How the ‘Hogwarts of Idaho’ helped a local teenager and hundreds of other deaf and blind students
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- Опубликовано: 26 авг 2024
- #EastIdahoNews #Deaf #Blind
GOODING - Step into a high school reading class on a weekday afternoon and you’ll likely hear teenagers chatting, laughing and telling stories.
But inside one classroom in a unique central Idaho school, students aren’t using their voices to tell ‘The Three Little Pigs’; rather, they’re signing the story.
The dozens of teenagers are all deaf or hard of hearing and attend the Idaho School for the Deaf and the Blind. The first student to volunteer to stand in front of the class and sign part of the assignment is Reagan Sermon - an 18-year-old from Idaho Falls.
“I love this school and I wish I came here my whole life,” Reagan tells EastIdahoNews.com. “ASL is my native language which I learned first before I was speaking English.”
Reagan, the first of five children, was born deaf but his parents, Brooke and Jordan Sermon, did not know their son couldn’t hear them until a few years later.
“I can actually remember perfectly. Reagan and I were playing hide and go seek in a hotel room and I was hiding behind the bed yelling his name,” Jordan Sermon recalls. “He didn’t speak at that point, he was 2 years old, but I could vividly remember realizing he didn’t know where I was and he didn’t know where the sound was coming from.”
Doctor visits and tests revealed Reagan had bilateral sensorineural hearing loss - likely caused by a virus Brooke contracted while pregnant.
The young parents began learning sign language and enrolled Reagan in a preschool for deaf children.
“It was heartbreaking but also very encouraging that we could do something about helping him. We knew where to go and what to do,” Brooke Sermons says.
Reagan started wearing hearing aids and they helped. When it was time to attend public school in Idaho Falls, the district provided an interpreter for him.
Over time, Reagan’s hearing diminished and when he was 11, doctors cleared him to get a cochlear implant. The small electronic device electrically stimulates the cochlear nerve, the nerve for hearing. An external part sits behind the ear and picks up sounds with a microphone. It then processes the sound and transmits it to the internal part of the implant, allowing Reagan to hear.
“He said it was a whole new world. He didn’t know that your pencil made sound writing or the dog’s paws click on the floor. It was really neat,” Brooke says.
Reagan did well in elementary and middle school. He loved sports and had many friends but during his freshman year of high school, he decided it was time for a change.
“Reagan is always very outgoing and people are nice to him but sometimes it’s hard for him to fit into groups because he’s so one-on-one. Sometimes in group settings, he would really struggle in feeling socially accepted or included,” Jordan explains.
The Sermons had heard about the Idaho School for the Deaf and the Blind but had never been there. Over the years, Idaho Educational Services for the Deaf and the Blind regularly sent employees to eastern Idaho to meet with the Sermons and other families with deaf and blind children. Reagan’s family appreciated the outreach and decided to visit the Gooding campus to see what it was all about.
“I came here, toured it and at first sight, I loved it,” Reagan says. “When I first arrived, I had people - my peers - that had background experiences that were the same as mine so they understood where I came from.”
Brooke adds, “It was amazing. We felt it was the right place for him.”
The state-funded school is on 40 acres and has been in Gooding since 1910. Governor Frank Gooding donated his property after the original school for the deaf and the blind in Boise burned down.
Around 135 students who have special needs, are deaf, hard of hearing, blind or visually impaired currently attend the school.
“We have to have a student referred from their home school district and then we as a team we decide together what’s the least restrictive environment for each student,” says Janna Hasko, Principal and Special Education Director. “We really provide individual instruction for each of these programs and each of these populations specific to each student.”
The blind and visually impaired students learn together, so do the deaf and hard of hearing. A separate program for developmentally delayed adults is also offered and there is special education for younger kids.
Around 100 employees work at the school and there are on-site speech and physical therapists, audiologists, braille printing machines, nurses and other services.
Read the entire story here:
www.eastidahon...
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Reagan parents are gorgeous
An amazing school, amazing parents, amazing young man and Nate, you've done it again...you've brought good to the world!! 👏👏🙌🙌
Thank you to Nate and East Idaho News. What an incredible school for children. This is seriously an uplifting story of how professionals create places for joy and successes to occur. Reagan is destined to become an extraordinary man; maybe a yearly update about him and other graduates could be reported?
What a great place for these kids. Nate and EIN, thank you for bringing these kinds of stories to the forefront. While I don’t live in Idaho, I can find a similar school in my area that I can help.
TEARS... that's amazing on so many levels , I do not think that child could be held back from anything. Love success stories; the children, the teachers, the school, the community.businesses it's what is all good about America and her people.
Thanks Nat for bringing to the world another fabulously uplifting slice of life. I believe there are more of these stories than we could ever imagine that just have not been brought to light!
Beautifully written and so true!
This is so cool... what an awesome school for children to experience.
Thanks Nate! This was a very interesting and uplifting interview! 🙋❤️
I love this! Thanks for sharing! What an amazing school! What a sweet young guy!
Congrats!!! and good luck on your Mission
Wonderful
👋 Beautiful story!!
What a great school and life changing! This story is so encouraging and heartwarming.
What an awesome boy! So glad he is thriving there! An amazing place for sure!
This is awesome! I was fortunate enough to have a hearing impaired buddy in high school - the things that I took for granted! The understatement of the century is that I was uninformed. My ASL is horrendous, but I still know please, thank you, and sorry - my clumsiness is always met with such grace
Truly a blessing to these boys and girls.
What an awesome places!!!
Parents of Reagan are just awesome ❤️🙏
Beautiful story! Thank you for sharing, East Idaho News.
Handsome young men with a good heart and a positive vision towards life!! Highest respect to both his parents for a well done good job to his upbringing!!
What a great story. Thanks.
truly a wonderful place.thank you for sharing.
That is so Awesome! It's hard to fit in when you are different from your peers! I believe children excel more when they have the support of others being like them!
Great inspiration 👍
What an awesome young man! And definitely an awesome school that is helping these young men and ladies to flourish ! Thumbs UP !! 👍
The number of kids of any ability that would benefit from this kind of school is immense. Kids who have unstable home lives who would benefit from weekdays with stability, structure, and fellowship.
Thanks for sharing another gem from Idaho with us, Nate and EIN. It's so inspiring and encouraging to see such efforts being put forth to help young people with different abilities to have a place to gather and learn together.
Let’s hope people and the state can insure that this school gets all the funds it needs to run all education programs etc.
It’s a wonderful place!
East Idaho news is the best news and I live in Taiwan.. lol
Yeaaaaah! So happy for them!
I wonder how many states have this kind of school? This is one of 50….do the other 49 have anything like this? I’d not they sure should. Love that they get to stay on campus …. So important for socialization. Geez…they even have sport teams! Wow!
Yes, all states have them. Before mainstreaming began in 1974 all Deaf and Blind children were typically automatically sent away to residential schools. That's less common now since mainstreaming in the local community and living with family is now the norm.
How awesome
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
❤❤❤❤
He and the school and faculty are so inspiring! Thank you for posting
👏👏👏👏
Hogwarts of Idaho?
Special kids going away to a boarding school for specialized training... not a stretch Muggle! 🤣
@@SarahPriceHancock lmao yeah okay you keep telling yourself what helps you also at night. Nothing near hogwarts lmao 🤣 😂 😆
😇😇😇👏👏👏👏👏 👍❤✌