Deaf Education Team’s Experiences in 3 Countries

Teaching literacy can be difficult in one language but when you need to teach literacy in Guatemalan Sign Language, Spanish and one of the indigenous languages all at the same time, the task becomes daunting. Sofy, the teacher in the Deaf classroom at Escuela Educación Especial in San Cristobel Verapez, Guatemala makes it fun. Using Scrabble tiles, the students learn to fingerspell each letter and then how to manipulate those letters to spell words. 

Filling balloons with different textured items for a hands-on lesson on 5 Senses with the teachers at St Vincent’s Centre for Handicapped Children in Port au Prince, Haiti. The Deaf Schools Teacher Training Team works with the teachers to teach different ways to teach the curriculum to Deaf students, so the students have full access to the information. The Team and the teachers discuss the impacts of hearing loss in the classroom and how the traditional way of direct teaching in the classroom needs to be modified in order to benefit the Deaf student. Providing the teachers with actual examples of hands-on activities that they can practice themselves allows them to feel comfortable with the sign language used during the lesson and determine how best to present it to their Deaf students. 

Who remembers their 12x tables? In an older Deaf class in Lima, Peru, students race to complete a hands-on activity to teach multiplication. 

The Deaf Schools Teacher Training Team provides education to teachers on different teaching methods and  pedagogical techniques; for example:  direct teaching, hands-on activities, incidental learning , chunking, scaffolding, classroom layout, etc  and how they can be adapted to provide the best learning opportunities for the Deaf students.