Teachers get the message

An unusual program at California Lutheran University is training teachers to work with deaf and hard of hearing students.

The Thousand Oaks university started the program last year because there is a shortage of those trained teachers in California, said Maura Martindale, the program's director.

"This started at the request of parents of deaf children," Martindale said. "The real drive comes from parents."

The only similar program in California is at the University of San Diego, and that is limited to full-time students, Martindale said. Both programs focus on deaf or hard of hearing children who have learned spoken, as well as sign, language.

The need for these teachers is growing as technology enables even profoundly deaf children to hear sound and learn to speak, Martindale said.

Children as young as 1 year can now receive cochlear implants. The implants allow people to hear sound, though not as a hearing person would perceive it. For that reason, people who receive the implants must be trained to interpret the sound they hear. Then they can learn to speak.

But some children still will need teachers who have been trained in working with students with cochlear implants, or who use other technology to enhance their hearing.

When they have trained teachers, children who are deaf or hard of hearing often can join traditional classrooms, rather than be in special education programs, said Cynthia Jew, chairwoman of the educational psychology department in the school of education at CLU.

Just a few weeks ago, Jew's daughter Jordyn, 6, who is profoundly deaf and has a cochlear implant, started kindergarten in a traditional class with a trained teacher.

But it took Jew a while to find a school. Her other option was to place Jordyn in a special-education program.

"This says something about where education needs to go, about how we deal with kids with special needs," Jew said. "We need to infuse them into school culture and broaden school culture."

Melanie Carlisle, 41, a teacher who joined the program a year ago, said she has found it challenging to adjust her approach to talking to her students. Her instinct, she said, is to slow down and enunciate if a child doesn't understand something. But that doesn't work with children with cochlear implants. They need to hear natural language so they learn to speak naturally.

"As a general-ed teacher, I rely so much on voice, on speech and innuendo," she said. "I have had to retrain an almost basic instinct."

Carlisle, who lives in Studio City, is one of a dozen students enrolled in the program, which officials hope will expand eventually to about 20.

Students and school districts are just now starting to learn about it, officials said.

"Technology, as usual, is a little bit ahead of education," Carlisle said. "This program is very pioneering in that way."

--- Published in the Ventura County Star on Sept. 25, 2008