New York Institute for Special Education | |
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Address | |
999 Pelham Parkway North 10469 | |
Coordinates | 40°51′31″N73°51′34″W / 40.858617°N 73.859438°W |
Information | |
Type | Private, Special, Day & Boarding |
Established | 1831 |
Sister school | Overbrook School for the Blind |
Executive Director | Bernadette M. Kappen, Ph.D. |
Grades | P–12 Students aged 3 to 21 |
Accreditation | National Commission for the Accreditation of Special Education Services |
Website | www |
The New York Institute for Special Education is a private nonprofit school in New York City. The school was founded in 1831 as a school for blind children by Samuel Wood, a Quaker philanthropist, Samuel Akerly, a physician, and John Dennison Russ, a philanthropist and physician. The school was originally named New York Institute for the Education of the Blind. It was located at 34th Street and Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, New York City. [1] [2]
In 1986, the school was renamed the New York Institute for Special Education (NYISE) to reflect its expanded focus on providing programs for children with learning and emotional disabilities as well as for those who are blind. The institute's multiple facilities now serve children ranging in age from newborn to age 21. [3]
Samuel Wood was a wealthy school-book publisher who had been a teacher until he was 40. Recognizing that reading books for children were few, he prepared and published a primer, The Young Child's A B C, or First Book (1806). Wood had seen eager-to-learn blind children in the city's poorhouses, where their future was bleak, and had probably heard of a movement in Boston interested in training the blind. Wood was in his sixties and of a philanthropic bent. [4]
Samuel Akerly had been for ten years the superintendent and attending physician of the New York Institution for the Deaf. He had been active in developing instruction for deaf-mutes and became interested in doing the same for the blind. Akerly knew how to propose legislation, and he, Wood and 15 other citizens presented a petition to the New York State Legislature proposing an institution to "...improve the moral and intellectual condition of the Blind, and to instruct them in such mechanical employments as are best adapted to persons in such a condition." The legislation passed, but was amended by one state senator to limit the institution's purpose to children. [4]
John Dennison Russ, a philanthropist and physician, had proposed on his own to instruct blind children in the poorhouse before Akerly made him aware of the newly approved institution. Russ served without salary as the first teacher of the first class — three blind orphan boys brought from the poorhouse to a private home on Canal Street. After two months, three more boys were added and the school moved to Mercer Street. Teaching was by experiment, with successful methods discovered as time progressed. A demonstration of the students' progress was given at the end of the year, generating public interest and stimulating contributions and new benefactors. [4] [5]
By 1833, ten more students, four of them girls, had joined the original six. In 1834, New York State began paying for some students, and New Jersey began sending children to the school. By now there were 26 students in all, and Russ was assisted by "one teacher of literary subjects, a foreman of mechanical pursuits, and a teacher of music." According to the school history,
Dr. Russ achieved results most remarkable. Besides carrying on instruction of his pupils and conducting the business of the Institution, he invented apparatus for the use of the blind, essayed to discover a means of reducing the size of books for the sightless, proposing a phonetic alphabet with forty characters and representation thereof by dots and lines, adapted and improved the methods used in European schools for representing geographical information. [4]
While teaching, Russ maintained his private medical practice, but the move of the school from Spring Street to larger quarters at the then-remote location of Ninth Avenue and 34th Street created difficulties. Russ resigned from the school in 1835.
Fanny Crosby, a poet who wrote the lyrics for thousands of Christian hymns, was both a student and a teacher at the institute. Blind since infancy, she entered the institute in 1835, at age 14. She was a student for 9 years, then a teacher from September 1847 to March 1858. [6]
Grover Cleveland and his brother William came to be employed at the school in 1853 and 1854, during the years Crosby was teaching. At that time there were about 116 pupils, ranging in age from 8 to 25, half male and half female. To finance his further studies for the ministry, William was teaching the older students history, philosophy, logic, and introductory physics and chemistry. He persuaded the school to hire Grover as a bookkeeper and as teacher of the basic subjects — reading, writing, arithmetic, geography — to the younger students. Neither brother was trained to teach and it was a matter of staying one step ahead of the students. [7]
The food at the school was poor, the pay was low, and the buildings were cold and damp. A martinet superintendent made life miserable for students and faculty alike. The Cleveland brothers would later recall their time at the institute as the bleakest in their lives. [7]
Reflecting their lifelong friendship, Crosby prepared a series of recollections of Cleveland's days at the institute for his first run for the White House. [7] She spoke of Cleveland as a hard worker who encouraged her to stand her ground against the domineering superintendent. [8]
William Bell Wait, a teacher at the institute, invented New York Point, a system of writing for the blind that enjoyed wide use in the United States before the Braille system was adopted. Wait also invented the Kleidograph, a typewriter with twelve keys for embossing New York Point on paper.
Ed Lucas, a sports writer, broadcaster and motivational speaker, was a student.
The NYISE is part of the 4201 Schools Association in New York.
Samuel Gridley Howe was an American physician, abolitionist, and advocate of education for the blind. He organized and was the first director of the Perkins Institution. In 1824 he had gone to Greece to serve in the revolution as a surgeon; he also commanded troops. He arranged for support for refugees and brought many Greek children back to Boston with him for their education.
