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Volume 142, N ο. 3, 1997 Professional Preparation and Advancement of Deaf Teachers Irving S. Fusfeld, former editor of the Annals. Gallaudet University Archives. Irving S. Fusfeld1 Dean, Gallaudet College, Washington, D.C. A consideration of the problem of the preparation and advancement of the deaf teacher must of necessity wait upon such questions as these: Do conditions indicate a need for the deaf teacher? If so, is the need a sporadic or a stable need? To what extent has the need been a fluctuating one? Happily, the answers to these questions are at hand, All we need do is turn to the following simple figures, indicating the ratio of deaf teachers to the total number of teachers in publicresidential schools for the deaf in the United States. We are here leaving out the public day-schools as well as the private and denominational schools, since the number of deaf teachers on the staffs of these schools is negligible. We find as follows: We have taken these figures from successive issues of the January number of the Annals. We may note here these essential points: 1. For the present it appears that one out of every five teachers of the deaf is a deaf person. 1 A paper read before the Section for Deaf Teachers, Convention of American Instmctors of the Deaf, Fulton. Missouri. June 25. 1941. 2. The demand for the deaf teacher seems to indicate an established need, that is, it has not declined over a period of the past twenty-five years—a pretty good test of the permanence of the need. As a matter of fact, the trend seems to be one of increase. This becomes more significant when one considers the present-day emphasis on oral teaching in our schools, the rising tide in enrollment of hard-of-hearing children , and the enormously accelerated interest in auricular work in our schools. Having established the fact that there is a continuing demand for deaf teachers, our next quer)7 is, What is the source of supply? Though there are no precise figures at hand, we know it to be true that the residential schools at times take up graduates of their own, particularly where special talent has been shown in vocational lines. Sometimes graduates are employed for supervision and then reach the rank of classroom teachers. But by far the great bulk of deaf teachers in our residential schools are graduates of Gallaudet College . With this acknowledged we must now turn to an arrangement of tabular information to determine the relation between Gallaudet College and the demand for deaf teachers. The questions that arise here are, first, To what Reprinted from Fusfeld, 1. S. (1941). Professional preparation and advancement of deaf teachers. American Annals of the Deaf, 86(5) 420-428. Volume 142, No. 3, 1997 American Annals of the Deaf extent is the college a teacher supplying -agency? and, second, To what extent is the college providing the necessary training and preparation for those of its graduates who obtain appointment in our residential schools? Going back for the past twenty-five years, we made careful check of each succeeding graduating class, excluding the Normal Department for hearing men and women, and determined the number in each class who at one time or another found employment as inTable I Proportion of Instructors in Residential Schools Who Were Deaf Persons Table Il Proportion of Graduates of Gallaudet College Who Received Positions as Instructors Volume 142, No. 3, 1997 American Annals of the Deaf Preparation of Deaf Teachers structors in our residential schools for the deaf. In this number we counted only those for whom we had knowledge as to their subsequent activity, and for this reason our information must be regarded as having a lean toward the conservative. Nor did we include those who obtained teaching places even before they graduated from Gallaudet College. Our table as finally constructed gives the following data: The number in each graduating class, the number obtaining teaching positions, the percentage this was in each class, and the number of men and women respectively who obtained places. (The final column indicates information we have already considered, namely, the ratio of deaf to hearing...

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