Summit Speech School

Last updated
Summit Speech School
Summit Speech School exterior view.jpg
Location
Summit Speech School
New Providence, NJ, USA [1] [2]
Information
Established1967 [3]
PrincipalHoward Helfman [4]
Staff50 [5]
Number of students130; [6] 180; [5] 200; [3]
(estimates vary)
Website www.summitspeech.org
The building was converted from industrial space and has high ceilings, wide corridors and a spacious environment. Classroom for children at Summit Speech School.jpg
The building was converted from industrial space and has high ceilings, wide corridors and a spacious environment.
The open half-donut seating arrangement improves chances for communication between a teacher and several students. Childrens learning area at Summit Speech School.jpg
The open half-donut seating arrangement improves chances for communication between a teacher and several students.

The Summit Speech School is a year-round [5] educational institution based in New Providence, Union County, New Jersey, United States, which assists children in northern and central New Jersey who have difficulty hearing. [6] [7] The school uses an approach which has been described variously as an oral-option [8] or auditory-oral [6] or auditory-aural [9] method, in the sense that the program helps children "to listen and talk without the use of sign language". [3] The school receives funding from various sources, [3] [10] [11] [12] including the Junior League of Summit [13] and the State of New Jersey. [5] It hosts benefits to raise funds. [14] [15] According to a report in 2010, fund-raising is on-going and ranges from $800,000 to $1 million a year. [5] It has been assisted in the past by volunteers. [16] [17] An introduction to music had been provided by renowned educator Capitola Dickerson for thirty years. [18]

Contents

History

The Summit Speech School was formed in 1967 with assistance from the Junior League and with efforts by volunteers such as Diane Hunt Lawrence. [19] The first building was located near Overlook Hospital. [5] In the nineteen eighties, pediatrician Arthur F. Ackerman was president. [20] The school moved to its present facility in New Providence in 1997 into a former warehouse. [21] Since 1997, according to one report, the building has been owned by the borough of New Providence. [5] In 2008, New Jersey was on the verge of passing Grace's Law, which requires health insurers to pay up to $1,000 per ear for hearing aids for children younger than fifteen years old, and the law was named for a former deaf student of the Summit Speech School named Grace. [22] In 2009, volunteers including Betse Gump helped set up libraries for the children at the school. [23] In 2010, the school was visited by Mary Pat Christie, the First Lady of New Jersey and wife of Governor Chris Christie. [5]

Programs

Most children served by the school have severe hearing loss which can hamper their ability to comprehend speech in any environment with substantial background noise. [9] Director Pamela Paskowitz said that the school tries to help particularly young children by teaching them to speak "clearly and often" and to use devices such as cochlear implants. [5] According to a previous director:

The natural reaction of a parent hearing that the child is deaf is to stop talking to the baby, and that's the very worst thing they can do. At that point they need to just pour language into that child. But they need somebody to help them realize that the child must wear his hearing aids or he's not getting any of the language that they're putting into him.

— Ann Buckley, Summit Speech School, 1992 [9]

The school offers several programs which vary based on the age of the child:

  1. Parent-infant program to help parents of children under age three. [3] [5] [9] [11]
  2. Classroom instruction for children from ages three to six years old [5] [9] which alternates between "small group language lessons and large group activities". [5]
  3. For older children, teachers of the deaf work with students and classroom teachers at approximately forty New Jersey schools. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hearing loss</span> Partial or total inability to hear

Hearing loss is a partial or total inability to hear. Hearing loss may be present at birth or acquired at any time afterwards. Hearing loss may occur in one or both ears. In children, hearing problems can affect the ability to acquire spoken language, and in adults it can create difficulties with social interaction and at work. Hearing loss can be temporary or permanent. Hearing loss related to age usually affects both ears and is due to cochlear hair cell loss. In some people, particularly older people, hearing loss can result in loneliness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cochlear implant</span> Prosthesis

A cochlear implant (CI) is a surgically implanted neuroprosthesis that provides a person who has moderate-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss with sound perception. With the help of therapy, cochlear implants may allow for improved speech understanding in both quiet and noisy environments. A CI bypasses acoustic hearing by direct electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. Through everyday listening and auditory training, cochlear implants allow both children and adults to learn to interpret those signals as speech and sound.

