Georgia School for the Deaf

Last updated
Georgia School for the Deaf
Building of the Georgia School for the Deaf, Fannin Hall, built in 1846, as a field hospital for Civil War soldiers during American Civil War.jpg
Fannin Hall, formerly a part of the GSD, is now the city hall of Cave Spring. One of the earliest buildings of the old GSP campus, it was used as a field hospital for American Civil War soldiers. [1]
Address
Georgia School for the Deaf
232 Perry Farm Road SW

Cave Spring
,
Georgia
30124

United States
Information
Type School for the deaf, state school
Established1846;177 years ago (1846)
DirectorKenney Moore
PrincipalLeslie Jackson
GradesPK-12
EnrollmentApprox. 75 students (2020)
Color(s) Green and gold   
Mascot Tiger
Team nameTigers
Languages American Sign Language, English
Website www.gsdweb.org

Georgia School for the Deaf (GSD) is a public residential school for the deaf. GSD provides comprehensive education and services to deaf and hard-of-hearing students between the ages of three and twenty-two. Located in Cave Spring, Georgia, United States, the school offers day and residential programs which meet the academic, social and physical needs of students in a bilingual (American Sign Language and English) environment. [2] [3] It was established in 1846 and is one of three public state schools operated by the Georgia Department of Education. [4]

Contents

History

Located in Northwest Georgia near Rome, Georgia School for the Deaf is in the scenic Vann's Valley. It is Georgia's only residential school serving Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students. GSD was established in 1846 on the grounds of the Hearn Academy by one of its teachers, O. P. Fannin. A log cabin, a $5,000 legislative grant, and four students [5] began a more than 170-years-long tradition of service to children across the state. GSD was the eleventh residential school for the deaf established in the United States. [6] Prior to its establishment, the State of Georgia had no dedicated educational facilities for deaf students, and only wealthy families in Georgia had the possibility of educating such children via privately operated schools in Europe. [7]

Its original name was the Georgia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. Originally it only took white students. It began admitting black students in 1882, but housed and educated them separately due to segregation of educational facilities common in the state. [7] The segments for white and black students had different curricula and were fully separated from one another. [8]

In the 1950s the institution began paying black employees at the same rate it paid white employees. [8] The school's racial groups integrated fully in 1975. [7]

In 1990 there was a study headed by two employees of Gallaudet University that concluded that the Georgia Department of Education should do more to ensure more children were placed at Georgia School for the Deaf and at the two other state schools for disabled children, Atlanta Area School for the Deaf and Georgia Academy for the Blind, as all three were under-utilized. [9]

Student body

It had 174 students in 1990, with most them not being from the Atlanta metropolitan area. The school served ages 3–22; most of them were 14 and older and about 40% had other disabilities with their bodies or minds. [9]

Campus

GSD has an extensive campus of almost 500 acres (2.0 km2) in the small community of Cave Spring. The relationship between Cave Spring and GSD is one-of-a-kind because many residents and business owners are able to communicate with American Sign Language. [10] GSD is currently based on the Perry Farm, on the outskirts of Cave Spring, but was originally located in Downtown Cave Spring in what is now the Cave Spring City Hall.

Mission statement

All GSD students will graduate with a positive Deaf identity as bilinguals in American Sign Language and English and will be prepared to make successful life choices. [10]

Vision

"The Georgia School for the Deaf offers high quality educational and extracurricular activities that prepare its graduates for further academic, social, and career success. This is achieved in a fully-accessible American Sign Language (ASL)/English bilingual environment, which recognizes ASL users as a distinct cultural and linguistic group. This fosters a positive self-acceptance and self-esteem, affording each student the ability to effectively navigate the world they encounter beyond their K-12 experience. As part of this lifelong learning philosophy, all staff and students consistently strive to improve their use of both ASL and written English." [10]

Residential students

GSD includes dormitory facilities. [11]

GSD's residential program allows students to access and experience Deaf culture, a unique cultural and linguistic identity. They create long-lasting friendships, develop appropriate social skills, and can be involved in sports and after-school activities.

Students are transported to their homes every weekend. [10]

Athletics

Georgia School for the Deaf has a varsity basketball team for girls and boys, a football team, a soccer team, and a volleyball team.

