Interview with the head of the school's living communities

The boarding school - living communities
Our final interview was with the head of the school's living communities, consisting of deaf and hard-of-hearing kids who live at the school from Monday to Friday. Some children are only at the school during the day. The head explains that for many parents, raising a deaf child is not so easy. They are suddenly confronted with the world of the deaf and do not 'speak' sign language. Also, many children prefer to live in the living community because they feel at home there. They feel that it's the only place where they are truly understood and they like to be with peers. According to the head, deaf children hardly have hearing friends. The different living communities represent different age groups: nursery school kids, 2,5 - 7 year olds, elementary school kids, and older kids.

Autonomy and identity
Themes that are important for the kids in the living communities are autonomy and identity. The head explains the importance of confronting deaf children with deaf adult role models by two cases that illustrates the unrealistic view of being deaf of these children. First, he tells that once a couple of elderly deaf ladies visited the school. A class of children saw these ladies 'speak' sign language in the hallway and asked the head "What have these ladies done that they are still deaf?". Another story is about a 16-year old girl. After the head returned from a trip to the UK, he told her that he had visited a club for deaf people there. The girl, asked unbelievingly: "But do they have deaf people there as well?". About autonomy, the ehad explains that this is a difficult issue for all boarding school children. Especially enjoying oneself in free time is hard for them. In the living communities of the school, children are encourages to find something to do themselves.

Relational development
Another important issue that the head raises is the disturbed relational development of deaf children. Many of the children show inappropriate behaviour related to forming relationships. For instance, many deaf children think it is normal to touch women's breasts. The problem is, says the head, that the children see lots of visual information about relationships (e.g. on tv, Internet, cinema, magazines), but they miss all or most auditory information accompanying the visual information. At the school they try to give the children a more realistic view on relationships, but the problem remains that they mostly have to rely on visual information.

Dovencultuurweek
Besides being the head of the boarding school groups, the head is also the main organiser of the "Dovencultuurweek". The boarding school children can also stay at the school during the holidays and about 7 or 8 years ago, the Dovencultuurweek was started to organise activities focused on deaf culture and sign language. During the Dovencultuurweek, all activities are run by deaf adults and everybody 'speaks' sign language. Every year, a theme is chosen for the week, with matching activities. Pieter and I will spend a day at the school during this week, on Wednesday August 17th. We will then be the only ones who don't speak sign language!

The school's House of the Future
Just before we're about to leave, the head briefly mentions that the school is doing a project called "House of the Future". When we ask for details, it appears that the school is building a house full of domotics. The idea of the concept of the House of the Future is to create a house that compensates for hearing impairments as much as possible. The kitchen will be the central part of the house, overlooking the living room. Between different living communities there will be a passageway which can both be open and closed. The head mentions the metaphor of "one big familiy with the option to separate the younger and older kids". In addition, he says that deaf kids think of their class mates as their family. the school is implementing all technological innovations in the house they can afford. Examples of such innovations are touch screens with high-speed connections for video phone calls (to use sign language a high speed of at least 30 frames / second is required), an induction loop system, vibrating mattresses (for central alarms and alarm clocks), and flash alarms. The house is also prepared for future domotics applications. According to plan, the house will be finished in January of 2010 and will from then function as a home for two groups of boarding school children and as a show case for ICT at home for deaf people.