Lip reading, also known as speechreading, is a technique of understanding a limited range of speech by visually interpreting the movements of the lips, face and tongue without sound. Estimates of the range of lip reading vary, with some figures as low as 30% because lip reading relies on context, language knowledge, and any residual hearing. Although lip reading is used most extensively by deaf and hard-of-hearing people, most people with normal hearing process some speech information from sight of the moving mouth.

Oralism is the education of deaf students through oral language by using lip reading, speech, and mimicking the mouth shapes and breathing patterns of speech. Oralism came into popular use in the United States around the late 1860s. In 1867, the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, was the first school to start teaching in this manner. Oralism and its contrast, manualism, manifest differently in deaf education and are a source of controversy for involved communities. Listening and Spoken Language, a technique for teaching deaf children that emphasizes the child's perception of auditory signals from hearing aids or cochlear implants, is how oralism continues on in the current day.

Unilateral hearing loss (UHL) is a type of hearing impairment where there is normal hearing in one ear and impaired hearing in the other ear.

Speech delay, also known as alalia, refers to a delay in the development or use of the mechanisms that produce speech. Speech – as distinct from language – is the actual process of making sounds, using such organs and structures as the lungs, vocal cords, mouth, tongue, teeth, etc. Language delay refers to a delay in the development or use of the knowledge of language.

Manually coded languages (MCLs) are a family of gestural communication methods which include gestural spelling as well as constructed languages which directly interpolate the grammar and syntax of oral languages in a gestural-visual form—that is, signed versions of oral languages. Unlike the sign languages that have evolved naturally in deaf communities, these manual codes are the conscious invention of deaf and hearing educators, and as such lack the distinct spatial structures present in native deaf sign languages. MCLs mostly follow the grammar of the oral language—or, more precisely, of the written form of the oral language that they interpolate. They have been mainly used in deaf education in an effort to "represent English on the hands" and by sign language interpreters in K-12 schools, although they have had some influence on deaf sign languages where their implementation was widespread.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing</span> U.S. non-profit organization

The Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, also known as AG Bell, is an organization that aims to promote listening and spoken language among people who are deaf and hard of hearing. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with chapters located throughout the United States and a network of international affiliates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atlanta Speech School</span> School in Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, United States

The Atlanta Speech School is a language and literacy school located in Atlanta, Georgia, established in 1938. The school provides educational and clinical programs. The Atlanta Speech School's Rollins Center provides professional development for teachers and educators in partner schools and preschools. The Rollins Center focuses on the eradication of illiteracy. The Rollins Center has an online presence called Cox Campus, which is an online learning environment with coursework targeted for the education of children age 0–8.

<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.

Auditory-verbal therapy is a method for teaching deaf children to listen and speak using their hearing technology. Auditory-verbal therapy emphasizes listening and seeks to promote the development of the auditory brain to facilitate learning to communicate through talking. It is based on the child's use of optimally fitted hearing technology.

Prelingual deafness refers to deafness that occurs before learning speech or language. Speech and language typically begin to develop very early with infants saying their first words by age one. Therefore, prelingual deafness is considered to occur before the age of one, where a baby is either born deaf or loses hearing before the age of one. This hearing loss may occur for a variety of reasons and impacts cognitive, social, and language development.

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.

Lexington School and Center for the Deaf comprises the Lexington School for the Deaf, the Lexington Hearing and Speech Center, Lexington Vocational Services, and the Lexington Center for Mental Health in New York City, aimed at serving the deaf and hard of hearing community.