The female and male varsity basketball teams at GSD compete in the Mason-Dixon Tournament yearly. [12] In 2008 the GSD Lady Tigers won the Mason-Dixon Tournament; it was their first win since 1980. [13]

The GSD football team competes against deaf and hearing schools. They use their hearing disadvantage to their benefit by using sign language in their huddles and mental rhythmic plays. [14]

Athletes

Willie Brown played basketball at GSD. In his sophomore year he was 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 m) and averaged 28 points, 12 rebounds a game. He was voted the number one high school player in northwest Georgia. [15] Brown holds the school record of 2,016 points over four years in basketball at GSD. After graduating, he pursued college basketball at Hofstra University in New York, where he played alongside hearing teammates. [16]

Requirements

To be eligible for admission at GSD, students must be between the ages of 3 and 21 and have an audio-metric hearing loss of 55 dB or greater in the better ear. To live on campus, students must be between the ages of 4 and 21. Students under the age of 4 are eligible for day school admission. [17]

Legacy

The book The Segregated Georgia School for the Deaf: 1882 – 1975 discusses the period in which the school admitted black students but housed them in separate facilities. Its coauthors, Clemmie Whatley and Ron Knorr, are professors at Mercer University, and the former is from Cave Springs. [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Sign Language</span> Sign language used predominately in the United States

American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by employing both manual and nonmanual features. Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutinative morphology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cave Spring, Georgia</span> City in Georgia, United States

Cave Spring is a city in Floyd County, Georgia, United States. It is located 17 miles (27 km) southwest of Rome, the county seat. The population of Cave Spring was 1,200 at the 2010 census, up from 975 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Rome, Georgia Metropolitan Statistical Area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quebec Sign Language</span> Deaf sign language of francophone Canada

Quebec Sign Language, known in French as Langue des signes québécoise or Langue des signes du Québec (LSQ), is the predominant sign language of deaf communities used in francophone Canada, primarily in Quebec. Although named Quebec sign, LSQ can be found within communities in Ontario and New Brunswick as well as certain other regions across Canada. Being a member of the French Sign Language family, it is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF), being a result of mixing between American Sign Language (ASL) and LSF. As LSQ can be found near and within francophone communities, there is a high level of borrowing of words and phrases from French, but it is far from creating a creole language. However, alongside LSQ, signed French and Pidgin LSQ French exist, where both mix LSQ and French more heavily to varying degrees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maryland School for the Deaf</span> Public school in Frederick, Maryland, United States

The Maryland School for the Deaf (MSD) offers public education at no cost to deaf and hard-of-hearing Maryland residents between the ages of zero and 21. It has two campuses located in Frederick and Columbia, Maryland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Learning Center for the Deaf</span> Private, publicly funded school

The Learning Center for the Deaf (TLC) is a Framingham, Massachusetts-based non-profit organization and school serving deaf and hard-of-hearing children and adults.

Bimodal bilingualism is an individual or community's bilingual competency in at least one oral language and at least one sign language, which utilize two different modalities. An oral language consists of a vocal-aural modality versus a signed language which consists of a visual-spatial modality. A substantial number of bimodal bilinguals are children of deaf adults (CODA) or other hearing people who learn sign language for various reasons. Deaf people as a group have their own sign language(s) and culture that is referred to as Deaf, but invariably live within a larger hearing culture with its own oral language. Thus, "most deaf people are bilingual to some extent in [an oral] language in some form" In discussions of multilingualism in the United States, bimodal bilingualism and bimodal bilinguals have often not been mentioned or even considered, in part because American Sign Language, the predominant sign language used in the U.S., only began to be acknowledged as a natural language in the 1960s. However, bimodal bilinguals share many of the same traits as traditional bilinguals, as well as differing in some interesting ways, due to the unique characteristics of the Deaf community. Bimodal bilinguals also experience similar neurological benefits as do unimodal bilinguals, with significantly increased grey matter in various brain areas and evidence of increased plasticity as well as neuroprotective advantages that can help slow or even prevent the onset of age-related cognitive diseases, such as Alzheimer's and dementia.

