Stories from New Families

Meet some of our new families Interview with:

Marlen Solis

Mother of new Latina student, Grecia

Staff and parents enjoy a social time at the home of Hank and Bunny Klopping.

Virginia Foletta greets the new arrivals at New Family Orientation.

Parents learn more about the instructional programs that CSD has to offer from presenters like Clark Brooke (above).

Time to relax!

Photographs courtesy of: Ma-Ling Chiou

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My daughter Grecia entered the ninth grade this year. Last year, she attended Burlingame Middle School, in the South San Francisco area.

Our decision to send Grecia to the California School for the Deaf was not an easy one. While Grecia was still at Burlingame, we were contemplating plans for her high school years. The teachers at Burlingame suggested that CSD might be a good choice for her.

Upon their recommendation, we contacted CSD outreach and made arrangements for our family to take a tour of the school. We spent the better part of a day learning about the programs and services offered at CSD. We were impressed to find that there were many opportunities for Grecia.

Our family attended CSD’s New Family Orientation the weekend before school started. We benefited greatly from participating in the events and enjoyed meeting the other new families. We appreciated the opportunity to spend the whole weekend together on the CSD campus. It made for a ‘gradual separation’ from our daughter, as opposed to just dropping her off and saying, “Good bye,” and “See you later.” The orientation allowed us to experience what living in the cottages and eating in the cafeteria were like.

While we miss having Grecia at home during the week, we know that CSD is a great place for her to get an education. We understand the importance of Grecia being with peers who are like her...who are

part of ‘her world’. On Fridays, Grecia arrives happy to be home, but by Saturday, she’s already starting to pack for her week back at school.

Grecia joined the junior varsity volleyball team. It’s turning out to be a great experience for her. I can see that Grecia looks happier now that she is at CSD. Interview with Marlen Solis (above) was translated from Spanish to English by Virginia Foletta.

Interview with:

Andrey “Yuriy” Cherepov

Middle school student from deaf Russian family

My family is from Moscow, where I was born. We moved to America when I was 7 months old and settled in Sacramento, California.

My parents enrolled me in the California School for the Deaf when I was in the first grade, but they couldn’t stand the idea of having their only son living away from them.

So after just one month, I transferred to a public school nearby my home in Sacramento.

I was the only deaf student in the whole school and communicated through an interpreter who signed in SEE. Communicating through an interpreter all of the time made it much more difficult to make friends with the other kids. Many of the kids at school made fun of me because I was deaf. Luckily, when I went home, I got support from my family, where we had strong communication using a combination of Russian and American sign languages.

October 3, 2008 | California News

For the sixth and seventh grade, I transferred to a public middle school. It was a little bit better because there was another deaf student there; I wasn’t the only kid at the school who was deaf.

Now that I am in the eighth grade, my family feels it is best for me to get my education at the California School for the Deaf. Even though they still worry about me living away from home during the week, we can communicate through videophone which makes it a little easier.

I’m thrilled to be attending CSD. My favorite class is Brenda Call’s math class. Actually, my parents are thrilled that I’m attending CSD, as well. I am making many new friends and am looking forward to participating in wrestling during the winter sports season. I am also interested in joining the football team.

I am very grateful to my family for enabling me to communicate in so many languages. So far, I know Russian Sign Language, American Sign Language, some reading and writing in Russian, and English.

I hope to learn more languages in the future.

Interview with:

Judy Catron

Former CSD staffer sends her son Ryan 2,300 miles to attend CSD

My son Ryan is fourth in line from my deaf family to be enrolled as a CSD student. My maternal

grandparents graduated from the school, back when it was located in Berkeley, in the 1920’s. My parents graduated from the Berkeley school in 1957. And, I graduated in 1980, with the very last class to graduate from the Berkeley site before moving to Fremont.

My husband Dennis and I worked, for about 10 years, as teachers at the California School for the Deaf, after the school moved to its Fremont location. Later, Dennis became the school’s athletic director and I became the family educator.

CSD became our son Ryan’s first school when he was 18 months old. In 1999, our family moved to Utah. Since then, Ryan has attended several other deaf schools (the last deaf school was Indiana) before returning to CSD this fall as a junior.

My husband and I are currently living in Indiana. We are both teachers at the Indiana School for the Deaf. After having our son attend several deaf schools, we felt that CSD was the best deaf school in the nation. It was a tough decision to send Ryan 2,300 miles away to school...and people have asked me why we thought CSD was the best deaf school in the nation. To name a few of the many reasons: CSD is stable and has had the same superintendent (Dr. Klopping) for 34 years; it has a strong bilingual deaf program, and an outstanding educational/career preparation program for students to become successful contributing citizens; it has strong visions and beliefs; and it is empowered by professional staff members.

