GSD shares Darlington’s prom
Darlington students and Georgia School for the Deaf students come together to celebrate a “Midnight in Paris.”
Darlington School’s mission statement this year is “Know your neighbor,” and the juniors and seniors decided to take that to heart as they invited students at Georgia School for the Deaf to take part in their prom Saturday.
The invitation came about after GSD opened its doors earlier this year to several Darlington students.
“We started this new initiative this year called iPeriod,” explained Justin Bruce, Darlington learning specialist. “It gives our students an opportunity to pursue their passion, whether it be cooking, knitting, drawing, construction, whatever. About 17 students decided they wanted to learn American Sign Language.”
Bruce, who has a background in sign language, worked with the students for six weeks, helping them learn words and the alphabet and basic signs.
“Then I got in touch with GSD and asked if I could bring the kids out to the campus so they could meet students and have a chance to converse with them,” Bruce said.
GSD Superintendent Leslie Jackson met with Bruce during one of the students’ visits and said she had an idea she wanted to share.
“She said that every year, the school tries to do a prom for their students, but there are usually only 10 to 15 kids and a big prom atmosphere is impossible to achieve,” he said. “She asked if Darlington would be open to the idea of having the GSD students share their prom so they could have a real prom experience.”
Jamie Herston, the instructional coach at GSD, said the relationship with Darlington was a win-win for both schools.
“We are a small school and we had used a lot of resources for a large ASL festival we’d hosted and we realized that the cost of a prom could be too much, and we were hoping to find a school that would let us have a prom with them,” she said. “Because we’d developed this relationship with the Darlington students, we approached them.”
Bruce took the idea back to Darlington officials, and they decided to put together a committee of juniors and seniors who could make the decision.
“We heard maybe two weeks later that they unanimously wanted us to come to their prom,” said Herston. “Our students have been so excited, they heard Darlington has a live band and they were looking forward to meeting new people.”
One of the committee members, Mary Harbin Gilbert, a junior, said the decision was an easy one.
“It was just an incredible, positive response,” she said. “We knew it would be fun to meet them and it was just a great idea. We knew we would have interpreters there so we could talk to each other, too.”
The GSD students were all smiles Saturday night, enjoying the “Midnight in
Paris” theme of the prom and looking forward to dancing.
“I’m very excited to be here,” said Katie Sikes, GSD student. “It’s great that they have a band.”
Jordan Hall was most looking forward to dancing, she said, and maybe making some new friends.