American School for the Deaf Adjusts Well to Reality

The Hartford Courant has an excellent article, "A Study of Adaptation," examining how the American School for the Deaf has adapted to the new realities of deafness. Many of their students have cochlear implants, and students come and go, leaving to attend mainstream programs and returning as needed or desired. The article is well illustrated (an accompanying video is not captioned), and clearly makes the point that the implanted students are still deaf. In fact, when one child forgets the external parts of his implant, he has to rely on sign language and speechreading to communicate at school that day. Kids will be kids.