More than 100 years later, DePaul School for Hearing and Speech's heroic work persists | KD Sunday Spotligh
In this modern day and age, there's never been a better time for technological help, and there's no better location than the support you'll find in Pittsburgh, specifically at the nonprofit DePaul School for Hearing and Speech.
Children attending the school can talk, but hearing is a vital step they're missing in communicating.
Teacher Lindsay Diethorn said she became a teacher here after working as an audiologist.
"Hearing loss is a developmental emergency," said Diethorn. "As an audiologist at Children's Hospital, I have had the experience of giving a family the diagnosis that their baby can't hear, and it can be devastating for some families. All of our intermediate families' units that work with our elementary age kids have educational audiologists, speech language pathologists, and they're all staffed with teachers of the deaf that help all these kids, and we're in a very fortunate place."
She said a lot of these students come in with no language or auditory skills at all. The key to bridging that gap is early intervention.
"We are among a very small handful of schools in the country that offer listening and spoken language beyond kindergarten," DePaul School for Hearing and Speech Executive Director, Dr. Ruth Auld, said.
From infancy through age 15, the learning continues with extra support for school-aged students who come here from all over the country, for the wrap-around services.
"It's amazing, we are unlocking that child's life while allowing her to become who she has the potential to become," said Dr. Auld.
As a nonprofit, the state provides free buses to DePaul School for Hearing and Speech. In Pennsylvania, hearing aids and cochlear implants are paid for by Medicaid.
Inside the classroom, the heroic work of learning to talk takes place with the help of a microphone and Bluetooth connected to those devices.
10-year-old, Depaul School for the Hearing and Speech student, Hunter Sotiriou said, the devices make them cool, he emphasized "extra cool."
It's game-changing learning at the school that's opening doors. Sotiriou said it's a joy to be able to hear and have conversations, "we can hear so many stories or something in their lives."
Small class sizes mean one-on-one instruction.
"By the time they leave, and they are standing at their preschool graduation, and they were saying my name is 'so and so'… and I'm five years old and I'm going to kindergarten, and you know that you had a really big part in that. It's kind of really amazing," said Diethorn.
It's amazing changes thanks to a nonprofit school dedicated to closing the gap in language skills for the deaf and hard of hearing.
The DePaul School for Hearing and Speech is recognized by the state's department of education as approved for public funding, but it has a private school license, meaning it receives no money from taxes, and it's mainly donation-based.
For more information on DePaul School for Hearing and Speech, click here.