Language acquisition is a natural process in which infants and children develop proficiency in the first language or languages that they are exposed to. The process of language acquisition is varied among deaf children. Deaf children born to deaf parents are typically exposed to a sign language at birth and their language acquisition follows a typical developmental timeline. However, at least 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents who use a spoken language at home. Hearing loss prevents many deaf children from hearing spoken language to the degree necessary for language acquisition. For many deaf children, language acquisition is delayed until the time that they are exposed to a sign language or until they begin using amplification devices such as hearing aids or cochlear implants. Deaf children who experience delayed language acquisition, sometimes called language deprivation, are at risk for lower language and cognitive outcomes. However, profoundly deaf children who receive cochlear implants and auditory habilitation early in life often achieve expressive and receptive language skills within the norms of their hearing peers; age at implantation is strongly and positively correlated with speech recognition ability. Early access to language through signed language or technology have both been shown to prepare children who are deaf to achieve fluency in literacy skills.

Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written with a lower case d. It later came to be used in a cultural context to refer to those who primarily communicate through sign language regardless of hearing ability, often capitalized as Deaf and referred to as "big D Deaf" in speech and sign. The two definitions overlap but are not identical, as hearing loss includes cases that are not severe enough to impact spoken language comprehension, while cultural Deafness includes hearing people who use sign language, such as children of deaf adults.

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Helen Louise Hulick Beebe was an American educator and pioneer of auditory-verbal therapy. In 1938, she made headlines when a judge jailed her for wearing trousers while appearing as a witness in court.

References

  1. ↑ "Summit Speech School speaker discusses interior design in cinema". Independent Press. March 4, 2011. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  2. ↑ Barbara Rybolt (April 20, 2009). "Around the Towns for the week of April 22: Speech School alumni reunite". Independent Press. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "Summit Speech School gets donation". Independent Press. December 16, 2011. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  4. ↑ "Summit Speech School Staff". Summit Speech School website. 2012-07-20. Retrieved 2012-07-20.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Liz Keill (July 7, 2010). "Governor's wife, Mary Pat Christie, visits Speech School in New Providence". Independent Press. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  6. 1 2 3 "About Summit Speech School". Summit Speech School website. 2012-07-19. Retrieved 2012-07-19. (from the website:) It is the mission of Summit Speech School to enable children who are deaf or hard of hearing to take their place in a hearing world by providing superior educational and therapeutic support services through an auditory/oral program.
  7. ↑ "Stephen W. Theriot joins Summit Speech School Board of Trustees". Independent Press. January 31, 2012. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  8. ↑ "Summit Speech School spring benefit has Reel Style". Independent Press. February 10, 2011. Retrieved 2012-07-21.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Susan Stock, New York Times News Service (October 1, 1992). "For The Deaf, A World Of Speech". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  10. ↑ "Deaths SAYLES, THOMAS D." The New York Times. May 17, 2004. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  11. 1 2 "Summit foundation awards $100K to help people with special needs". Independent Press. February 26, 2012. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  12. ↑ "Summit Area Public Foundation awards grant to Summit Speech School". Independent Press. February 4, 2012. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  13. ↑ "Junior League Summit awards $40,000 in Community Grants". Independent Press. August 19, 2010. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  14. ↑ "Summit Speech School hosts 22nd annual spring benefit". Independent Press. February 15, 2012. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  15. ↑ "Summit Speech School Spring Benefit presents Lloyd Boston, America's favorite style guy, April 28". Independent Press. March 1, 2009. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  16. ↑ "Peapack-Gladstone Bank announces new wealth management employees". Messenger-Gazette. June 16, 2012. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  17. ↑ "Prudence L. Waldmann". Star-Ledger. July 26, 2011. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  18. ↑ "Capitola "Cappie" Dickerson". Star-Ledger. June 18, 2012. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  19. ↑ "Obituaries: Diane Hunt Lawrence, conservationist, hiker, golfer, has died". Independent Press. January 26, 2010. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  20. ↑ "Arthur F. Ackerman, Pediatrician, Dies at 85". The New York Times. August 25, 1989. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  21. ↑ ANTOINETTE MARTIN (May 19, 2002). "In the Region/New Jersey; Converting Industrial Spaces Into School Buildings". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  22. ↑ Mike Frassinelli (December 30, 2008). "Codey plans to sign law requiring insurers to pay for kids' hearing aids". Star-Ledger. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
  23. ↑ "Summit's Betse Gump earns United Way's highest honors". Independent Press. October 2, 2009. Retrieved 2012-07-19.

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