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Help schools meet a deaf child’s needs:
• Teachers can prepare the rest of the school — the other teachers and
children — to welcome deaf children. They can teach everyone in
the school about deafness and about how deaf children learn best by
seeing.
• Deaf adults can help the teacher or the students learn sign language.
They can help the teacher in the classroom by giving extra attention
to the deaf students.
• Because children who are deaf or cannot hear well
learn by seeing, schools can help them have their
eyes checked and get glasses, if needed.
Parents can meet with a child’s teachers to get
information about what and how she is learning.
This will help parents strengthen and build on what
their child is learning at school. They can also tell the
teacher about what the child does at home. That way the
teacher can include things from the child’s experience in her lessons.
Deaf children can learn in their own group
Children who are deaf or cannot hear well can learn in separate
classrooms for deaf children in a local school, or in separate day schools
or residential schools.
Many local or national associations, or government, religious,
community, or aid organizations have started separate schools or
classrooms to educate children who are deaf or cannot hear well. These
organizations may even offer scholarships for deaf children to study in
such schools or classrooms. Bringing deaf children together in their own
schools or classrooms creates a community of children who otherwise
might have been isolated from each other.
When children attend schools like
these, they often learn sign language.
Family members will be able to
communicate better with their
children if they learn sign
language too.
Helping Children Who Are Deaf (2004)