Bilingual–Bicultural or Bi-Bi deaf education programs use sign language as the native, or first, language of Deaf children. In the United States, for example, Bi-Bi proponents state that American Sign Language (ASL) should be the natural first language for deaf children in the United States, although the majority of deaf and hard of hearing being born to hearing parents. In this same vein, the spoken or written language used by the majority of the population is viewed as a secondary language to be acquired either after or at the same time as the native language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernest C. Drury School for the Deaf</span> Provincial school for the deaf school in Milton, Ontario, Canada

The Ernest C. Drury School for the Deaf is a provincial school in Milton, Ontario, Canada with residential and day programs serving elementary and secondary deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf</span> United States historic place

The Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf (MSAD) is a public residential school serving deaf children in Minnesota, United States. It is one of two Minnesota State Academies in Faribault and operated by the state for particular student populations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marlton School</span> Public school in Los Angeles, California, United States

Marlton School is a KG–12 public special school for the deaf and hard of hearing students in Los Angeles, California, United States. It was established in 1968 and is part of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Singapore Sign Language, or SgSL, is the native sign language used by the deaf and hard of hearing in Singapore, developed over six decades since the setting up of the first school for the Deaf in 1954. Since Singapore's independence in 1965, the Singapore deaf community has had to adapt to many linguistic changes. Today, the local deaf community recognises Singapore Sign Language (SgSL) as a reflection of Singapore's diverse linguistic culture. SgSL is influenced by Shanghainese Sign Language (SSL), American Sign Language (ASL), Signing Exact English (SEE-II) and locally developed signs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nebraska School for the Deaf</span> Public school

The Nebraska School for the Deaf, or NSD, was a residential school for Deaf students in kindergarten through Grade Twelve at 3223 North 45th Street in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Founded in 1869, the school closed in 1998. The school attracted national attention throughout its existence, first for controversial teaching practices and then for its closure.

Delaware School for the Deaf (DSD) is a public K–12 school located on East Chestnut Hill Road in Brookside, Delaware, United States; It has a Newark postal address. The Christina School District operates the school, but because it is state-funded, the budget is separate from the rest of the district DSD operates Delaware Statewide Programs for the Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Deaf-Blind.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deaf education</span> Education of the deaf and hard of hearing

Deaf education is the education of students with any degree of hearing loss or deafness. This may involve, but does not always, individually-planned, systematically-monitored teaching methods, adaptive materials, accessible settings, and other interventions designed to help students achieve a higher level of self-sufficiency and success in the school and community than they would achieve with a typical classroom education. There are different language modalities used in educational setting where students get varied communication methods. A number of countries focus on training teachers to teach deaf students with a variety of approaches and have organizations to aid deaf students.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sir James Whitney School for the Deaf</span> Provincial school for the deaf school in Belleville, Ontario, Canada

The Sir James Whitney School for the Deaf is a provincial school in Belleville, Ontario with residential and day programs serving elementary and secondary deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

The Robarts School for the Deaf is a provincial school in London, Ontario, with residential and day programs serving elementary and secondary deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

The history of deaf education in the United States began in the early 1800s when the Cobbs School of Virginia, an oral school, was established by William Bolling and John Braidwood, and the Connecticut Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, a manual school, was established by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc. When the Cobbs School closed in 1816, the manual method, which used American Sign Language, became commonplace in deaf schools for most of the remainder of the century. In the late 1800s, schools began to use the oral method, which only allowed the use of speech, as opposed to the manual method previously in place. Students caught using sign language in oral programs were often punished. The oral method was used for many years until sign language instruction gradually began to come back into deaf education.

