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Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech – Lessons from the 1918 Flu Pandemic applied to COVID-19

Our Reach.

Since our founding in 1867, Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech (formerly Clarke School for the Deaf) has prepared children who are deaf or hard of hearing to succeed in mainstream schools and the wider world. But soon after its 50th anniversary, Clarke faced catastrophe.

In 1918, an influenza pandemic began spreading worldwide. One-third of the global population became infected, with records indicating an astonishing 50 million deaths.

In Clarke’s 1918-1919 annual report, Alexander Graham Bell, President of the Board, wrote:

“The year past has been one of grave problems for the school, but problems we feel bravely and wisely faced. The epidemic of influenza occurred at the opening of the year and undoubtedly its influence was felt long after its disappearance.”

In that school year, the Clarke community sadly lost several members. The school also matriculated 159 students in its elementary, primary and intermediate grades, with 14 graduates venturing off to new chapters—some bound for high school and others taking teaching jobs in California, Indiana, Georgia, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Canada. One graduate was even headed to the Carnegie Institute of Technology, the present-day College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

Through philanthropic generosity Clarke managed to support this number of students during a crisis.

In the annual report, Bell shared that there were significant financial losses during this time, which forced the organization to consider increasing fundraising efforts. So, to support the important work of the school, the Board voted to double the endowment.

“The school,” Bell wrote, “…cannot fail to engage the continued interest and support of those who stand ready to help forward educational and philanthropic work.”

By viewing philanthropy as a priority, Clarke leadership was able to support the needs of 159 children who were deaf or hard of hearing, providing them with the education and tools they needed to thrive.

Our Work: Clarke and COVID-19

Years later, Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech faces another crisis. The COVID-19 global pandemic has caused suffering and death, mass unemployment and an economic downturn—upending lives and taking a drastic toll on vulnerable communities.

Today and every day, Clarke is stepping up for the futures of the vulnerable. Our team’s response to the crisis has been inspiring. Clarke’s services have rapidly evolved from in-home, at-school and center-based learning, to meet the critical needs of our vulnerable community from afar. Clarke teachers of the deaf, speech-language pathologists, audiologists and early intervention specialists have gone above and beyond to ensure that all Clarke children are set up for success. Because without the ability to learn listening and language skills, access speech therapy and increase self-advocacy, their futures are in jeopardy. 

We have rallied as a community by delivering hundreds of virtual and remote classrooms, coaching sessions and learning experiences to infants, preschoolers, school-age children and families along the east coast.

Withstanding this swift transformation has been exceptionally difficult, but with the support of donors, local sponsors and foundations like the Johnson Scholarship Foundation, the Clarke team can continue to keep progress and learning on track for hundreds of students and families.

We now regularly see philanthropists uniting to support collective impact initiatives. Corporations are stepping up by making masks out of shopping bags, converting distilleries and perfumeries to sanitizer production facilities, increasing mobile data for free and writing large checks. All citizens, but especially our at-risk communities, rely on these initiatives for safety, connection and access to services.

Closing his letter in the 1918-1919 annual report, Alexander Graham Bell wrote, “The Corporation [Clarke] desires to urge upon friends of the school active interest and co-operation in this work.”

Your Role.

Now more than ever, Clarke relies on the support and generosity of many dedicated friends who believe in our work and mission. With this support, we can continue to provide every Clarke infant, child and school-age student with the tools and support they’ll need to sustain their listening and spoken language success through this historic event.

To learn more about how you can support Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech, please visit clarkeschools.org/donate.

Cindy Goldberg is the Chief Development Officer for Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech. She’s dedicated her career to helping children and communities thrive through strategic fundraising efforts. 

From the Classroom to the Boardroom – One Journey of Teaching Executive Functioning Skills

This content was republished with permission from Groves Academy. a grantee partner of the Johnson Scholarship Foundation. It was published originally in the February 2020 edition of “Connections,” Groves Academy’s biannual magazine. In response to COVID-19, the program and all of Groves Academy’s teaching went virtual earlier this year.

The Groves Upper School is midway through our second year of an exciting experiment – an experiment that has already begun to show promising results. It was a radical move, devoting an entire class period each day to explicitly teaching skills that many schools hope students will absorb more implicitly – executive functioning skills.

