Staff picture

Here is our teaching staff. The assistant principal and the principal are the two ladies on the right end.

 This photo is really from this month! Honest! The green shirts are the new school uniforms, by the way.

Tuesday is the first day of the new school year

Tuesday is the day! CCES will be beginning the new school year with lots of new teachers, and lots of new students. There are over a hundred students signed up now, and if this year is like previous years, they will continue to sign up students well into September. After that, new students will still come, but not daily.

This promises to be a very difficult beginning. CCES has several new teachers who have minimal Sign Language skills and no experience teaching deaf children. You may wonder why we would hire such.

It comes down to this: there really are not any qualified teachers of the deaf available. CCES looks for Christian teachers--and thankfully, they are abundant. But there are more qualifications. The Secretary of Education will hire only teachers who have been licensed through the university system and passed an exam given by the Secretary of Education. (Only a small percentage of licensed teachers pass this test.) Teachers who know sign language are scarce. Teachers who have a degree and know sign language, scarcer still. Teachers who have a degree, can sign, and have passed the test given by the Secretary of Education are almost non-existent--and the few that exist are already working in schools for the deaf.

So the choice they have is to either have no education for the deaf, or to hire unskilled, unqualified teachers, train them on the job, and hope they succeed. This sounds terrible, and it is, because it means that deaf students will not be getting the quality education they should unless they get one of the teachers who has been trained in previous years.  Why even bother?

It is worth it for several reasons. First, the very most important thing we can do to prepare these children for life, and especially for coming to know the Lord, is to give them a language. Most who don't attend school will not learn a language. Even with inadequate teachers, deaf children learn a language just from being around other deaf children. 

Second, the teachers who start out knowing nothing, often end up being excellent teachers within a single year or two. It's a sink or swim situation. Many learn to "swim" beautifully. Each year new teachers are added, and each year more are trained, so progress is being made.

If you are a teacher of the deaf, and you would like to come and participate as a volunteer in the training of new teachers in Santo Domingo, let us know. CCES needs you! Spanish is nice, but not absolutely necessary. ASL is required. You can offer a school year, a semester, a month, or just come for a few days and give a workshop. Interested?  See this page for details about volunteering.

As always your prayers are desired. Please pray that teachers and students will settle in quickly to the work at hand, and that in everything God will be honored and glorified.

Getting ready for back to school

Today begins our teacher training for the new school year. We are also signing up quite a few new students.


Our teacher training includes a course in Cued Spanish given by Marleny, one of our teachers.  Maria, the assistent director,  will be giving workshops on new strategies for teaching content with the use of Sign Language.

You may notice that we have mentioned two different language methods. That is because our goal is for the children to be bi-lingual. First of all, we use Sign Language, the preferred language of most Dominican Deaf people. Most of our communication and content is conveyed in Sign. 


We also use Cued Spanish to teach the students Spanish, mainly for purposes of literacy and knowing how to write effectively. This allows them better communication with the hearing world. That is important for jobs, family, and societal interaction.


We encourage parents to choose either of these options for their home communication, and provide training for those who choose to do so. Still, did you know that the majority of the parents of deaf children, even in the USA, never learn to communicate effectively with their children? If you'd like to know why, here is a good article on it: Why parents don't learn to sign

Camp

Camp was  a success. Children learned more about Jesus, and some came to know him personally. There was too much fun to be believed, even though it poured down rain every day. The kids still had time to get in the pool.


Framy, who has been dealing with visual problems, at first didn't want to come, because he cannot see at night now. We assured him that we would assign someone to him, if necessary, to make sure he didn't have any problems. He decided to come. His classmates were happy to see him, and fought over who would be his guide.

The children had a bunch of new American friends to get to know, and American friends who they knew from last year to catch up with.

Several weeks later...oops! I just realized that this post was written but never posted. So here it is, better late than never!