Apodixis Press

Crossing Over: Techniques used with deaf children benefit other students, too

by Jill Smith, M.A., Howard Diller, M.D., M.P.H., and Ray K. McNamara

Any school whose students achieve mastery where failure is all too common deserves a careful look- especially if the school is in an urban, racially diverse, middle class neighborhood. Such a school is Stonewall Jackson Elementary, a shining jewel in the Dallas Independent School District, whose schools generally are plagued with all the problems typical of big cities.

Stonewall Jackson scores as high as a school can on the standardized tests in the state: Some 94.4 percent of the school's fourth-graders passed the reading exam in May 1993, as did 96.1 percent of its fifth-graders and 90.6 per-cent of its sixth-graders. Overall in Texas, less than half of the students passed all three sections in that year. Obviously, the children at Stonewall Jackson learn, and they learn well.

What's curious-and what attracted our attention-is that in addition to being a neighborhood school, Stonewall Jackson is the site of the Dallas school systems program for the deaf. The enrollment mixes many deaf and hard-of-hearing children with other children from the neighborhood; in fact, 75 of the school's 575 students are deaf or hearing impaired.

Although Stonewall Jackson has received awards and attracted media attention, we believe that one reason for Stonewall Jackson's success has not previously been brought to light: The techniques used for the deaf children at the school contribute to the success of the other students.

If our hypothesis is correct, it has important implications for schools in general--including your own.

The hearing connection

Children who have trouble learning to read first have trouble distinguishing sounds.

How could the techniques used for deaf children help children without this disability succeed? Consider for a moment the reasoning process we went through when faced with these high test scores in a school with a large concentration of deaf children.

First, we postulated, schools probably have far more learning disabled students than have been identified formally-a phenomenon every school executive is familiar with. Some of these students have not failed enough to "qualify" for special education or even to be tested for eligibility. Their eventual failure might flag them for special help, but it often comes too late. They probably will not achieve skills commensurate with their intellect. They won't test well--or do well.

Second, we reasoned, auditory problems-that is, difficulties in accurately perceiving, processing, or remembering information that's "heard"--might be at the root of the educational problems of the great majority of students with learning disabilities, both identified and unidentified.

To understand auditory perception, think for a moment of someone who is color-blind. whereas we see green and brown as two distinct colors, they might see them as shades of the same color. A person with auditory problems can have a similar difficulty in hearing:

He or she might have trouble distinguishing between the sounds for "th" and "f," for "m" and "n," for "i" and "e," as well as among many other sounds.

Sometimes the problem might be related to dyslexia. Albert Galaburda, a researcher at Harvard University, has reported abnormalities in the brains of dyslexics in a part of the brain that processes sounds. Paula Tallal of Rutgers University, who since the early 1970s has studied the auditory problems of dyslexics, has demonstrated that children who have trouble learning to read, first have trouble distinguishing sounds-especially sounds that last a short period of time.

At school, such a problem means the student would be confused about much of what is said. One of the mathematics tests we use to evaluate children has a picture of four rabbits. The examiner is to say, "If half these rabbits ran away, how many would be left?" This question causes stress for many students who have auditory problems. The middle of the sentence seems to become garbled; they hear, "If half these rabbits---way, how many would be left?" Faced with confusion over the missing word or words in the middle, a student might just give up or guess. One bright first-grader said, "If half these rabbits be in the way?" But then the final clause "how many would be left?" made no sense to him at all. He was angry as well as confused. And he didn't know how to answer the question.

The ability to lip-read can help many learning disabled students with auditory perceptual problems sort out some of the confusion that occurs all day, every day. Very few of them know they are doing this lip-reading, though. And very few of their teachers know their students are doing it.

There is a long list of problems one might have in school because of a cognitive difficulty with managing incoming auditory information. Students miss directions in the same way as they missed part of the math problem about the rabbits. And when primary grade students misperceive the sounds associated with the letters in phonics, reading readiness and reading itself are both very difficult

The potential for embarrassment is endless. Children with this problem say things wrong and do the wrong things. And if children also have auditory memory difficulties, they forget even those things---directions, names, facts-that they've managed to figure out.