The sociolinguistics of sign languages is the application of sociolinguistic principles to the study of sign languages. The study of sociolinguistics in the American Deaf community did not start until the 1960s. Until recently, the study of sign language and sociolinguistics has existed in two separate domains. Nonetheless, now it is clear that many sociolinguistic aspects do not depend on modality and that the combined examination of sociolinguistics and sign language offers countless opportunities to test and understand sociolinguistic theories. The sociolinguistics of sign languages focuses on the study of the relationship between social variables and linguistic variables and their effect on sign languages. The social variables external from language include age, region, social class, ethnicity, and sex. External factors are social by nature and may correlate with the behavior of the linguistic variable. The choices made of internal linguistic variant forms are systematically constrained by a range of factors at both the linguistic and the social levels. The internal variables are linguistic in nature: a sound, a handshape, and a syntactic structure. What makes the sociolinguistics of sign language different from the sociolinguistics of spoken languages is that sign languages have several variables both internal and external to the language that are unique to the Deaf community. Such variables include the audiological status of a signer's parents, age of acquisition, and educational background. There exist perceptions of socioeconomic status and variation of "grassroots" deaf people and middle-class deaf professionals, but this has not been studied in a systematic way. "The sociolinguistic reality of these perceptions has yet to be explored". Many variations in dialects correspond or reflect the values of particular identities of a community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black American Sign Language</span> Dialect of American Sign Language

Black American Sign Language (BASL) or Black Sign Variation (BSV) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) used most commonly by deaf African Americans in the United States. The divergence from ASL was influenced largely by the segregation of schools in the American South. Like other schools at the time, schools for the deaf were segregated based upon race, creating two language communities among deaf signers: black deaf signers at black schools and white deaf signers at white schools. As of the mid 2010s, BASL is still used by signers in the South despite public schools having been legally desegregated since 1954.

Metro Deaf School (MDS) is a birth–12+ free charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota that serves Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and DeafBlind students throughout the Twin Cities. Its mission is to promote academic excellence and social wellbeing for Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard-of-Hearing students using an ASL/English bilingual approach.

References

  1. ↑ "Cave Spring's historic Fannin Hall reopens renewed". Rome News-Tribune . 2015-08-23. Retrieved 2021-06-25.
  2. ↑ Georgia School for the Deaf http://www.gsdweb.org . Retrieved 31 August 2020.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  3. ↑ "State Schools". Georgia Department of Education. Archived from the original on 2009-03-26. Retrieved 2009-09-17.
  4. ↑ "GA Department of Education". Georgia Department of Education. Retrieved 31 August 2020.
  5. ↑ "Georgia Deaf History". Epeachy News. Archived from the original on May 19, 2009.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  6. ↑ Gannon, Jack (1981). Deaf Heritage – A Narrative History of Deaf America (PDF). Silver Spring, MD: National Association of the Deaf. p. 26. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-03-28. Retrieved 2011-09-05.
  7. 1 2 3 Whatley, Clemmie; Knorr, Ron (2015-10-23). "The segregated history of Georgia School for the Deaf". Rome News-Tribune . Retrieved 2021-09-02. - Guest editorial, special to the newspaper.
  8. 1 2 3 "A Past Forgotten: New book sheds light on the lives of black students, faculty and staff at the 'Segregated Georgia School for the Deaf'". Rome News-Tribune . Retrieved 2021-09-02. - Alternate link: "Book sheds light on 'Segregated Georgia School for the Deaf' " at the Philadelphia Tribune
  9. 1 2 White, Betsy (1990-06-28). "State schools under-used?". The Atlanta Constitution . p. E3. - Clipping from Newspapers.com. The source says the founding year is 1946.
  10. 1 2 3 4 "Index". Georgia School for the Deaf.
  11. ↑ "F.A.Q". Georgia School for the Deaf. Retrieved 2021-06-18.
  12. ↑ "Teams". Georgia School for the Deaf. 2010. Retrieved September 2, 2010.
  13. ↑ "GSD Girls Go on to Win Tournament". www.prepgameface.com. 2008. Retrieved September 9, 2010.
  14. ↑ Letwin, Bill (November 20, 1943). "Deaf Grid Team Wins No.6 on Sign Language". The Milwaukee Journal. pp. 3–4.
  15. ↑ Rogers, Thomas (July 26, 1982). "Sports World Specials; Glenns Devotion". New York Times. pp. 0–1.
  16. ↑ "Deaf Basketball Player: Hofsta's Willie Brown Has Plenty of Heart". Los Angeles Times. January 6, 1985. pp. 1–2.
  17. ↑ "Admissions". Georgia School for the Deaf. 2010. Retrieved September 10, 2010.

Further reading

34°05′50″N85°20′58″W / 34.097123°N 85.349416°W / 34.097123; -85.349416

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.