August 2023:

Our schedule is in flux at this time. We are working with some private schools to provide ASL classes to their hearing students, working with Adult Deaf who want to develop their literacy skills, teaching remote classes with Deaf and hearing students,  and tutoring/ASL instruction with a few Deaf children after school (they are mainstreamed in hearing schools)

Evenings we have some Bible studies (remote),  Refresher-Advanced ASL for some local friends and families.

We are holding Second and Fourth Saturday activities:

Saturday Mornings 10 -10:45  – Reading in English or Spanish  // 11 – 11:45 Writing / Printing

Second Saturday 1 p.m. games and fellowship  // Fourth Saturday 1 p.m. Movie and Chill time

Third Friday – Cooking, Crafts, and LifeSkills ( screwdrivers, hammers, saws, plumbing, etc)

 

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Since May 2020,  we have been running more as a tutoring center than as a school. One student is coming fulltime.  The others are coming part-time for ASL and language intervention therapy. This is impacting the level of signing contact and we are seeing our youngest students more isolated and not receiving that impact of fluent signers that we once saw.

Our one fulltime student will graduate in May 2023 and is talking about going to NTID or another technical school. Pray for his wisdom.

We have one older teen who comes daily to develop his skills in ASL.  As a hard of hearing teen, this lad finds communication difficult and his family has decided to give him the opportunity of learning ASL.  He also attends our morning chapel and Bible classes and we use a daily devotional for reading comprehension as well as sharing ideas from that in ASL.

We have two little girls who come in our after-school hours to play games and enjoy story and song time in ASL.  Both have educationally significant hearing losses and it’s our hope that these little girls will continue to learn signs and as they proceed in mainstreamed programs will have access to interpreters who will continue to work with them.  WE at CSCD will continue to work with them also in language development, speech reading, speech and language therapy, and situational help – one girl came crying one day:  something happened in her mainstreamed preschool and she was upset. Oh too young to be having such problems but there it was.

 

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At CSCD we have several objectives, the most important of which is to see our students come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. The second most important objective is language development.

The teaching staff arrives around 7:15 a.m. to prepare the classrooms for the day.  Students begin to arrive anytime after 7:30 a.m.

The kids enjoy some free time until flag raising at 8 a.m. (when the sun is shining). By the raising of the flags and repeating of the Pledge of Allegiance, we seek to instill in our students a love and respect for their country and their government.

Following the flag-raising, we go into the chapel where we spend the first part of our day singing, sharing prayer and requests, reviewing Bible memory verses, participating in Bible drills, learning Bible lessons, and for the little kids, learning how to sit still in a group setting. Many ASL discourse-level skills are learned in the process of chapel times.

From opening exercises, we go to our classrooms. Each class has time to pray together in small groups or individually.

Since our students come in daily, we have devotional times as part of our class schedule so that each student has some time to read God’s Word and pray.

We revise our plans weekly to help to meet the needs of each child.  We want them to have an opportunity to pray for their day in a small group with a teacher who helps to keep them focused. The older students are discipled to live for Jesus and encouraged to consider how they can invest their lives for God’s Kingdom.

By 8:30 – 9  a.m., we launch into our academic work. Vocabulary, reading, language development, social skills, and mathematics take much of the morning followed by  Lunch.  After lunch, the older students have some free time and the younger students go home. We move into afternoon classes: Bible, Social Studies, Science, Language Arts, and other miscellaneous subjects.

Our youngest pre-school student arrives after her day in a mainstream classroom.  She comes for some “play” time in which we seek to stimulate her conversational skills in ASL, Spanish and English.

The administrator who is also a teacher spends the after school hours working in the school office, handling phone calls and e-mails, updating the school website – while the other teacher work in their classrooms preparing lessons, cleaning up from the day, organizing for the next day, or assisting students who need special attention.

(2019) Our staff is down to two full-time workers who meet with other missionaries for Bible study and prayer through the week.  Please pray with us for more workers.  We have a list of adult learners desiring to improve their English, Spanish, reading, writing and mathematics skills.

We hope this little glimpse of our days helps you to pray more effectively for our ministry.