Deaf Children Get Their Say at School : Unique Approach Helps Give Voice to Ambitions

Alisa Runstrom, at 13, is considering several career options.

A seventh-grader in the gifted and talented program at Venado Middle School in Irvine, Alisa thinks about becoming an astronaut, a horse trainer, a librarian or a veterinarian for sea animals.

Deafness clearly has not curbed her ambitions.

Alisa listens to her teachers and speaks normally with her classmates, although she was born with a severe hearing problem. Her parents credit a small, innovative private school founded specifically to teach deaf children to speak.

In the 23 years since its founding, the Oralingua School for the Hearing Impaired has helped hundreds of children, some of whom are profoundly deaf, into mainstream public schools and on to professional careers.

The school, parents say, shows that deaf children can be taught to use their voices and develop their residual hearing, so they are not cut off from the rest of the world. It does not teach sign language; it teaches speech.

“What we really want are effective communicators, for the students to be able to transition into life,” said Etta Fisher, director of Oralingua in Whittier. “We want to give them those life skills so they’ll be able to function in any situation.”

Most schools in Orange and Los Angeles counties that have programs for deaf children use the “total communication” method, teaching sign language and speech.

But Fisher said those children ultimately tend to abandon speech and rely solely on sign language, because it is easier.

“What happens is kids start signing and then they stop talking,” she said.

The debate among educators of deaf children had become strident at times, with advocates of total communication saying that not all students can benefit from a program that emphasizes speech.

Jon Levy, principal of the Orange County Department of Education’s Hearing Impaired Program, said signing is necessary, especially for children with a profound hearing loss. And sign language interpreters are necessary where teachers tend to walk around and face away from students, he said.

On a recent day at the school, Jess and Daiva Harris of Laguna Beach watched their 3-year-old daughter, Jordan, as she responded to questions and played in a slightly noisy room with other hearing-impaired children.

For Jess Harris, seeing his daughter learn to speak new words over the past year has given him hope that she will be ready for a mainstream kindergarten one day.

“We can see the light at the end of the tunnel now,” he said. “A year ago we weren’t sure she was going to (talk).”

At home, the Harrises encourage their daughter to articulate her wants, asking her to repeat her questions if they are unclear.

“If the parents don’t support them and put in the time, it isn’t going to work,” said Daiva Harris.

But students like Alisa Runstrom, say the staff, prove it can be done.

Alisa spent about three years at Oralingua, then attended regular classes at Irvine public schools. She said she recently started at the hearing-impaired program at Venado to learn more about other deaf students.

“I wanted to see what’s different between my life and theirs, and see what they’re going through,” she said.

Alisa said most of her friends can hear, but she has enjoyed learning sign language and associating with her deaf friends.

“I sign for my deaf friends all the time,” she said. “I enjoy doing that.” But she also encourages her deaf friends to use their voices.

The key to a success like Alisa’s, say Oralingua’s staff, is starting children at an early age.

Joanne Chivers of Huntington Beach brought her son, Matt, to Oralingua when he was only 15 months old. Today Matt Chivers is a seventh-grader at Mesa View Middle School.

Chivers said she had to take Matt to three doctors before his hearing problem was even detected.

“He acted normal and reacted to sounds, so they wouldn’t believe he had a problem,” she said. “He used to bang pots and pans on the floor and lay his head on the floor to feel the vibrations. He would put his cheek up to my cheek. He wasn’t hearing me, he was just feeling the vibrations. . . .

“A lot of these kids are really bright, they learn to use their other senses. They do so well you don’t notice (a hearing problem) until their speech doesn’t progress as it should.”

In March, a panel of experts convened by the National Institutes of Health in Washington recommended that all newborns be routinely screened for hearing problems. Panel members said about half of all hearing impairment in children goes undetected until about age 3, long after speech and language skills start to develop. Experts say hearing loss should be identified before children reach nine months of age.

Early detection and training helped Pamela Burns, who is too deaf to use a hearing aid. After Oralingua, Burns attended Newport Beach public schools and graduated from San Diego State University. She is now married and an accountant at the Balboa Bay Club.

“Oralingua will always be a very special part of my life,” Burns said. “The teachers were wonderful and supportive. They were like a family to me at the school. It was very important for a deaf child to have that type of relationship with a teacher.”

More than a year’s worth of time and energy by 16 parents originally created Oralingua. Each of the founding couples had at least one deaf child.

Frustrated by the lack of good programs, and convinced their children could be taught to speak, the parents defied conventional wisdom and founded the school with virtually no money, in space leased to them cheaply by a church.

“The California public schools failed to take care of these kids,” said former Newport Beach Mayor Milan Dostal, Burns’ father and one of the founding parents. “They just relegated them to their silent ghetto.”

With no money, no curriculum model to guide them and only negative comments from professional educators, the school’s staff and parents struggled to make the program work.

“For the profoundly deaf, there was no program that said, ‘We will teach them to talk,’ ” said Linda D. Hyde, a program coordinator. The parents “believed and wanted it for their children. That’s a pretty big undertaking, to say ‘I will start my own school.’ It was a huge step to say we can teach even deaf children to talk.”

But this education doesn’t come cheaply. Annual tuition for full-time students is nearly $20,000 a year.

School officials say that doesn’t mean only wealthy children can attend. Some families have been welfare recipients. Fees for the infant program are paid on a sliding scale based on the income of the parents, and the school relies heavily on donations and fund-raising for its operating budget, since it receives no state or federal money.

“It was our whole social life for years and years, fund-raisers for Oralingua,” Dostal said.

When Fisher looks back on her career at Oralingua, she says the rewards have been worth the struggles.

“It’s been a lifelong journey of commitment,” she said.