Plenty to celebrate
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
More than 150 students from preschool age to 11th grade lined the hallways of their school in Edgewood to congratulate this year’s graduating class. The kids’ movements and faces revealed their anticipation, but except for some clapping, the halls were quiet.
As the 15 seniors paraded through the halls of the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, the younger students traded high-fives and twisted their hands back and forth in the air — the American Sign Language motion for applause.
The nine girls and six boys of the graduating class wore blue and gold gowns, their caps decorated with different designs and expressions. One read, “She turned her can’ts into cans and her dreams into plans,” and another simply said, “Finally.”
“Honestly, I’m feeling a variety of emotions,” Noah McAuley, 19, of Forest Hills, said through a sign language interpreter. “I know I’m going to cry buckets later. I just have so many memories. I wish there was a 13th, 14th and 15th grade.”
He has attended the School for the Deaf since first grade, when his family moved from California.
He said life would have been “a very different experience” for him if he hadn’t attended a school with such an inclusive “deaf culture.”
“I only would’ve had one person to sign for me,” Mr. McAuley said.
Mr. McAuley will attend the Community College of Allegheny County in the fall and then plans to study art therapy at Seton Hill University.
This is the school’s second annual “graduation walk.” School officials were inspired by an online video of a similar event at another school and hope it will become a tradition at their historic institution, which will celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2019. About 40 percent of its students live on campus.
“It’s to encourage the younger kids to have something to look forward to,” said the school’s CEO, Steve Farmer. “And it’s a neat way for the seniors to celebrate their last day of school.
“We’renot just a school, we’re afamily here. For some, it’s a homeaway from home,” Mr. Farmersaid.
Rain Kelly, 19, of Mercer County, has lived at the school Monday through Friday since seventh grade. She said she felt sadness and joy during the walk.
“I grew up in a mainstream environment in Sharon, Pa., and I felt like there were a lot of limitations,” Ms. Kelly said.
She said that she always felt as if she was having “three-way conversations” between her interpreter and teachers and that other students “didn’t want to take the time” to talk with her through an interpreter.
She said she was “amazed” at how her world opened up when she went to the School for the Deaf.
“I remember feeling like I never saw so many people in one place signing,” Ms. Kelly said. “I think that changed who I am.”
Ms. Kelly will attend Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. — a private university specializing in higher education for deaf students — in the fall to study business administration. She said she hopes to someday manage a tattoo shop.