Stonewall Jackson's approach

Significantly, the learning problems of people with auditory perceptual and auditory memory deficits are quite similar to the learning problems of the deaf. But schools that have a large population of deaf children often are quite successful at managing both problems. Lip-reading children might miss directions if they aren't looking at the teacher when the directions are given; they don't miss them in a school where a signal, such as flicking the light switch, precedes all directions.

And such is the case at Stonewall Jackson. For the teachers and the rest of the staff, including the janitor, nurse, and cafeteria workers, it's OK for students to need extra help to hear information. No one says, "If you were listening you would know" or "You weren't paying attention in class, so I won't help you individually."

At Stonewall Jackson, no one speaks to a child without having eye contact. Teachers always alert the children before giving group directions; they also never give directions from behind and they're always ready to repeat directions when necessary. Everyone uses every tool and technique imaginable to help all children hear and understand what's being said-not just the deaf children who are enrolled. In this way, we believe, Stonewall Jackson fosters successes not only for deaf children but also for an army of learning disabled children with unidentified auditory deficits.

Not every school where deaf children are served is so successful. Stonewall Jackson is doing an especially good job, and much of its success is undoubtedly due to the dedication and skill of the staff.

But part of the success at Stonewall Jackson is due to the fact that deaf children attend the school, and their percentage of the overall enrollment is high enough to demand attention. We suspect that in a school serving a very small number of deaf children the practices might have a less powerful effect on the remainder of the children in the school.

For example, when we surveyed some of the other school districts in the Dallas metropolitan area, the Richardson Independent School District reported that its hearing-impaired students make up about 10 percent of the enrollment at Prairie Creek Elementary School. And students at Prairie Creek Elementary School perform better on the regular state testing than the district's overall average.

By contrast, deaf and hard-of-hearing children make up only about 2 percent of the enrollment at the Arlington Independent School District's program for both deaf children and neighborhood children at Goodman Elementary. Goodman students post scores on the regular state tests that are just under 50 percent mastery. It is possible---but scientific research is needed to verity this-that a deaf population of 2 percent is not enough for the school to go to great lengths in deaf-awareness efforts, and the dynamics we are speculating about do not occur.

We believe that our ideas about why Stonewall Jackson's students thrive have great significance in light of the trend toward the inclusion of disabled students in schools today. As all sorts of special education children find themselves in regular classrooms, we believe that schools with substantial enrollments of deaf students should be studied as models for improving services to the students with learning disabilities that are both identified and unidentified.

On your own

An analysis of the performance of schools that house deaf education programs might reveal a great deal, but you don't have to wait for rigorous research to be conducted to experiment with the techniques that work so well for the deaf students at Stonewall Jackson-those techniques that seem to rub off on the other children in the school.

Most of these techniques cost little beyond the staff development to train teachers as if they were all going to work with deaf students. And there's certainly little cost and no negative consequences to having teachers speak clearly when the kids are ready and repeat things without being critical. Other inexpensive practices include:

• Speak slowly. Some children with auditory problems are so busy figuring out what you've said, that they miss the next two sentences while they are doing that
• Keep secondary noises to a minimum. A good example of secondary noise is the noise you can hear in a cafeteria at lunchtime. If nothing can be done to diminish this noise, be sure no significant learning material is presented at that time.
• Let children sit close to the teacher. Sitting up close helps children who have to read lips. It also means, though, that teachers can't wander around.
• Write out directions and place them on the same place on the chalkboard every day. For young children, the directions might be a page number next to a symbol they all recognize; for older children, the directions might be more complex. ("Do every odd-numbered challenge on page 111 and the bottom half of page 112.")

To be effective, these techniques must be applied consistently, from Day One, in class, on the playground, in the halls, and waiting for the bus.

Think of the possibilities: The majority of the Stonewall Jackson children have no disability testing and no labels. They just have success.

Jill Smith is director of the Smith Clinic in Dallas, which specializes in children's learning disabilities. Howard Diller, MD., is a retired pediatrician. Ray K. McNamara is a clinical Psychologist in private practice. All the authors are members of the Institute for Neurobehavioral Studies in Dallas.