‘Give deaf students a fair chance’: After finding success in US, deaf Jamaican calls for change at home

Deaf students who have the academic ability and desire to enrol in the regular school system in Jamaica must be provided with qualified interpreters in the classroom to enable them to function and excel.

That call is coming from 40-year-old Kaniel McDonald Dodd, who attended Mona High School in 1998 as part of a Government programme aimed at incorporating special needs students with exceptionalities into the regular school system.

She was the third deaf student to attend Mona High at the time, but the first to enter the institution at Grade seven through the Common Entrance examination. The other two students were educated up to Grade 10 at the Lister Mair Gilby School for the Deaf before joining Grade 11 students at Mona to prepare for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations.