Willie Ross School for the Deaf Emphasizes Flexibility in Learning

Bert Carter both signs and speaks with teacher Laura Chagnon — much like teachers and students communicate at the school.

Specifically, the Longmeadow-based school was founded in 1967 by a group of concerned parents who were struggling in the aftermath of a rubella epidemic that swept the East Coast and deafened thousands of children.

During that era, residential placement of all deaf children was virtually the only option for families. But these parents had a vision of a day placement program for their sons and daughters. Since existing programs did not provide such an option, they established their own day school.

“A group of concerned parents made the effort to put the school in motion,” said Robert “Bert” Carter, who took over as president and CEO last year. “I think we offer an alternative, and a big difference from other schools for the deaf, in that we’re not residential. We really are about serving the local region; we’re not interested in serving kids from the Boston area or Vermont. And we believe those kids should go home at night to their families.”

The school’s stated philosophy, in fact, is that it’s primarily the responsibility of the family, before the school, to make sure no child is left behind.

“We think families should be involved in the day-to-day lives of their children, and that they should have the opportunity to go home in the evening,” Carter added. “That’s not a criticism of residential schools; there’s a reason for those, too. But we offer this alternative.

“It’s a team educational approach,” he continued. “Again, there are several schools for the deaf in Massachusetts, and it’s good for parents that the approaches differ, so there’s some choice.”

Led by the late Gene and Barbara Ross — and named after their son, Willie, who resides in Southern California these days — the parent group sought to establish a program that would further their children’s abilities in an inclusive setting. Almost a half-century later, it has built a reputation and a track record that more than validate their decision.

Talk to Me

Betsy Grenier sits with her young students on the floor, an intimate setting made possible by the small class size.

Specifically, the school began as an oral-only school, built on speech and lip reading, but over time parents and teachers saw limitations in this approach. Rather than abandon it completely, sign language was integrated alongside speech, and the school adopted a simultaneous approach known as ‘total communication.’

Over time, the school has integrated a number of communication approaches to enhance student learning, including advancements in the use of ‘residual hearing’ through digital hearing aids, FM systems (in which the teachers wears a microphone and transmitter and the student wears a receiver), and cochlear implants. These technologies, working in concert, maximize speech and understanding in a way that cannot occur when only a single method is available.

“With total communication, we use both speech and sign language to address the individual strengths of the child, Carter said. “We have students that use a variety of listening technologies, such as cochlear implants and the use of FM systems in the classroom. Again, we’re looking at each child’s strengths and needs and addressing those accordingly.”

In short, the school recognizes that instructional models must evolve along with the needs of the students it serves, and this extends well beyond how they communicate at school, but also encompasses where they learn. A case in point is the development of a dual-campus model. In addition to the 62 students based on the Longmeadow campus, other students are ‘mainstreamed,’ to some degree, at public schools in East Longmeadow.

“We have this campus here, which functions like a lot of schools for the deaf, but we also have classes in the East Longmeadow schools, at all levels — two classes in elementary school, two in middle school, and two in high school,” Carter said. “Students are served over there by our teachers and our staff, and they have opportunities to mainstream where it’s appropriate.”

This model, known as the Partnership Campus, is a good fit with many students whose families appreciate the mainstreaming opportunity but still want the benefit of an education overseen by Willie Ross-affiliated specialists. Whether through that program or learning at the Longmeadow campus, he explained, deaf students have the opportunity not to feel isolated among their hearing peers.

“Language access is important,” he said, noting that public schools offer diversity in a number of beneficial ways, but communication is critical. “For a student to be in a public school, even with a sign-language interpreter, it can be socially stifling.”

Forging Connections

Even in area public schools that aren’t part of the Partnership Campus — 17 of them, to be exact — the Willie Ross school is helping students feel less isolated through a consultation program, helping educators and staff understand the needs of deaf students and offering technical expertise and support regarding listening equipment.

“It can make a huge difference,” Carter said. “We have an audiologist go out to public schools with listening devices a student might benefit from. Technology changes constantly, so we help them stay ahead of that — we manage equipment, make sure it’s in good, working order, repair it if necessary, teach staff how to clean it, all those things.

“Along with that,” he added, “they work with students and remind teachers of simple things like having deaf or hard-of-hearing students sit in the front of class, and how to manage group situations — it’s hard to follow what’s going on when there are multiple speakers. We just provide consulting to school staff.”

The Willie Ross School also established its Outreach Division to provide services from infancy through age 22, encompassing everything from newborn screening to tutoring for high-school students.

“We have staff that go out to families at home and work with them around developing skills with the child and getting them ready to go to school,” Carter said, adding that the school’s philosophy of parental choice extends here as well. “We always go with what the parents are thinking. If they’re saying, ‘I want my child to speak and go to public school,’ we help them move through that process. If they’re saying they want the child to learn sign language, we help them do that.

“It can be a difficult process for the family,” he added. “They don’t necessarily expect that they’re going to have a deaf child; it’s usually a surprise, and you have to adjust expectations around that. Not that you don’t expect the child to be successful, but the process looks different. You have to be prepared for that. We help a lot of parents work through that and recognize the success their child has along the way.”

The Outreach Division also sponsors the Laurin Audiological Center, located in Pittsfield, so that public-school students in the Berkshires receive the same kind of audiological support available in Greater Springfield.

Personal Touch

Meanwhile, back at the main Willie Ross campus, small classes allow for plenty of individualized attention. Students are grouped by approximate age in most cases, but also by ability level, and many students have learning and physical disabilities in addition to deafness.

Laura Chagnon, who teaches a class of five boys, said most of them would struggle with mainstreaming, but at the same time, everything they experience at the school is preparing them in some way for mainstream life.

Carter understands that concept, having worked in some way with deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals for more than 30 years, most recently at the Austine School for the Deaf in Brattleboro, Vt. Having worked in adult social services as well as in education, he said, “it’s helpful to understand what happens to people after they leave school.”

These days, it’s his job to prepare them for that, and the Willie Ross School doesn’t cut corners on educational requirements.

“We have our own curriculum based on state standards, and our kids do well on state testing,” he told BusinessWest. “But even with all that, so many people in Longmeadow don’t know we’re here. Or, they know we’re here, but they don’t know exactly where.”

That’s not surprising, with the small, quiet campus tucked away on Norway Street, near the Connecticut border. But the impact of the school’s work, he said, radiates much farther out.

“The whole approach we take — with total communication, with the choice between two campuses — is based on what’s the most enabling environment,” he said. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s still considered an uncommon model.

“We’ve been asked to consult around the country on that, because it is an intriguing concept for people,” he continued. “Instead of looking at education as, ‘well, if you need this model, go somewhere else,’ we provide the whole continuum and can move fluidly between different modalities in our organization.”

Its students might be going places, all right, but for now, they’re staying close to home, learning and communicating in a variety of different ways. That’s something worth talking about. Or signing. Or both. Whatever works.

Joseph Bednar can be reached  at [email protected]

HCS Head Start Strives to Get Preschoolers on the Right Track

Nicole Blais says HCS Head Start has evolved over the years to reflect the current emphasis on preschool academic readiness.

One Tree, Many Branches
Thirty-two Head Start programs blanket Massachusetts, Blais said, each with its own catchment area. HCS Head Start, as it’s known in shortened form, operates most of its centers in the three cities that comprise its name, although it also has sites in Ludlow and Palmer. Children from other area communities may access out-of-town centers, however.
“We don’t have centers with classrooms in all of our towns because our charge is really to set up shop in communities where there’s a great need,” she said, noting that poverty tends to be more prevalent in urban areas. “We work with vulnerable children and families — children who are living at or below federal poverty lines. And 10% of our enrollment has to be made up of children who have a special need or disability.”
Under the leadership of its long-time executive director, Janis Santos, HCS Head Start operates three different types of programs. There are 904 slots for traditional Head Start, designed for 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. Meanwhile, 60 clients are enrolled in Early Head Start, which works with prenatal families and children from birth to age 3, with goals ranging from healthy prenatal outcomes to the development of very young children to cultivating a healthy family structure. “Then, when a child turns 3, they can transition into the preschool room,” Blais said.
Finally, “about 10 or 12 years ago, we became the Migrant Head Start grantee for the state of Massachusetts, and we are charged with providing Early Head Start services to eligible children whose families are working in agriculture. Our assessments showed that a lot of migrant families reside in Western Mass. as opposed to the eastern part of the state,” she explained. “That program is a little different in terms of length of operation; those families tend to be here in the summer months, so we have a fast and furious 13-week program to cover those summer weeks.”
Last year, federal budget cuts resulted in a loss of 200 slots, making the program more competitive than it already was. Blais said HCS Head Start aims to fill spots by the greatest need first — not only financial, but developmental as well. And homeless families are always a priority.
With the public education system so focused in recent years on testing and outcomes, there has been increased scrutiny of Head Start. Competing studies have produced very mixed data in determining how much of an advantage enrollees gain when they reach kindergarten.
One notable 2011 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services claimed that Head Start benefits both 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in the cognitive, health, and parenting domains, and aids 3-year-olds in the social-emotional domain.
“However,” it goes on, “the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by first grade for the program population as a whole. For 3-year-olds, there are few sustained benefits, although access to the program may lead to improved parent-child relationships through first grade, a potentially important finding for children’s longer-term development.”
Blais noted that each child is a different case, and some make academic gains faster than others.
“Every child is unique, especially during this critical time. They all come in here at different stages, and they all have their unique ways of mastering different skills,” she told BusinessWest. “It can be hard to keep that in perspective. There’s this standard, but it’s sometimes hard to capture that. Sometimes it’s hard for people to understand the complexities when we’re working with unique little ones.”
That said, HCS Head Start — which makes sure all its teachers have degrees in early childhood education and that each classroom has no more than 20 students — is always looking for ways to self-evaluate.
“We’re always figuring out how to appropriately measure something that gives validity to the program,” she said. “Teachers can tell you a thousand anecdotal stories about successes in the field. In general, we’re working really hard trying to figure out how to measure those.”

Getting Better
What is clear, Blais stressed, is that parent involvement in the program makes a big difference.
“There’s been a lot of talk over the years about quality, and what makes a quality early-education and care program: things like staff and materials,” she said. “The unique thing with Head Start, what has made it stand out, is the parent-engagement piece. The staff really get to know the families.”
They accomplish this through home visits, family fun nights, cultivation of classroom volunteers, and a policy council comprised of elected parents who serve as consultants to HCS Head Start’s senior management.
“We always make sure the parent’s voice is included,” she said. “Parents are made aware of how the Head Start program works — not only what they see in the classroom, but in its entirety. We’re developing leadership skills and advocacy skills for the family, too, so they can hopefully get a different perspective on how Head Start works and how important their voice is. Sometimes our families have been through some challenging times, challenging situations, and they don’t always believe they have the power to make a difference.”
Other Head Start programs are aimed directly at family involvement, from the TLC Building Healthy Relationships Program, which helps adults and teens develop skills in parenting, conflict resolution, financial management, and other areas; and the MILK (Men Involved in the Life of Kids) Program, a father-involvment initiative that offers male-focused activities that bring fathers and their children closer together.
While parents become more active, Blais noted, the teachers never stop learning, accessing a host of professional-development opportunities, particularly in rapidly advancing fields like science and technology.
“Professional development is huge in Head Start. We do a lot of in-service trainings,” she said, citing one recent workshop in conjunction with Holyoke Health Center on helping children develop healthy eating habits. “Teachers are on the front lines with kids, so we’re making sure they have a wealth of information, including community-resource information they can pass along to families. It makes a big difference for the child in the end.”
With so much at stake — and a waiting list to be admitted — it’s not surprising that regular participation is critical. Specifically, Blais said, children need to maintain an 85% attendance record to stay in the program.
“Not only will they miss out if they don’t show up,” she said, “but we’re really trying to instill good attendance habits for when children go off to kindergarten.”
Just one more way, in other words, to get a head start.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

STCC Nursing Program Celebrates 40 Years of Evolution, Excellence

The STCC Alumni Association honored several STCC nursing alumni on Nov. 3. From left are honorees Kerry Fournier (’98) and Marianne Hamel (’72); STCC Dean of Nursing Mary Tarbell; STCC Dean Emeritus Mary Elizabeth O’Leary; honoree Sunshine Domaruma (’08); and STCC President Ira Rubenzahl. (Missing from photo is honoree Melissa Odom, ’04.)