Perkins School for the Blind, in Watertown, Massachusetts, was founded in 1829 and is the oldest school for the blind in the United States. It has also been known as the Perkins Institution for the Blind.
Frances Jane van Alstyne, more commonly known as Fanny J. Crosby, was an American mission worker, poet, lyricist, and composer. She was a prolific hymnist, writing more than 8,000 hymns and gospel songs, with more than 100 million copies printed. She is also known for her teaching and her rescue mission work. By the end of the 19th century, she was a household name.
The Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons is the medical school of Columbia University, located at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.
Johann Bernhard Basedow was a German educational reformer, teacher and writer. He founded the Philanthropinum, a short-lived but influential progressive school in Dessau, and was the author of "Elementarwerk", a popular illustrated textbook for children.
Thomas Braidwood (1715–1806) was a Scottish educator, significant in the history of deaf education. He was the founder of Britain's first school for the deaf.
The North Dakota School for the Deaf (NDSD) is a state-funded residential school located in Devils Lake, North Dakota that provides services to meet the educational needs of children who are deaf and hard of hearing. NDSD is under the direction, control, and management of the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction. The current superintendent of the school is Donna Sorensen.
The Grand Contraband Camp was located in Elizabeth City County, Virginia, on the Virginia Peninsula near Fort Monroe, during and immediately after the American Civil War. The area was a refuge for escaped slaves who the Union forces refused to return to their former Confederate masters, by defining them as "contraband of war". The Grand Contraband Camp was the first self-contained black community in the United States and occupied the area of the downtown section of the present-day independent city of Hampton, Virginia.
Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst is the Herman and George R. Brown Chair and director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. His research primarily focuses on program evaluation, teacher quality, preschools, national and international student assessments, reading instruction, education technology, and education data systems.
The system of education in Iceland is divided in four levels: playschool, compulsory, upper secondary and higher, and is similar to that of other Nordic countries. Education is mandatory for children aged 6–16. Most institutions are funded by the state; there are very few private schools in the country. Iceland is a country with gymnasia.
Frank Haven Hall was an American inventor and essayist who is credited with inventing the Hall braille writer and the stereographer machine. He also invented the first successful mechanical point writer and developed major functions of modern day typography with kerning and tracking.
Howard Hille Johnson was a blind American educator and writer in the states of Virginia and West Virginia. Johnson was instrumental in the establishment of the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind in 1870, after which he taught blind students at the institution's School for the Blind for 43 years.
The Halifax School for the Deaf was an institution in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, which opened on 4 August 1856. It was the first school of the deaf in Atlantic Canada. There was later a dispute over who the true founder was, William Gray (1806-1881), a deaf Scottish immigrant who was the first teacher in the back room of a house in Argyle Street, or George Tait (1828-1904), another deaf Scot, who claimed to have been the driving force behind the establishment of the school. Gray was sacked in 1870 for being intoxicated and for threatening pupils with violence.
John Dennison Russ was an American physician and co-founder of the New York Institute for the Blind and The Children's Village with 23 others.
L. Braille Special educational centre for blind children is a specialized educational institution located at Krasinski street 10 in Bydgoszcz, Poland.
John T. Outhouse was the first public school teacher in Portland, Oregon. He taught in Portland from 1851 to 1853.
Edith Bryan was an English teacher of the deaf, who after teaching in England and Ireland, emigrated to Australia and became one of the educators who contributed to the development of Special Education in Queensland. Though trained in the oralist tradition, she supported the use of sign language and fingerspelling for teaching purposes. From 1901 to 1926, she was the head teacher of the school operated by the Queensland Blind Deaf and Dumb Institute. An activist, she pressed for the training of special education students to become mandatory, and fought for their teachers to be paid the same salaries as other teachers. From 1926 to 1937 she taught at the Queensland school where she became responsible for the courses for deaf students. After her retirement, she volunteered at the Edith Bryan Hostel, a facility that offered housing and medical assistance to deaf citizens. She is considered to be one of the two most influential pioneers of special education in Queensland.
The establishment of schools and institutions specializing in deaf education has a history spanning back across multiple centuries. They utilized a variety of instructional approaches and philosophies. The manner in which the language barrier is handled between the hearing and the deaf remains a topic of great controversy. Many of the early establishments of formalized education for the deaf are currently acknowledged for the influence they've contributed to the development and standards of deaf education today.
Thomas Mark Lucas was a British educator of the blind, founder of the Royal London Society for Blind People, and developer of the Lucas tactile alphabet system, an alternative to the Braille system of reading for the blind.
Samuel Akerly was an American physician, superintendent of the New York Institution for the Deaf from 1821 to 1831, and co-founder and president of the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind from 1831 to 1842.
The New-York Institute for the Blind, Thirty-fourth-street and Ninth-avenue, celebrated its fifty-first anniversary last night by an entertainment and exhibition given by the blind pupils of the institute.
[...] the oldest school of its kind in the country, will mark its hundredth anniversary this week. The school was founded by Dr. Samuel Akerly and Samuel Wood. Its first director was Dr. John D. Russ and its first students were three blind orphan boys.
Frances Jane Crosby was born in a Brewster farmhouse in 1820. While still an infant she was blinded when her mother was mistakenly advised to apply mustard plasters to her eyes to treat discharges caused by a cold.
The Pre-presidential Career of Grover Cleveland.