Recently we, along with other families with deaf children, received a letter from the Newfoundland and Labrador English School District (NLESD).
The letter begins, “As you are aware, your child is currently learning American Sign Language at school...”.
Not only is this opening statement inaccurate and misleading, it shows a startling ignorance on the part of NLESD about how a child, deaf or hearing, acquires a first language.
Our son, along with most deaf children under the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, is not learning American Sign Language (ASL) at school because for his four years at school, none of his teachers teach ASL and some have little to no knowledge of the language.
To date, the only ASL access a deaf child might have at NLESD is limited to incidental contact with deaf student assistants (SA). As good as they are and as much as our son learns from his SA, NLESD refuses to identify these under-employed and under-valued SAs as the most valuable asset N.L. deaf education has.
In a meeting last fall with the Education and Early Childhood Development Minister Brian Warr, told us to “leave it with him.”
Our trust in him was rewarded by his appointment of a steering committee on deaf education stacked with committee members uninformed about deaf education and the language situation of deaf children. For example, the Atlantic Provinces Special Education Authority (APSEA), has an open human rights complaint against them and, very recently, the director of APSEA herself informed us they have no expertise in deaf education, do not teach ASL, and have no deaf teachers.
Warr also appointed CHHA-NL to his steering committee, an organization that works predominantly with hard of hearing adults, has shown itself uninformed about ASL children and has not supported ASL for deaf children. Finally, we expect Warr’s steering committee includes people from his department and NLESD.
We have only experienced these educators as incapable of understanding that if deaf children have access to language and education, they are as capable as any other children.
Since Warr appointed his committee, a few initiatives have surfaced. Whether they were proposed by this committee or not they are each seriously flawed.
In the letter mentioned above, NLESD informed parents that an individual “has been hired to assess your child’s American Sign Language Skills.”
Before any assessment is conducted on our child, we need to be made aware of the individual’s qualifications for conducting the assessment and we will request to be present during such assessments.
Language assessment for our son is critical but having an individual with the qualifications and expertise to assess him is also critical.
The individual tasked with this role must have experience working with deaf preschool or young school-aged children, as well as assessing the ASL proficiency of late first language learners of ASL, such as our son. There are qualified deaf professionals who can do those assessments right here in N.L. All it takes is appropriate due diligence.
Another initiative involves NLESD arranging and funding ASL courses for NLESD staff in the St. John’s area. Knowledge of a second language is never a bad thing in itself; however, paying for one ASL course for school staff members who might never meet a deaf child during their careers, probably isn’t a wise publicly funded expenditure.
While money is being spent on hearing teachers, there is no indication that there is an initiative to increase access to ASL for our child and other deaf children who desperately need it.
To reduce continued harm to deaf children under ill-conceived NLESD programs, funding needs to be allocated for N.L. professionals to design and implement evidence based ASL early language intervention and deaf education programs in our province.
The last NLESD initiative we heard about is disturbing in that it arranges for and funds deaf children to go to APSEA in Halifax.
We have enormously qualified deaf and hearing professionals in N.L. so why is Warr, as a minister in the Liberal government of Newfoundland and Labrador, outsourcing to APSEA, an organization that admits inadequacies, rather than taking advantage of the pool of experts we have here in N.L?
Kim and Todd Churchill,
Portugal Cove-St. Philips