School of Thought
Tarbell said the nursing program had simulation technology in 1972 — well, sort of.
“We had what we call a task trainer,” she explained. “You’d have a model of a leg … and you would use it to teach a student how to put on an elastic stocking or wrap a stump after amputation — something limited to that part of the body.”
Today, students learn from computer-controlled simulators that can talk back to them while displaying a wide range of symptoms and conditions, she continued, adding that this is one of many sea changes that have occurred over the past 40 years. Summing it up, Tarbell said that what’s being taught is virtually the same as when she was attending classes in Building 5, but how it’s being taught is radically different, because of changes in technology and the healthcare industry itself.
Turning the clock back to when Richard Nixon was in the White House, Tarbell said nursing education was undergoing a seismic shift with regard to where and how students were taught.
For decades, area hospitals had their own programs, she said, noting that, by the early ’70s, the last of them had closed due to the high costs of administering the schools. To fill the gap and put more students in the pipeline, college programs were created at STCC, Holyoke Community College, Elms, American International College, and other schools.
The transition process created both challenges and opportunities, she said.
“Those nurses who were going to the hospital-based programs were so exposed to patient care in a different way than an associate-degree nurse was exposed to patient care,” she explained, “because they were actually in the hospitals managing the units and running the units.
“When the associate-degree program came in, we were on limited hours — we were doing 12, maybe 15 hours, and as you advanced, maybe 18 hours a week in clinical, far less than what the diploma schools were doing,” she continued. “But we were getting a sound education based on the fact that we were taking college-level courses along with our nursing curriculum.
“But when we first went out there,” she went on, “no one believed that we could actually function. And that was just one of the obstacles we had to deal with as we went out into practice.”
Today, of course, there are no such doubts about the qualifications of those who graduate from STCC and other area programs, said Tarbell, adding, however, that today’s nursing students face other challenges when they enter the job market, particularly patients who are, overall, sicker than those who would be in a hospital 40 years ago.
And this phenomenon, prompted by a wave in changes in technology, how care is administered, and how it’s paid for, is reflected in how nursing students are prepared for their chosen profession, she told BusinessWest.
“What we see now in the hospital is different than what we saw years ago,” she explained. “Decades ago, if someone had their gallbladder out, a fairly simple surgery, that person would have a large abdominal incision and be in the hospital for a week. Today, you can be in the hospital at 6 in the morning, and many times, you’d be home that evening after having your gallbladder taken out.
“The fast turnover of patients has driven us to deliver care in a more intense fashion,” she continued, “but what you can’t separate from it is the caring and the safety and the knowledge. One of the key things we look at in all of our students is safety; if we find anyone who is unable to maintain safety, we counsel that student and we try to help them and facilitate how they can be a safe practitioner.”
There are other challenges awaiting today’s nursing graduates, said Tarbell, including a tighter job market than many industry and workforce experts were predicting even a few years ago. Graduates are still finding jobs, she continued, but sometimes not in the desired acute-care setting.
One of reasons for this is that many of the Baby Boom-aged nurses who were expected to retire over the past few years — including some from that first class at STCC — are finding that they can’t retire yet for financial reasons, or are not yet ready to leave the profession. But perhaps more importantly, she said, many employers, especially those in acute-care settings, are demanding more than an associate’s degree from their nursing applicants.
“We’re graduating nurses, just as the other schools are, but the vacancy rate is just not what it used to be,” said Tarbell. “You used to be guaranteed that, when an associate-degree nurse or a bachelor-degree nurse graduated, they would have a job in an acute-care facility — and not that many years ago, it was even before they graduated; they had their jobs in January, February, or March.
“Now, many places are not interviewing or even accepting applications until after that nurse has his or her license in hand,” she continued. “At the same time, when they [associate-degree recipients] graduate, they’re not guaranteed a job in acute care. It’s few and far between when it comes to associate-degree students being hired into acute care right away.”
Instead, they’re finding jobs in community nursing (as school nurses, for example), long-term-care facilities, and other settings, such as home care, she told BusinessWest, adding that there is still 100% placement within six months of graduation.
To help its graduates get the jobs they desire — and to address the demand for higher-degreed nursing graduates — STCC started collaborating with UMass Amherst and Baystate Health on a program that would enable the college’s two-year graduates to then earn a bachelor’s in a year plus the intervening summer.
“They can do it three years instead of four,” she said, adding that this program, in addition to similar initiatives involving other four-year schools, is designed to improve the likelihood that those leaving STCC with an associate’s degree can get the bachelor’s degree needed to open more doors, and in less time.

Class Acts
As she talked with BusinessWest, Tarbell paused for a minute and went to a bookcase to collect a textbook from her days as a student at STCC.
As she thumbed through Cooper’s Nutrition in Health And Disease, she marveled at the simplicity of the diagrams — and also the price tag on the inside cover: $9.75.
“That’s another thing that has changed, obviously,” she said with a laugh, noting that today’s textbooks, like the one recently sent to her one publisher in hopes that it might become part of the curriculum, cost perhaps 20 times what they did four decades ago.
Those inflationary changes aside, as well as the myriad advances in technology, the basic mission of the STCC hasn’t changed and won’t, said Tarbell. Now, as then, the goal has been to properly prepare students for the industry they have chosen.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Head of Academy Hill School Plans to Change the Way Students Learn

Stephen Edele has ambitious plans to institute an inquiry-based learning program to promote students’ interest in what they are learning.

