Mantua: A School powered by people

Teaching Pre K-8, Feb 2001 by Rodia, Becky

A Virginia elementary school includes a school for the deaf and hard of hearing, and technology for everyone

All is quiet in the broadcasting studio. The boy and girl seated at the anchor desk keep their eyes glued to the enormous screen of the teleprompter. Another girl checks a monitor, to make sure the anchors are properly centered in the shot. When the boys in the control booth give the signal, the two young anchors cheer, "Good Morning Mantua! It's Wednesday, October 11. Here's the news for today."

It's another morning at Mantua Elementary School in Fairfax, VA, kicked off by yet another edition of "Good Morning Mantua," a daily morning-announcements show produced by Mantua sixth graders. The equipment is up-to-date and professional (with a SMART Board-, normally used for distance learning, doubling as the teleprompter) and the kids are real pros, too. The students running the technical aspects of the show keep it flowing, and the student anchors are energetic and well-spoken.

Seeing the signs. It's clear that plenty of the students and staff at Mantua are well-versed in a language other than English - American Sign Language (ASL). A sign language interpreter seated between the two student anchors "signs" everything they say, so deaf and hard of hearing students and staff receive the day's information and remain an active part of the Mantua community.

Mantua Elementary School boasts a "school within a school." This smaller school, Mantua Center, is a special education program for deaf and hard of hearing children. 73 of Mantua's 865 students are deaf or hard of hearing. Principal Jan-Marie Fernandez points out that making announcements via loudspeaker at Mantua would be pointless, so there are TV monitors in every classroom, which allow school-wide announcements to be made via English and American Sign Language.

ASL in action. Teaching K-8 saw this successful integration of deaf and hearing students and staff when we visited the school last October. One first-grade class of hearing and deaf/hard of hearing children was involved in an activity that was led by a teacher who spoke, and an interpreter who translated everything into ASL. As the teachers asked the students - in both languages - to volunteer the correct punctuation for a sentence, both hearing and deaf children offered enthusiastic answers.

Then the students reviewed the Sign of the Day (another "Good Morning Mantua" feature, in which a deaf student presents a signed sentence), which was "The two of us are going to the cafeteria." All the children practiced the sign, which ended by cupping a hand into the letter "c" and rubbing down one's cheeks, "Almost as if wiping food off one's face," explained Bryon Rowe, the interpreter.

Sign language is everywhere at Mantua, including the staff meetings. Every other Wednesday morning, before the students arrive and school starts for the day, the faculty and staff meet in the library for "Breakfast With Boyer." Yes, Mantua is a Basic School, and this breakfast meeting gives the teachers an opportunity to reflect upon tenets of the Basic School philosophy and how they fit into current classroom activities. As the teachers make their presentations, an interpreter translates everything into ASL so Mantua's deaf and hard of hearing faculty and staff can share in the informative, inspiring meeting.

A great team. Inspiring is a word that definitely applies to the teachers at Mantua Elementary School. Dedicated is another, and creative is yet another. In supporting and educating each other, they truly work as a team to support and educate their students. We met Sheila Andersen and Katharine Edwards, two teachers who are part of the fifth grade team. Katharine - who began teaching at Mantua three years ago after finishing graduate school - told us about the support she received as a new teacher.

"The fifth grade team is so organized. When I came to Mantua, they swept me right in and helped me to be successful," she said. "The team plans what to cover with the kids, week by week. That helped me gauge how quickly or slowly I was covering the material."

Elements of culture. The fifth grade social studies curriculum focuses on ancient cultures - Greece, Rome, Egypt - but the fifth grade team's plan for teaching ancient cultures begins here and now, with the culture of their students.

"We try to emphasize their own culture first," Sheila Andersen said. "Their food, their clothing. Things that relate directly to them. We don't want the children to tell us they build airplanes, because they don't. We ask them to think and talk about things that they do, personally"

Then the fifth graders listen for elements of culture as their teachers read them Weslandia by Paul Fleischman and Morning Girl by Michael Dorris. Two children will listen for references to clothing, two children listen for references to shelter, two children listen for references to food, and so on. The books, which deal with simple civilizations that are unfamiliar to the students, serve as a stepping stone to the study of ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian cultures. By the time the students have reached that point, they're familiar with various aspects of culture, because they've started from their own lives.