Kent ISD — A guest reader is coming for World Hearing Day to the Oral Deaf Program at Northview’s North Oakview Elementary School, so students in Jill Fouch-Chapple’s preschool and developmental kindergarten are busy preparing. They check their hearing devices and their teachers ensure those devices are synced to a microphone.
Five-year-old Danny Jacinto-Tercero approaches Program Coordinator Debra Burkhardt. He needs a new battery, which she helps him get from a supply box. Then Danny, all by himself, changes the battery in his cochlear implant.
“Technology has come a long way,” Burkhardt marvels. “It’s unreal. The devices, they are like little computers.”
The Oral Deaf Program has seen the positive impact of technology and early detection — the main focus of World Hearing Day on March 3 — throughout its 125-year history.
Focus: Getting Students to Their Home District
Started in 1899 by a group of Grand Rapids educators, the Oral Deaf Program teaches students who are deaf and hard of hearing to develop spoken language and listening skills through technology and observation.
Originally operated by Grand Rapids Public Schools, the program became part of Kent ISD in 2019. Kent ISD also offers a Total Communication Program, which provides access and instruction in American Sign Language, spoken English or a combination of both. The two programs operate independently.
When Burkhardt joined the Oral Deaf Program 30 years ago, it was housed at Grand Rapids’ Shawnee Park Elementary, with 14 classrooms serving about 100 students in pre-K to 12th grades, she said. Back then, they stayed at Shawnee throughout their school career.
But with advancements in technology and newborn hearing screenings, she said, students are moving faster through the process of being identified as having hearing loss, given the right hearing devices for their needs, and entering programs that help them learn to navigate daily life using those devices.
The result has been students integrating into their home districts, taking general education classes with their peers while being supported by the program’s teacher consultants, Burkhardt said.
Today, the Oral Deaf Program has three rooms at North Oakview Elementary School serving preschool to fourth-graders, with most of its 157-student population attending their local districts.
Thanks to early identification methods, the program also supports an additional 20 families whose infants have been diagnosed with hearing loss, said Burkhardt, noting some students in the program have never required services at North Oakview and can be in their local districts from the start.
“Much of it depends on if the students would benefit from more structured programming and support or could do well with less structure and be in a classroom setting,” she said.
Emphasis: Listening & Learning
The North Oakview team focuses on listening and language while wrapping in the basic educational fundamentals of letters, numbers, shapes and sounds, said Fouch-Chapple, the preschool and developmental kindergarten teacher.
“My main focus is listening and language skills, but we do have goals that we work on every day,” she said. “For example, we are currently working on present-tense verbs but also have the goal of reviewing numbers. I had the students say ‘I am putting in (the number) five.’ So they are reviewing the verbs, but also counting at the same time.”
Burkhardt said the teachers also work with the students to cut through typical classroom noise, such as tapping pencils and shuffling papers, in order to hear directions and other important information. To do that, a teacher will stand either alongside or behind a student and read to help the student build their listening skills, she said.
By taking an auditory verbal approach, combined with the advancement in technology and early detection, students usually move back to their home districts by fourth grade, Burkhardt said.
A teacher consultant then works with the student and the home district, continuing to provide assistance in listening and language and working with students to advocate for themselves, she said.
Kent City senior Fernando Diaz-Guzman, who served as the host for the program’s 125th celebration, said having a teacher consultant has helped him identify his weaknesses and strengths. In turn, that has led him to learn and adapt to new environments and programs.
“I was a shy student,” Fernando recalled. “I would never have been able to talk in front of a room full of people, much less an auditorium (full).”
Through the Oral Deaf Program, Fernando thinks he has grown as a student. He is dual-enrolled at Grand Rapids Community College through Kent ISD’s Launch U and plans to pursue a career in meteorology.
Making, Keeping Connections
Fernando also served as a host for singer Jonathan Hutcherson, who performed at the 125th anniversary celebration. Hutcherson, a contestant on television’s “The Voice,” has worn hearing aids since he was 2. At the celebration, he talked about his hearing loss and how he entered into the world of music, “a profession that requires you to hear,” Hutcherson told the audience.
Once in their home districts, students do lose some of the regular connection to the hearing-loss community, Burkhardt said. Programs like the anniversary celebration enable families and students to connect and recognize they are not alone.
At this year’s World Hearing Day the guest speaker was Addison Hovey, a senior at Hart Public Schools and the cousin of North Oakview preschooler Nash Conover. Addison was identified with hearing loss at an early age.
Addison read “Can Bears Ski?” by Raymond Antrobus and Polly Dunbar, then showed the students her cochlear implant processor, which prompted them to show her theirs: a mix of hearing aids, cochlear implants and bone-anchored hearing aids.
“This has been an amazing experience, coming here and visiting with a whole group of students with so many different hearing devices,” Addison said. “It is nice to be able to be that older role model for students with hearing loss, to show them they can do it, too.”
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