FAQs

No. Our teachers sign and speak at the same time using an approach called Sign Supported English.

No.  This is a commonly held misconception.  Research suggests that the sooner a child with a hearing loss uses sign language, the quicker they will develop communication skills.

Yes.  Our Speech and Listening Therapy Department provides individualized and group therapy to students when needed.  WRSD provides a range of services including a strong auditory/oral program at all sites.

Yes.  We have a number of students with implants enrolled at Willie Ross.  We offer specialized speech and listening services to our students with implants.

Willie Ross recognizes that deaf and hard-of-hearing students are individuals who require a variety of instructional opportunities to meet their needs.  The programs offered on both campuses provide students with a combination of instruction, support services and peer interaction designed to meet their individual needs.

The Longmeadow Campus is the home of the Willie Ross School for the Deaf and consists of the Founders’ Classroom Building, where programs from early childhood through high school are offered, the Foster & Constance Gleason Furcolo Student Center, the Sidney M. Cooley Administration Building, the Curtis L. Blake Center for Audiological Services, and the Edward B. Cooley Speech and Listening Therapy Center.  The Partnership Campus is located in the East Longmeadow Public Schools at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.  The Partnership Campus is also staffed by Willie Ross School personnel.

The Partnership Campus students are not isolated at all.    They interact with both Willie Ross and East Longmeadow students.  Each of the levels is fully staffed by Willie Ross personnel and administered by the Director of Educational Services.  All of the support services that are available to students at the Longmeadow Campus are available at the Partnership Campus.

The Willie Ross School offers mainstreaming services because it provides an opportunity for students to be educated with hearing peers at their grade level in a regular school setting. Willie Ross conducts mainstreaming on a case-by-case basis. Students may be accompanied by sign language interpreters, oral interpreters or, in instances where the IEP calls for an aural/oral setting, with no interpreter at all.

Yes. We offer a transitional program to prepare all of our students for their life after WRSD. A Work-Study Coordinator along with other staff members work with the students and supervise their community-based internships.

Students with a hearing loss are not all alike and cannot be adequately served by a single teaching approach or method.  Willie Ross provides a variety of instructional and communicational opportunities for students and their ever-changing needs, one child at a time.

Willie Ross’s use of mainstreaming is not based on the premise that all students with a hearing loss should be in the regular classroom for the entire school day.  Rather, WRSD views mainstreaming from a student perspective and offers mainstreaming on an incremental basis.  Individualized academic opportunities and comprehensive audiological support services are also in place to enhance the mainstreaming services. 

The students who are enrolled at Willie Ross receive all of the benefits of being in a Special Education Chapter 766-approved school for students with a hearing loss.  They are taught by teachers of the deaf using the Willie Ross curriculum.