Tucker Maxon School is a non-profit preschool to fifth grade elementary school for the deaf and hard of hearing (DHH). It was founded in 1947 with a goal of teaching deaf children how to talk, and still retains its auditory-oral focus. Today, however, the school’s student body is a mix of both DHH children and typical-hearing children, and teachers are assisted by new technology like cochlear implants and Bluetooth.
Tucker Maxon emphasizes spoken and written learning. American Sign Language, while offered as an after school club, is not required. The school aims to guide kids into their local, language-speaking middle school by the end of 5th grade, a process known in the DHH world as “mainstreaming.” This focus on developing spoken language was once seen as an attack on deaf culture in the 1980s, at a time when the national philosophy of “Oralism” (or “Audism”) motivated the ban against ASL in the classroom. Since then, the school has undergone many changes.
There are many diverse levels of hearing at Tucker Maxon. The majority of the kindergarten through fifth grade student body is composed of individuals with “typical” hearing. Fifteen percent of that total suffer either complete hearing loss or are hard of hearing, according to Jim Klein, Operations Manager at Tucker Maxon. Klein believes that this diversity fosters community.
“What is really special is that you’ll see the kids being advocates for each other,” Klein said. “They will step up when one of their friends is struggling.”
In the late 1800’s, American Sign Language was banned in American and European schools for close to a century. Educators at the time were proponents of a highly controversial philosophy called Oralism, which emphasized spoken language and assimilating deaf or hard of hearing children into society using verbal language and lip reading, a process that some classified as an erasure of deaf culture.
It wasn’t until 2010 when the Milan Congress officially lifted the blanket bans on ASL in the classroom, an act shortly followed by an official apology to the deaf community in 2013. Since then, many DHH schools have adopted ASL as a primary form of communication. Other schools, like Tucker Maxon, still prioritizes auditory learning while stating that they “respect all forms of communication and a parent’s right to choose what is best for their child.”
The school is home to its own audiologist and sound booth. The booth, a small sound protected room, is used to administer clinical hearing tests. Some students may need more help with comprehension in the classroom while others may have an easier experience via the assistance of technology.
A cochlear implant is a surgically implanted hearing device that combats hearing loss by stimulating the auditory nerve directly. The device is implanted via a small incision behind the ear, allowing an electrode to attach to a small fluid-filled organ called the cochlea. However, despite the fact that children can receive implants as early as nine months old, most still miss important early language development.
Much of the job of teaching DHH kids is making up for lost time. According to Cheryl Fischer, the school’s reading specialist, children who haven’t experienced language when they’re young struggle with connecting the concepts of letters, syllables, words and meaning. These building blocks of language are known as “phonological awareness.”
“When you’re a kid, you play with rhyme, alliteration and rhythm,” Fischer said. “Bat, cat, mat. That’s building phonological awareness.”
To make up for this lost comprehension of language, DHH educators like Fischer rely on multisensory games, activities and classroom props. Students may slide their feet across letters placed on the ground to emphasize the concept of blending syllables into a word or use small color-coded blocks to connect letters.
DHH educators must also be hyperaware of their speech. Words in a lecture are easy to miss if you rely entirely or partially on lip reading, especially in a classroom setting.
“Eye contact is really important,” said Kyle Watson, an elementary teacher at Tucker Maxon. “It helps them pick up on emotion and read lips easier.”
The school has speakers placed at the back of some classrooms that connect to small microphones teachers wear around their necks. For those with cochlear implants, the connection is even more direct. The microphones can connect via Bluetooth to head implants, and the instructor doesn’t have to worry about their distance from the kids.
Despite these accommodations, over 80% of the school’s student body is typical-hearing. Kat Selah, the volunteer president of Tucker Maxon’s new parent-teacher organization and parent of two students, believes that the school offers a strong alternative curriculum with an emphasis on reading comprehension.
“We started out in public school and my oldest was having a really hard time getting the support he needed by the end of second grade, he couldn’t really read,” Selah said. “We looked at Tucker, and we knew because of their experience with deaf and hard of hearing kids they had a lot of extra learning supports, particularly around reading and speech. It seemed like a really natural fit for our family.”
According to Selah, having such a mixed student body is beneficial for diversity and inclusion. An auditory-oral focus does not only benefit DHH students, but is also a highly effective education for children who otherwise struggle with reading comprehension.
“The benefits are an access to diversity and being able to have conversations about ableism and different forms of ability from a very early age, which I think is so essential,” Selah said. “Because of the school, there is actually a pretty high population of kids who are neurodivergent and have different developmental challenges. There’s just a lot of exposure to different learning styles and different abilities within the school.”
