Sign Schools of the Prairie

How Residential Deaf Education Created a Signing Style That Mainstreaming Is Erasing

The Iowa School for the Deaf sits in Council Bluffs, just across the Missouri River from Omaha. Founded in 1855, it is one of the oldest continuously operating schools for deaf children in America. For over a century and a half, children arrived from farms and small towns across Iowa, many boarding through the school year because their families lived to…