Classroom to Community to Classroom: A Multi-Media Approach to Teaching Functional Skills to Multi-Handicapped Hearing-Impaired Students

The curriculum for the Development of Self Awareness, Survival, and Independent Living Skills is a new curriculum designed to teach functional skills to multi-handicapped hearing-impaired students in the Special Unit at the California School for the Deaf, Fremont. An approach that seems to work well in teaching these functional skills is to take a group of students into the community, then use media to bring that same community back into the classroom. This paper discusses the role of media in the implementation and further development of the Special Unit curriculum. It also shares some concerns, practicalities, and reactions related to structuring classroom activities that feature the use of media as a primary mode of teaching.