When Patricia Ross' high school students at the Phoenix Day School for the Deaf buddied up with elementary school students to improve their reading skills, amazing things happened. As they read to them, Ross' students, who were part of the 2012-2013 Integrated Language Arts and Social Studies program, increased their reading scores and…

When working as a teacher of deaf students, Melissa Herzig's school was a magnet high school just five minutes from the border of Mexico, where 95 percent of the students were Latinos. The deaf students' experiences with languages may involve using American Sign Language (ASL), a sign language they may have learned in their home country,…

As educators working with high school students, the author's face questions such as: (1)" How can students become better self-advocates?" (2) "Are students sufficiently prepared for life after graduation?" (3) "How can students become more motivated in planning their future?" (4) "What can be done to…

The process of developing and implementing a 504 plan is different from that of implementing an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). This author has been a teacher of deaf and hard of hearing students under the Special Education Department in Prince William County Schools for 11 years. She had never had a student referred to the team that handles…

Educating deaf and hard of hearing students is a rewarding yet complex endeavor. Students are the beneficiaries when educators consistently reflect on and dialogue about teaching strategies, curriculum, student expectations, and school culture beliefs and practices. In the Union Street School for the Deaf and the Hackensack High School Program for…

Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind (USDB) serves students with varying abilities and needs. At the high school level, a range of transition services is required to help this diverse group of students prepare for life after high school. USDB established the STEPS program as part of this range of services. STEPS is a training and transition…

In this article, the author discusses a transition program at the Iowa School for the Deaf (ISD) that helps students learn to search for, find and keep jobs. ISD's personal and career development (PCD) classes, which began in the fall of 2005, are required for the school's ninth through twelfth graders. The goal is to ease transition from school…

This article describes a pilot project that examined the use of a two-way text messenger for deaf and hard of hearing teens and their parents. The study took place at two large inner-city public high schools and in grade 8 of their feeder school. The vast majority of the students in the study had severe to profound congenital hearing loss and were…

Guiding deaf and hard of hearing students in making important decisions about their adult careers can be a difficult task. Twenty years after its inception, the TCB, as adapted for deaf and hard of hearing students, may help. The TCB is a unique assessment tool designed to measure the transition skills of deaf high school adolescents and young…

As part of the effort to reduce cigarette smoking--the single most preventable cause of death in the society--researchers have tried for over half a century to identify effective school-based anti-tobacco education that can discourage tobacco use among children and adolescents. Unfortunately, deaf and hard of hearing young people have been largely…