For this post I have summarized an interview I did to a “Mestre d’Audició i Llanguatge (MALL)” during the 17-18 course. She worked at a grouping school* called La Vila (Palamos) and she told me her function at the school and how these types of schools work.
In her school they school children with hearing impairment or deafness and they try to make them spend the maximum of hours and classes with their fellow listeners, and at the same time, children learn to develop their language in the best way possible.
Professionals working at the school:
2 Speech Therapist form the CREDAG: they have 8 hours per week each and they are the reference point. They work on language at the level of word, phrase and text. Moreover, they produce a language profile, a layout and a report on the state of the student’s language. They also coordinate with the EAP specialists and the MALL teacher, and advise families on how to work at home with their children. At her school, sometimes families go to the school and they join their children’s class with the speech therapist in order to see how to work with their children and how are they working at the school.
EAP specialists: they go to the school from time to time and they test the students.
MALL: she has 10 hours per week with the children to help them develop and reinforce oral language correctly. To do that, she works with them individually or in the classroom and she elaborates different materials. In addition, she makes them tell her stories, give her conversation, etc. and she speaks with other specialists working with the children to evaluate their oral language level and see how they are evolving.
Class tutors: most of them are not specialized teachers in hearing impairment because they do not need anything more than to be teachers. Even so, sometimes they have some training with students with deficits. They do a lot of work with children in the classrooms.
Advantages of grouping schools:
Children do not feel alone in the classroom or at the school because they know that there are more children with the same problem.
Students with hearing problems mix and integrate with hearing students, making it normal for them to carry implants, hearing aids or vibrators. This fact also makes hearing children more knowledgeable about deafness and helps them create bonds and empathy towards the people who suffer from it.
For parents, one of the advantages is that they can meet families who are in the same situation as them and this can make them feel more accompanied.
From an educational point of view, having a deaf student in the classroom make teachers give more importance to oral language.
I also ask her if they teach sing language or only oral language and she answered that: “in this school we only teach oral language because we are not a special educational school or just for deaf students, so in order for them to feel integrated with other students, we only teach them oral language. Besides, I think that thanks to the implants they have achieved good hearing and most of them do not need to learn sign language. In some cases, it could also make them take a step back in their language learning.”
Even so, she told me that for her, a good model would be to combine sign language and oral language, without leaving behind oral language once they learn sign language.
These are some of the facts she explained me, I thought that it could be interesting to share this with you to know a little more about grouping schools. Do you know any in your region?
*Escola d’agrupament
Judit Capell
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