Executive functioning (EF) skills are the tools, strategies, and habits of thought and action that allow us to set and reach goals. Or, as one student put it, “Adulting 101.” It is a class about the brain, a class about new tools for work and learning, and a class for thinking strategically about success, setbacks, and growth. Students engage in daily mindfulness practice, and connect what is happening in the classroom now to the life that awaits them and the goals they have set for themselves outside of a classroom’s four walls. They explore their own learning profile to build a strength-based narrative of who they are and move towards self-advocacy.

As I tell my students each September, I want them to learn at 16 what I, an adult with ADHD, did not really learn until I was 26 – how to own and even love your strengths and weaknesses, how to relate what you do day to day to the bigger passions and values that fuel your life, and how to plan it out and get it done with the brain you have, not the brain you wish you had.

Group of students in front of hockey stick statue

One of the best experiences we have had as students and as teachers has been working with a curriculum from a dyslexia education and advocacy organization called Noticeability (founded by Dean Bragonier, who was the 2018 Groves Gala speaker). In the Entrepreneurs and Innovators curriculum, our students formed small groups, came up with creative solutions to problems big and small, and fine-tuned sleek, professional pitch presentations that offered a value proposition to a target market. They delivered these pitches at our culminating “Groves (Shark) Tank” event held last May. Local entrepreneurs, HR bigwigs, and corporate marketing types descended on the school (along with the KARE 11 news van), and our students blew their proverbial socks off.

It could have ended there, but for five of our executive functioning students, the moment they spent basking in the glow of a successful Groves Tank was the calm eye of the storm. Mr. Bragonier, the aforementioned Gala speaker and mastermind behind the Noticeability curriculum, is quite the dapper dresser, a bit of a clotheshorse actually. That is to say, Dean knows a good thing when he sees it.

In our case, the ‘good thing’ in question was a doozy – what he saw was the same potential in our students that we see, and he knew where it could take them. Their idea, shoes that have replaceable soles, and soles suited to a variety of purposes, athletic or otherwise, caught his attention. When he saw their prototype (a dissected Nike sneaker with sole held firmly in place by 3M hook-and-loop and a sliding clasp harvested from a Nerf gun) they captured his imagination. It turns out that Dean knows a guy who knows a guy, and that guy is in the shoe business.

After a few breathlessly optimistic conference calls and a little help from a pillar Groves family that saw the same great opportunity for our students that we did, I was able to make some of the most exciting phone calls of my life, calls to my students that went something like this:

ME: Do you remember our Groves Tank from last spring?

STUDENT: called by a teacher in the middle of summer…Yes?

ME: Do you want a chance to do your pitch presentation again?

STUDENT: knows something is up…Ye-Yes?

ME: Do you want to fly to Boston with the rest of your team to pitch your shoe idea to New Balance?

STUDENT: screams in growing comprehension and glee

 

Yeah, that was lots of fun.

You know how grandparents can tell you how great their grandchildren are without it being bragging because, well, that’s their privilege as grandparents? I hope something similar applies to teachers and their students. If not, you’re about to hear me brag a little bit.

Student holding a nike shoe

As I tell you about the trip, I could tell you about the excitement my students felt in a new city. I could tell you about the eager (dare I say aspirational?) stroll we took through Harvard’s campus, about the meals we ate (high schoolers really know how to put an omelet away in a hurry), or even about the pitch itself, but the highlight of the trip was seeing my students step boldly into an adult world and get accepted by its rules, succeeding on its terms.

First of all, my students were prepared. They reworked their presentation (new audience, new purpose, new presentation), they knew each other’s areas of strength, they trusted each other to support and offset their relative weaknesses, and on game day they knew each other’s roles as well as their own. After a day of travel and a night of diligent rehearsal in their hotel room, my students were hardly nervous.

On the bus ride to New Balance’s corporate campus, I considered how far they had come, and what they were about to do. New Balance knows footwear, it is their industry, and accordingly, blowing their socks off would be a bit of a challenge.

I knew our students had accomplished something amazing when their pitch had ended and New Balance’s lead designers and product managers could barely wait their turns to give them feedback. In a standout moment, one of the designers whispered something to Ken Thornby, our host and New Balance’s general manager, and Ken gave his assent; the designer had asked to give the Groves group “the same kind of feedback [they] give each other.”