History Lessons
Edele brings a wealth of experience to his new position. “I have been through so much with so many kids and parents, you would have to try really hard to surprise me with something,” he said.
His career began in the early ’70s when he was hired to teach high-school English in a West Philadelphia public school. “It was a wonderful position; I learned a lot and got along well with the students,” he said, adding the majority of students were African-American and Vietnamese. “It was a fairly tough neighborhood, but that’s not what sent me scampering,” he told BusinessWest.
He said he felt a lot of pressure to conform, and when Edele was ordered to terminate an afterschool theater program he had begun, he made the decision to leave. The students had asked him if he would start the program because they hoped to stage a few small productions.
“I felt as if I were a puppet on a string. I had absolutely no say over what or how I taught,” Edele said, adding that he was teaching a class of ninth-grade gifted students.
His next stint was at the Pennington School in New Jersey, which catered to students in grades 6 through 12 via a boarding and day program. “I fell in love with the place and was there for 20 years. It was one of the first schools in the country with a program for kids with diagnosed learning differences,” he said.
Edele taught middle-school students in the school’s Center for Learning and discovered he loved working with the age group. “I really believe middle school is our last real chance to influence students in terms of who they will become. They are just beginning to separate from their parents and form their own identity and begin to think for themselves, but they have no idea how they will fit in the world,” he said, acknowledging that working with students of this age is a “roller-coaster ride, as their emotions are all over the place as they face enormous peer pressure.”
Edele believes schools have an obligation to educate the whole child. “It’s not just about making them the best in math, but about making them the best person they can be. It doesn’t just happen by itself, and it’s important for adults to guide students in how to make the right decisions,” he said.
He held a wide variety of roles at the Pennington School, including a stint as its first director of residential life, teaching advanced-placement courses, heading the middle school, then the upper school, coaching baseball and football, and directing middle-school plays.
“I loved it there until I had my own kids. And by 1995 I was itching to head my own school,” he said. So, he took a job at a facility in rural Virginia, then moved two years later to the Pegasus School in Huntington Beach, Calif., which catered to gifted and talented students.
Three years later, was recruited as head of the Harborside School in San Diego, a private school for students in preschool through grade 8. Seven years later it closed after losing a major benefactor, but Edele helped transition it into a charter school, then moved to a school on Vashon Island in Puget Sound, which was a 15-minute ferry ride from Seattle.
Although he and his family were attracted to the idea of life on an island, he found it isolating, and after three years, “I had the great fortune to end up here.”
But along the way, he learned many things, and one of the most important is how well inquiry-based learning works. He instituted the teaching method at the Harborside School and found the results were astounding.
Edele will never forget a project undertaken there by middle-school students. It was an election year in the U.S., and the students were tasked with learning Mexican history.
So the teachers divided the classes into two political parties and set up their own school election. One party supported a fictional candidate named Cortez, and the other supported a candidate named Montezuma.
The students did everything in their power to woo voters. They conducted research, used history from real-world politics to make their points, held debates, and developed comprehensive advertising campaigns within a budget.
Edele doesn’t remember who won that election, because the candidates were not real. But he does remember the effect it had. “The students were actually engaged in learning rather than reading about the subject in a textbook,” he said. “It was fun, and they will remember it forever. The old ways of teaching — reading a textbook and answering questions at the end of a chapter — are simply dull and boring and will certainly kill any child’s enthusiasm for learning. It’s important to keep them excited and engaged so they are active participants in their own learning, not passive recipients of information.”

Textbook Examples
Edele’s history has made him realistic about the time and energy it takes to bring a new style of teaching to a school.
“It’s not going to happen overnight. And I want to be absolutely certain that parents understand what I am trying to do and how and why new and different ways of teaching will benefit their kids. I also want to make sure that the faculty has all of the resources they need,” he said, adding that the staff will have to become fully grounded in inquiry-based learning.
But he knows it will add value to the Academy Hill program. “There isn’t another school in the Pioneer Valley with the same mission,” he said. “And what we’re going to do is the best way to prepare students for life after Academy Hill and beyond. Our students are bright, curious, and gifted, and this is our niche.”