Month: June 2018

We were delighted to welcome Ms Lorraine Leeson to the school for a brief visit. She received the usual warm and Ambo welcome and the students were delighted that she possessed some ability to communicate with them. Lorraine set up the School of Deaf Studies at Trinity College and is a professor of linguistics. She was able to identify something special happening in the development of Sign Language here at the ALDS. We hope to keep in touch and explore some links between Ambo and Trinity College…

In June our second group of Grade 8 Students participated in the State Exams and graduated from the ALDS. They are anxiously awaiting the results, which will decide if they can progress to Grade 9 at the government school next year. We are of course sorry to see them go, but delighted we were able to give them the opportunity to progress this far in their education. We will continue to support them in what way possible. We wont have a graduation class again for four years. In the mean time we will examine the possibility of providing grades 9/10 at the ALDS for students graduating in 2022.

During the months of June and July students from two Vincentian Secondary Schools in Dublin joined us: St. Vincent’s Castleknock and St. Paul’s Raheny. Each school spent two and a half weeks in Ambo facilitating a summer school for all the local children, teaching them English and maths and generally having some fun. A significant highlight of their time in Ambo was the opportunity to go to the Deaf school where our students took time to teach them Ethiopian Sign Language.

The Irish boys very quickly picked up the basics in Ethiopian Sign Language allowing them the opportunity to really engage with the Deaf students and even teach some maths classes. Of course there was the annual Ireland V Ethiopia football match to be played, a very competitive affair. (Ethiopia won 5-4)