Thankfully, Ryan will be able to attend CSD for his last two years of high school.

California News | October 3, 2008

Interview with:

Arlene Monroe Mom wants a better quality of education for her son

Last year, my son Chris was in a mainstream program with an interpreter. The fourth and fifth graders were grouped together in the same classroom. Chris was the only boy in a class with 10 girls. He was paired up with a girl who was the same age and in the same grade as he; however, they were at completely different levels with their schoolwork.

Chris was good in math and behind in English; whereas the girl he was paired up with was good in English and behind in math. The result was that both of them were being taught at a level that is too low and putting them behind in their education.

Additionally, the deaf children were being taught by an instructional aide instead of a certified teacher. This added even more to the problem of my son not getting the education he needed. The education Chris was getting was not preparing him to take the high school exit exam he would need in order to graduate.

It just so happened that before Chris got his cochlear implant, we had to meet with CSD staff as part of the process. During our visit, we got a little glimpse at what the school was like. So when we heard that CSD’s family education coordinator Ginny Malzkuhn [and Virginia Foletta] were going to be at the Monterey County Office of Education, we made a point of 3

coming to meet with Ginny [and Virginia]. They presented us with plenty of helpful information about the program at CSD. It was very helpful and it resulted in us deciding to enroll Chris at CSD; we felt he had a much better chance of getting his high school diploma if he transferred to CSD. We attended the New Family Orientation weekend and found it very informative. We especially benefited for hearing the experiences of the other families who were there. In fact, we made friends with another family staying in our cottage who had three boys who were deaf. It was great to have made that connection with another family before school even started!

My husband doesn’t sign as well as I do. Through his attending the New Family Orientation weekend, he realized how important sign language was in order to communicate with our son. He has since made a commitment to improve his signing skills. Our son has some speech because of his cochlear implant, but still relies heavily on signing for his communication.

We were particularly impressed that Dr. Klopping invited all of the parents to his home. It made me feel more comfortable about leaving my son in the hands of the school knowing that the superintendent was so involved with the kids. It surprised me that Dr. Klopping is so committed to deaf education because he isn’t deaf himself; I understand that his parents are deaf, but it was still nice to see him so involved. Our old principal didn’t sign very well. It’s a big difference.

Chris has only been attending the school a short time now, but he’s already doing fine there. He really likes the staff in cottage 17.

He talks about them a lot during the weekends. They play a game called 4

“war” after dinner (like dodge ball).

He particularly likes that. He also likes the fact that there are a lot of activities he can participate in after school—a different activity every night of the week: Mondays, it’s Boy Scouts; Tuesdays, it’s swimming, etc. And he loves having boys his own age to hang out with; boys his age don’t want to hang out with a group of girls all the time (like what he had at Monterey).

Interview with:

Lynn Dunn

Former CSD alumna moves to Fremont so son Richie can attend CSD

I entered preschool at the California School for the Deaf, in 1963, when the school was still located in Berkeley. Back then, my maiden name was Lynn Mason.

Since my family lived in Pacific Grove, I lived on the CSD campus.

In those days, the students only went home to visit their families every other weekend. I was grateful that even though my parents were hearing, they totally supported my attending CSD. I love my hearing family because they believed in me.

After graduating from CSD in 1976, I moved to Hawaii, got married, and had a daughter named Renca. My husband, daughter, and I moved to the Bay Area so that Renca could attend CSD. When my husband took an early retirement, our family moved to southern Oregon and lived on a farm with my brother-in-law.

While we were living in Oregon, I earned my master’s degree in deaf education. At the same time, my daughter Renca attended the Oregon School for the Deaf for five years, but we did not feel that Renca was getting enough academics in the educational program there. We decided to move to Washington state so that she could attend the Washington School for the Deaf. Seven years later, Renca graduated and went on to attend Gallaudet where she majored in English.

I got hired to work at the Phoenix Day School for the Deaf as an American Sign Language specialist and an English teacher.

Luckily, my second child, Richie, was able to attend the same school where I was working. Unfortunately, the Phoenix Day School courses weren’t challenging enough for my son, since most of Richie’s classmates were English-as-a-secondlanguage learners and the program was geared toward the students learning basic English skills. Our family decided it was time to move back to my alma mater, CSD (because it would meet my son’s needs of higher language learning).

The move back to Fremont has worked out perfectly for us. We found a home just two miles from the school. I got a job working on at CSD teaching special needs students at the Eagle Café. Richie loves CSD and is very happy at his new school. He especially loves his junior varsity football coaches: Jeff Bibb, Clint Dickenson, and Mike Sutherland. Though Richie grew up in a very loving home environment, he didn’t have the kind of adult role models he has with his coaches at CSD. He is developing some good habits through the sports program.

It has really been a great experience for him.

October 3, 2008 | California News