He walked them through some of the practical aspects of their shoe—where the foot puts stress on the sole, other ways they might attach their swappable soles, and he gave them sound advice about narrowing their focus and fine-tuning their market.

Would my students see this as criticism? Would they be discouraged? I should have had more faith. On the contrary, this meant the world to my students, and to me – they had gotten the nod, the implicit “you belong here” from someone who would know.

What happened next? After their celebratory lunch, did our victorious students run amok in Harvard Square, window shopping and blowing their spending money on ice cream and gift shop tchotchkes, the way I might have at that age?

Of course not. They went back to our hotel to hold a stakeholder’s meeting.

Yeah, I think this executive functioning thing might have legs.

This unique student enrichment experience was made possible thanks to the generosity of the Sanger Family Foundation- Steve, Karen, Mark and Ashley


Executive Functioning: In the Classroom and Beyond
At Groves Academy students engage in experiences designed to foster self-awareness and to develop their executive functioning skills – the brain’s ability to coordinate the thinking and behavior needed to start, sustain, monitor, and adjust attitudes and behaviors needed to achieve a goal. Groves teachers provide the tools, strategies, and opportunities for metacognition that equip students to reflect on their own patterns of thinking and behavior. Social and emotional learning at Groves Academy empowers students to understand themselves and to interact with others in meaningful and productive ways. This occurs in a nurturing environment where students learn from both success and failure.

9th-grade focus
Training the Student Brain for School and Learning
10th-grade focus
Self-Discovery: Finding Your “Why”
11th-grade focus
Leadership: Setting the Course
& Leading the Way

12th-grade focus
Legacy: What Comes Next & What We Leave Behind

A Desire to Heal Unseen Pain Drives Senior’s Calling

The following is an excerpt from an essay written by a graduating senior in the Johnson Scholars-Take Stock in Children (JSTSIC) Program, a college readiness program that is a partnership between the School District of Palm Beach CountyTake Stock in Children Palm Beach County and the Johnson Scholarship Foundation. We will feature other student authors in the coming weeks.

In modern-day society, I‘m categorized as an African American woman. But my Haitian culture runs deeper than the outward appearance of my skin. Where I’m from, our struggles are both mental and physical. According to the Borgen Project, a nonprofit organization combating poverty in Haiti, “59 percent of Haitians live on less than $2 a day.” Knowing that my culture is a place that is constantly fighting depression inspired me to become a successful psychologist in the future. In this role, I would like to appeal to the biased and skeptical individuals that would see therapy as a weakness.

While accomplishing the process of getting my psychology degree, I’ll have the ability to help people understand and manage their problems by identifying their strengths and available resources. No one is perfect, so it’s important to have those people who can evaluate an individual holistically and view the scope of their problems. I hope to expand my career into social work. I would like to help children that are in danger mentally, physically, and sexually. Once I receive the degree I’m going to help people overcome all the issues they are facing. Lastly, I will have an ongoing business for low-income families that need help but can’t afford it. With the knowledge I gain, I’ll take it back to my culture and help them relieve some of their stress.

Ednisha Vertus standing in front of school building.

Leadership, public speaking and service work are roles that I play in my everyday life. I wouldn’t describe my capabilities as skills because skills are things that are learned and taught, while capabilities originate from within. I will lead my future clients towards the right path to overcome obstacles that are blocking their success. I shall inspire them to be a better version of themselves, and not let anyone categorize them. There is a solution to everything; you just have to be willing to find it and work for it. When I do become a psychologist, I would like to lower the suicidal death rate by encouraging people to form a plan to solve their problems.

There are many things that I am grateful for but most importantly is my eyesight. A tragic accident when I was 6 resulted in me being stabbed in my eye. This incident caused me to realize that there are many different types of hidden pain a person can feel. It allowed me to view world issues from a different perspective. As I was teased about the Band-Aid on my eyelid, no one knew how I felt inside. They saw the outcome of my accident and assumed to know my feelings. With all the pain I’ve experienced mentally and physically I want everyone to know that me becoming a psychologist is not something I decided for myself, but what I truly believe is my calling on this earth.

Ednisha Vertus is a senior at Lake Worth High School in Florida and a participant in the Johnson Scholars-Take Stock in Children (JSTSIC) Program.