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The Star School staff of the Engaged Learners project at the New Mexico School for the Deaf in Santa Fe has completed its fourth year of a 5-year federally-funded program. This project aims to improve language-teaching practices of teachers who work with learners who are deaf by providing training in current bilingual theories and pedagogical techniques, including Engaged Learning practices, through a convergence of Internet, Web, and distance learning technologies. The project promotes proficiency in American Sign Language (ASL) and English for all students based on the belief that bilingualism enhances cognitive, social, and linguistic growth. This publication describes the projects fourth year activities and the overall project impact. Information is provided on: (1) participating teachers and mentors; (2) training materials; (3) teachers experimentation with ASL/English bilingual assessment for students with deafness and teachers written reflections on the training; (3) teachers utilization of technology while using ASL and English; (4) plans to refine and revise the staff development model in the projects fifth year; and (6) the establishment of the Center for ASL/English Bilingual Education and Research. More than 163 teachers and over 500 students participated during the first 4 years of the project. (CR)

This report covers year 3 of a 5-year longitudinal study that is applying a bilingual language approach to development of American Sign Language (ASL) and English language and literacy skills in deaf learners. Specifically, the report describes how 45 teachers and mentors in five residential schools participated in inservice training on the use of bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) methodologies and practices with deaf children. Teachers kept written reflective logs as they participated in weekly seminars for 24 weeks. Conclusions of the project to date support a dual language developmental bilingual approach in ASL and English but do not support the mixing of languages as in a sign-supported speech environment. Implications of the project include increased use of bilingual and ESL methodologies in inservice teacher training and a closer attention to background variables of deaf students as they affect language learning. Conclusions also suggest that many public school programs are failing deaf students and exacerbating their language delays, that schools for the deaf need to reform their language teaching and learning environments, and that widespread mainstreaming of young deaf children without ASL and deaf culture support is not working. Six appendices provide teaching training syllabi, questionnaires, and other project related materials. (Contains 52 references.) (DB)

This paper reports on a case study of four African American hearing parents who participated in an intervention project involving reading story books to their deaf/hard-of-hearing (hh) young children. The study included the utilization of: (1) research-based literacy strategies for both hearing and deaf/hh children; (2) African-American cultural role models and mentors, both hearing and hearing impaired; (3) cultural books featuring African-American characters and themes; and (4) American Sign Language for communication purposes. Parent training sessions were in the parents' homes and included videotaping the parent reading/signing to their child and provision of feedback to parents based on a checklist of desirable literacy strategies. Among results of the intervention were the following: parents learned to modify reading strategies to fit the specific literacy needs of their deaf/hh child; parents began utilizing sign language more for daily communication; parents were exposed to African-American deaf culture and deaf culture in general; and the children were provided with a strong literacy model (their parent). (DB)

The New Mexico School for the Deaf, Santa Fe, was awarded a five-year federal grant to improve language teaching practices of teachers working with children who are deaf by using current bilingual theories and pedagogical techniques, including "engaged learning" practices and educational technology. The project developed and refined the American Sign Language (ASL)/English Bilingual Staff Development Model for practicing K-12 teachers in five state residential schools for students with deafness. This report discusses activities and outcomes of year two of the five-year project. The first section of the report discusses the theoretical framework of the ASL/English Bilingual Staff Development Model. Section 2 describes the project's activities, including a technology plan for the next three years. Sections 3 and 4 discuss significant findings of three of the residential schools' teacher reflective logs, and conclude with excerpts of teachers' comments. Section 5 examines and discusses the significant issues of the complexity of assessing language of students with deafness, and describes assessment instruments such as signing attitude and reading and writing attitude surveys. It also discusses the assessment instruments for project teachers. The last section describes the family computer loan program. Appendices include further information on the ASL/English Bilingual Staff Development Model. (Contains 45 references.) (CR)

The New Mexico School for the Deaf was awarded a five-year federal grant to implement and test a proposed bilingual/ESL model for students with deafness acquiring and learning two languages. The Star Schools project also was tasked with designing an effective system of staff development within residential schools for the deaf to guide teachers in the use of effective instruction to maximize students' affective, cognitive, social, American Sign Language (ASL) proficiency, English literacy acquisition, and academic achievement through the use of two languages: ASL and English. This report summarizes the first year's research on the implementation of staff development for teachers of children with deafness. Fifteen elementary school teachers from two residential schools for the deaf participated in a year-long staff development program. This program included 36 hours of seminars in bilingual/ESL theories. Analysis of reflective logs indicate that the seminars prodded teachers to reexamine their beliefs about how students with deafness acquire language and literacy. Appendices include course syllabi and answers to questions regarding bilingualism, first and second language acquisition, and teaching techniques that emerged from discussions with teachers and other professionals concerned with implementing bilingual education for students with deafness. (Contains more than 200 references.) (CR)

This paper reviews the role of deaf teachers in the education of deaf children and urges the hiring of such teachers, especially in Texas. Part 1 presents current data on deaf teachers in Texas and the nation, reviews the history of deaf teachers, considers the modern day preparation of deaf teachers and some court cases supporting deaf teachers under the Americans with Disabilities Act. It finds that barriers such as standardized testing, lack of support services, discrimination, and lack of awareness of deafness among principals in hiring positions are keeping deaf professionals out of schools. Part 2 discusses curriculum, staffing, and strategies that universities can use to train deaf teachers in schools and programs with deaf children. It emphasizes the need for additional deaf teachers and administrators as well as deaf professionals who represent ethnic minority groups and urges a curriculum containing courses on: deaf children with additional disabilities, legal issues and deafness, American Sign Language, multiculturalism, educational technology; and speech and audiology. In addition, practices and student backing should be included. Also important in such programs is deaf culture sensitivity and leadership training. (Contains 64 references.) (DB)

As part of a larger study on the levels experienced by deaf children in acquiring knowledge about printed letters, words, and stories, an investigation was undertaken to discover the effects of a reciprocal teaching method on deaf children's learning of four prereading skills--finger spelling, book reading, story reciting, and word recognition. Subjects, 23 prelingually deaf kindergarten and first grade students with severe-to-profound and profound hearing losses, met in groups of five or six for 30 minutes each week with the teacher. The teacher read and signed an experimental storybook containing three to five new words in a picture context with a manual sign illustration. After discussing the new signs, the children performed a number of activities involving the four target skills. In addition, the children took the books home to read with siblings, parents, and friends. Gains made in prereading were measured through pretesting and posttesting. Results indicated that the reciprocal teaching procedure could build prereading skills in young deaf children. The training was beneficial for students with a wide range of abilities. (FL)

Evidence from a nine-month longitudinal study of deaf children's early attempts at learning to read provides the construct for an instructional model that stresses that even though the children may have, at the least, a meager expressive sign language vocabulary, they can be lead successfully through the holophrastic or one-word stage of reading development by matching signs and meaning to print. In addition, the evidence identifies three levels of change in this word-reading development. At the first level, the child knows about printed word symbols, can handle a book properly, and begins to attend to stories and label pictures with manual signs. At the next level, the child can: recognize words on food labels, cereal boxes, and road signs in picture contexts; recognize the alphabet using finger spelling; read and print a first name; and attempt to sequence and recall stories. During the third level, the child rapidly increases a sight-word vocabulary, spelling and printing knowledge, and story reciting and sequencing abilities. Two classroom experiments and parent interviews provide additional evidence to support this instructional model. The findings of these efforts suggest that children's communicative interactions about reading related activities using finger spelling and manual signs with parents, teachers, or peers act as precursors to and possibly shape the reading acquisition process that follows. (HOD)