face with education in a hearing world. Sometimes the communication does not get through.
“In gym I follow everyone else and ask other kids what we are doing,” Rios said to describe the frustration of a mainstreamed class, where handicapped children are put in standard classrooms.
Hearing-impaired children in Lake County have an alternative to complete mainstreaming. The John Powers Center for the Hearing Impaired, a program sponsored by SEDOL, the Special Education District of Lake County, meets the dual needs of hearing-impaired students by offering students exposure to the hearing world and the deaf community.
The Powers Center, named as a memorial to a SEDOL counselor, is not right for all hearing-impaired children in the 37 school districts SEDOL serves (most of Lake County, excluding the extreme southeastern area). The majority, more than 300, attend regular classes in home districts around the county. But for hearing-impaired students who can benefit from what is called a total communication approach–sign language, finger spelling, lip-reading, auditory skills and speech–Powers Center is the choice, according to Principal Randy Gunderson of Gurnee.
The center offers classes for preschool through 8th grade in a setting with the language and culture of the hearing impaired. Seventy-six students are enrolled this year. Because the building is on the Hawthorn School District 73 campus, it also provides a way for hearing-impaired children to take regular Hawthorn classes, where they can interact with hearing peers in a program for which Hawthorn is reimbursed through SEDOL.
“Since hearing-impaired people must function in both a hearing and a deaf world, they must be exposed to both worlds,” Gunderson said.
Powers Center is one of only a few hearing-impaired programs in the state that are attached to a regular school, having the children go back and forth, said Judy Pierce, director of the Illinois Service Resource Center, a Northbrook-based, federally funded agency that serves hearing-impaired children with behavioral disorders.
“I applaud their future vision that sees children need a place where their language is spoken and can also be integrated when they are ready,” she said. In many areas a lot of buildings that served strictly the hearing impaired have been removed, she said. “The analogy is like taking someone who speaks English and putting them in a neighborhood where only Chinese is spoken and saying this is really good for you.”
Pierce praised the program because it fits the needs of many children, from those who should be in just a hearing-impaired school to those who can benefit from a combination or a fully integrated program. Pierce, who said she recently worked with Powers on behalf of a client, praised the school’s staff for showing great caring, understanding and professionalism.
Although the Mielke family of Buffalo Grove had wanted to relocate to a larger home, they decided to stay put rather than move 9-year-old Kaitlyn, who is completely deaf, out of the Powers Center, said mother Wendy Mielke.
“The whole thing has been a very positive experience,” she said. “I’ve looked into other hearing-impaired programs and decided not to move.” Other programs separate students according to hearing ability–deaf with deaf only, hearing impaired with hearing impaired, she said. “That’s not how the world is; the world is mixed.”
Mielke also praised the respect Powers children get at Hawthorn, where she said the teachers and children are comfortable socializing.
Kaitlyn agreed with her mother’s evaluation. “Powers is wonderful,” said Kaitlyn, who said she likes both Hawthorn and Powers.
At age 5, kindergartners go to full-day school, Powers in the morning and Hawthorn in the afternoon. Starting in 1st grade, most hearing-impaired students are in Hawthorn classes for physical education, art, library and related arts. Some students also are mainstreamed into academic classes, with interpreters provided as needed. The program is designed for each child individually.
At Powers, lessons focus on language as well as help with academics.
Teacher Liz Rose of Highland Park said she attempts in her preschool class to make up for the input lost from being shut out of the hearing world.
“A normal child hears language all the time from casual conversation like the TV, or Mom and Dad talking, that the hearing-impaired child misses,” Rose said. “If people aren’t signing around them, deaf children don’t get any language, and without language they are at a disadvantage.”
Rose’s classroom is decorated in a variety of themes: a bank, a beauty shop, a kitchen.
“It helps us use words they already know in different ways,” she said. “The circus corner stimulates talk about what’s at a circus. You can use words they already know in different ways. A lion jumps though the hoop. If you always use the same word in the same situation, you don’t get a complete understanding.”
Even lunch time is language time. “I’m going to break it with my hands,” Rose says in sign language to a boy before tearing his toast. “I’m going to rip it,” she explains, giving him two ways of saying the same thing.
The center is an exception to the current trend in education toward inclusion, or mainstreaming.
“There is a lot of trepidation in the deaf community about inclusion,” said Sandi Brunati, SEDOL director of instructional services. “The mainstreamed classroom, called the least restrictive environment, can be very restrictive for a student with a hearing loss because of the inability to communicate with peers. If you depend on sign language and need an interpreter, it’s pretty restrictive to have an adult glued to your side to communicate.
“There isn’t that push for inclusion that you might see with other disabilities,” Brunati said. “Imagine 6th-grade girls giggling together and having an interpreter there.”
Statistically, one baby per 1,000 is born deaf, said Barbara Murphy, chief audiologist at the school, responsible for the Lake Diagnostic Program housed at Powers. The program provides audiological exams for Powers students and children referred to the clinic by their local districts. “The averages are probably more like 5 per thousand in high-risk nurseries with all the miracle medicine,” she said.
Mary Bernardi of Vernon Hills, who has taught hearing impaired students for 24 years, has seen the severity of disabilities grow in recent years and also the class sizes. One of the six students in her preschool class has a lot of hearing but many other problems, making him eligible for the program, she said.
Although the Powers building is 15 years old, the program for the hearing impaired has been around since 1961, Gunderson said. In the beginning, classes were housed in schools around the county.
Longtime teacher Bernardi, who remembers the isolation that hearing-impaired children experienced when the program was spread throughout the county, say the peer contact at Powers is much nicer. “A lot of kids who had older brothers and sisters thought they would hear when they got older because they didn’t see older kids who were deaf,” Bernardi said.
Gunderson came to the program as a social worker in 1970 and became principal in 1982. He also serves as supervisor of the high school hearing-impaired program.
When Powers students graduate from 8th grade, they receive a Hawthorn diploma and move to the hearing-impaired program at Libertyville High School. Their education continues to be a blend of self-contained classes taught in sign language and regular classes with an interpreter or a note taker.
Mary Beth Rosell of Lindenhurst, a hearing-impaired teacher at the high school, teaches English, health and geometry this year but said the classes she teaches vary from year to year, depending on the students’ needs. Several factors play a role in whether a high school student is in a regular class or special class, she said. Some students have the ability, but the language involved in teaching it may be too difficult, and mainstreaming adds too much pressure.
Four girls who attended Powers together and now are in the high school hearing-impaired program sat down recently and discussed the ups and downs of going to class in a hearing world.
Heather Pedersen, 16, of Spring Grove; Aliza Meyer, 18, who splits her time between her parents in Lake Zurich and Vernon Hills; Kelly Manley, 17, of Mundelein; and Rios all said they feel their day is pretty much like that of any other student.
But they say mainstreaming can be difficult socially. “Some people in my classes don’t accept deafness,” Pedersen said. “They give me mean looks, and they are not really friendly at all,” she said.
The girls, who all attended Powers together, are a strong indication that the Lake County hearing-impaired program is working. They all like school and have big plans for the future.
“We can get there,” Manley said. “We just have to work harder at what we are doing.”
