Deaf Schools concern--ATTN: WPSD and Illinois SD

Transcript (with visual description) Transcript: [Alyssa, wearing black shirt, is sitting with tan background] ALYSSA: Hello everybody… Today, I want to share something that I feel very passionate about, and the topic is Deaf schools in America. Many of the natives in Deaf community are aware of the changes that Deaf schools faced in the past years. Some Deaf schools saw grand improvement in maintaining standards. However, some Deaf schools face unfortunate changes. And it is those unfortunate changes that I want to focus today, especially one Deaf school. I don’t mean to imply that the issues at this one Deaf school are more important than other schools that are also facing changes. For example, Virginia School for the Deaf had a newspaper article discussed concerns about its future, Vermont School for the Deaf just laid off many jobs as they closed down, and Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind are losing numbers of Deaf administrators and teachers. But today, I want to focus mainly on Illinois School for the Deaf, and also Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. Before I go into the details, I want to share some things about myself. I grew up attending to three different Deaf schools: American School for the Deaf in Connecticut, Maryland School for the Deaf, and California School for the Deaf, Fremont. Also, I did a big research project covering residential schools for the Deaf at Gallaudet University. Lastly, I am currently in a bilingual education (ASL-English) in University of California, San Diego. In all, I am confident that I am well aware of the history, system, changes, and bilingual teaching pedagogies those Deaf schools faced in the past years. Now, back to the purpose of this video, I watched one frustrated mother of a daughter who is currently a student of Illinois School for the Deaf, for she couldn’t find a suitable ASL classroom for her daughter. Instead, she and her daughter had to compromise some things such as being placed in a classroom with peers that are not of same skill level or age group. The mother asked the Illinois Deaf community for help and I sat watching on my computer monitor reminiscing my parents having the same frustration when I was younger. I could empathize and understood her frustration. Not only that, National Association of the Deaf (NAD) has already recognized this issue by declaring themselves as a watchdog for Deaf schools in America at the latest NAD conference. Yes, yes. We all know of the ongoing issues, but what do we do about it is always the question. How can I step in?