All Ears

At Granada Hills High School, they’ve broken the sound barrier.

The deaf students mainstreamed into the school’s math and science magnet program say the classes will better prepare them for college.

And, at least for hard-of-hearing sophomore Lisa Scheybel, 15, there’s another important social benefit: her hearing boyfriend.

Lisa is one of 35 deaf students in the Granada Hills / CSUN Science Math Technology magnet school, which is part of a nationwide trend in deaf education and the only program in Los Angeles Unified School District that allows deaf students to attend the college-preparatory classes alongside hearing counterparts, according to experts in the field.

The 3-year-old magnet program, one of 132 in the district, also features math instructor Jeff Dichter, 41, the LAUSD’s only deaf teacher--and believed to be one of just a handful in California--who teaches hearing students in academic courses other than American Sign Language, said Steve Mark, administrative coordinator for the district’s division of special education.

The rigorous magnet school curriculum learned alongside hearing students is a welcome contrast to the traditional all-deaf classes most of deaf teens attended before, the students, their parents and administrators say.

“There’s more equal opportunity [in the magnet],” Amrita Nat, 17, a deaf senior, said recently during a break from her math analysis class. “Here, you learn more about the real world, not just deaf people.”

The district’s deaf teens are generally taught a regular high school-level curriculum in all-deaf classes, although some programs allow many to be mainstreamed with hearing students for one or two periods, Mark said.

But because other district magnets are not staffed to teach the deaf, disabled students generally don’t have access to those programs, he said.

At Granada Hills, all magnet, honor and advanced placement classes are available to deaf students.

The program, which serves 405 hearing students and 35 of LAUSD’s 2,300 deaf pupils, has eight interpreters who join the deaf teens in each class to translate into sign language the teachers’ audible explanations, said Kathy Rattay, Granada Hills’ principal.

Special tutoring, note-taking assistance, translating for extracurricular activities and a bus to take them home after evening tutoring sessions are also available to the deaf, Rattay said.

In Dichter’s math classes, however, the interpreters’ role is reversed.

While the deaf students understand Dichter’s sign language, the interpreter stands in the back of the classroom to audibly translate his instructions for the hearing students.

The math and science magnet program at Granada Hills is a joint effort between the district and nearby Cal State Northridge.

CSUN’s National Center on Deafness, the nation’s largest mainstreaming program for deaf college students, offered to help Granada Hills develop a support system that would allow deaf high school students to enroll in the magnet program, Hill said.

The CSUN center helped Granada Hills train some staff, while offering the deaf students access to the center’s resources and programs and making available to all magnet students the university’s library, labs and lectures, Hill said.

The magnet is no walk in the park for any student, deaf or hearing.

Among the demanding requirements, students must take four years each of math and science, instead of the usual two years each required for students in a regular high school curriculum, Hill said.

“The program is hard enough for hearing students,” said Charlene Creeger, a Granada Hills magnet counselor who heads the deaf component. “Deaf students have to be brighter and work harder.”

The deaf students must juggle looking at the board, watching their interpreter and, in some instances, taking notes, she said.

“In the beginning I would look at the teacher to try to read the lips and taking notes was too hard,” said Alim Chandani, a 17-year-old senior. But “Now I’m more used to it and things are more smooth.”

Although the classes are difficult, deaf students say they are good practice for the future.

“[Regular] deaf classes are too easy,” said Gene-Paul Del Rosario, an 18-year-old senior, who has been in the program three years. “Here, we’re setting foundations for college.”

Academics aside, parents say the mainstreaming experience also has social benefits, forcing hearing and deaf students to learn to communicate with each other.

“[Mainstreamed] deaf students have to interact with the other kids,” said Lucy Del Rosario, Gene-Paul’s mother. “You don’t have an interpreter there with you all the time.”

Eighteen-year-old senior Adam Hannig agreed. “I’ve dated many hearing girls,” he said. “I don’t have an interpreter on my dates.” He added that he did need interpreters when he played varsity basketball.

The Granada Hills mainstreaming program is a growing phenomenon nationwide that shows how some physically disabled students can be fully incorporated into academic and extracurricular activities, some educators say.

“With the proper [interpreters and tutors], people are seeing that deaf students can compete with other students on a hearing basis,” said Herb Larson, director of CSUN’s center on deafness.

Programs fully mainstreaming deaf students in high schools and colleges are still rare nationwide, but increasing, Larson said.

Mainstreaming has developed slowly because it has taken time for educators to become aware of the needs of the deaf and because students often prefer the security of all-deaf environments, Larson said.

“School is much more than education,” he said. “Students are looking for friends and social life, so they like to be around the people they can communicate the easiest with.”

In the last few years, however, enrollment at all-deaf schools nationwide has decreased while mainstream programs have increased in number and enrollment.

For example, in 57 all-deaf high schools tracked between 1985 and 1995 by Gallaudet University, an all-deaf institution in Washington, D.C., enrollment decreased from 18,105 to 15,234. In the same period, high school mainstreaming programs grew from 75 to 208 and increased from 10,134 to 14,374 in enrollment.

The university’s statistics also show only 58 college mainstreaming programs with an enrollment of 4,883 in 1980. By 1995, the number of programs increased to 200 with an enrollment of 8,070.

Mainstreaming programs have grown, in part, because of legislation and an increase in understanding among educators of the needs of the deaf, said Arthur Schildroth, researcher at Gallaudet.

The deaf students graduating this year from Granada Hills are following the nationwide trend. The first five deaf students who will graduate from the program in June have all applied to or been accepted at CSUN--where the mainstreaming services are similar to those at Granada Hills--instead of applying to an all-deaf college.

Mainstreaming of deaf teachers could also follow a similar pattern, Larson said.

As the reverse-translation technique used in Dichter’s classroom becomes more common, more deaf teachers will be incorporated into the similar programs, he said.

Two years ago, Dichter said it was culture shock for hearing students when he, using sign language, brought the class to order.

Dichter said students, by their attitude, seemed to be asking: What is a deaf teacher doing in a classroom?

But soon, he said, they got used to the procedure: Dichter’s hands moving in front of the blackboard while an interpreter in the back of the room translated.

“I assured them I was no different than the other teachers,” Dichter said. But some students insist Dichter and his class are different, maybe even better.

“Not only are you learning math,” said a hearing 15-year-old junior, Lizbeth Torres, “it’s like you’re also learning a foreign language.”

Most important, Rattay said, having the deaf students and a deaf teacher on campus has created an awareness among the hearing, prompting some students and teachers to take sign language classes, which are offered at Granada Hills.

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The routine interaction between the two cultures has enlightened some hearing students.

“My father was deaf,” said 16-year-old hearing junior, David Postar. “He was forced to become a painter ‘cause he didn’t need to communicate in that.”

But if his father had educational opportunities like the deaf students at Granada Hills have today, David said, he might have realized that he had other talents.

“Maybe he could have been something else, something better,” David said.