Speech Mirror

CSDR is approaching its 75th anniversary as a school in 2028. There have been many internal and external changes over the course of the years.  One visible change is the disappearance of what I call “speech mirrors” from the campus-wide classrooms.

Old timers remember the school placed an emphasis on speech training as part of the schoolwide curriculum from the Lower School through the Upper School, a process that could take 13-15 years. Every student was assigned two 20-minute individual speech-training sessions per week with a classroom teacher.

It is hard to believe today, but all hearing teachers had an extra teaching assignment on top of their subject.  The speech requirement remained in effect until June 1973.   Altogether, twenty years from 1953 to 1973.   I remember doing this for three years before it discontinued. My speech training didn't go well for me.

Speech therapy, however, continues for students who request a pull-out time with a speech trainer rather than with every classroom teacher.  Deaf teachers were excused from teaching speech by themselves.

One day in 1998, I entered the high school classroom where Math Teacher Gerald Sullivan had taught since 1973.   I spotted a familiar object that I had seen in the 1970s.  It was a two-foot-long mirror still screwed to the wall.  I asked Sullivan if I could take it out for the museum. He admitted he still used it to check his hair, but he understood the mirror's historical value. 

Thank you, Mr Sullivan!   He retired in 2010 after 37 years of teaching in the same classroom.

Of the perhaps 75 classrooms across all grades on campus, we have only one surviving speech mirror for the campus museum.

Kevin Struxness, ‘76, MA

Editor, CSDR Old Times

28 February 2026