When teacher Teresa Torres Zurita opened CORAL’s big steel doors one afternoon nearly two years ago, she was nearly knocked over by the 4-year-old boy racing towards the school’s inner courtyard.
Here was Moíses, followed by his mother and father, who came here with high hopes of enrolling him in CORAL’s oral-auditory school. Moíses’ parents were devastated about their child’s hearing loss. They recently had to pull him out of preschool because each day they went to pick him up, they found Moíses alone, playing in the dirt of the schoolyard. The kids made fun of him, said Moíses’ mother, and the teachers ignored him. Nobody understood his disability, so the teachers just let him do what he wanted as long as he didn’t interfere with the rest of the class.
Moíses’ first few months in the CORAL school were very difficult. Like many children who enroll at CORAL, Moíses had very few limits put on him by his parents and he was not accustomed to rules. “Truthfully,” remembers Tere, “Moíses was one of the hardest cases I have ever encountered.” This is significant coming from a teacher who has worked with hundreds of hearing impaired children over the years.
Moíses, one of Tere’s biggest challenges, also became one of her biggest successes. After he aced his final evaluation prior to summer break of this year, Moíses’ parents with the support of the CORAL staff, decided to enroll him in first grade in public school.
Tere went to observe Moíses in his first week of school in late August and to consult with his teacher. She was so relieved to see him sitting properly in his chair and controlling his seemingly boundless energy like the rest of the children. In fact, Tere observed that Moíses was one of the better-behaved children in the class, regardless of his disability. “Many of the other children in the class didn’t have any behavioral boundaries – just like Moíses two years ago,” Tere said.
But what happened next surprised Tere even more. Moíses’ teacher held up a picture and asked the class, “Who knows what this is?”
Moíses’ hand was in the air first.
“Yes, Moíses?” said the teacher.
He stood up, pulled his elbows back as he learned in his cued speech therapies at CORAL and said for the whole class to hear, “Coconut!”
Even though Moíses must still rely on diverse communication methods and attend therapies in the afternoon at CORAL and practice at home, he now has friends, a first grade classroom to go to every morning, and the full support of his parents.
Moíses’ parents also had a breakthrough of sorts of their own. Rather than despair over the whys and hows of his disability, they said recently, “We are good parents. We are proud of our son Moíses.”
Under an expanded program plan, CORAL students receive more support in their mainstream schools than ever. Teresa Torres Zurita works not only with the public school teacher and deaf child to ensure success, she also speaks with the entire class to help them better understand people with hearing disabilities. The CORAL staff also works with parents of the other children in the class who might fear that their own child’s progress is being impeded by the special classroom communication strategies used for the benefit of the deaf child. CORAL staff shares videos and other information with these parents to demonstrate that strategies such as how to maintain a quieter classroom and the repetition of key points are actually beneficial for all students.
