Professional Training

For over a hundred years, Clarke School has been preparing teachers in the field of auditory/oral education. In 1962, Clarke partnered with Smith College to establish an advanced academic degree, the Master of Education of the Deaf. The degree requires forty-two semester hours of course work and practicum experiences, and takes a minimum of one academic year and one summer to complete. Thanks to a generous, private foundation grant, Smith College is able to award full-tuition scholarships to all participants in this program. Room and board fellowships funded by endowments and federally insured loans are also available to qualified students.

Whether it be working in the dormitory on the weekends, helping out with the school musical, or chaperoning a ski club trip to the mountains, graduate students are brought right into the Clarke community and have an academic experience like no other. Clarke graduate students live and learn on a campus where they get to know the faculty and students. Students work with children at several academic levels, from preschool through middle school, both in the classroom and in the communication lab. Every graduate student also completes two, three-week practicums. Nearly 1,500 teachers have graduated from the programs since it first began and have gone on to serve children who are deaf and hard-of-hearing in 50 states and 34 foreign countries.

Program emphasis is on an auditory/oral approach when working with children with hearing loss who use cochlear implants or hearing aids. Courses include study in language development, anatomy and physiology of hearing and speech mechanisms, communication science and skill development, multimedia education technology, professional ethics, psychology, and planning and implementation of education programming for children who are deaf and hard-of-hearing.