About Us

EVERY child has the right to develop their individual capabilities to the greatest extent possible.

In the case of hearing-impaired children, additional resources are required in order to provide a solid educational foundation and an equal opportunity to succeed. Memphis Oral School for the Deaf (MOSD) exists for the purpose of insuring that these unique resources are readily available to those young children who need them. With the combined support of the community and MOSD, young deaf children in Memphis and the Mid-South area continue to have the opportunity to listen, learn, and talk.

Mission

The mission of the Memphis Oral School for the Deaf is Empowering Deaf Children to Listen, Learn, and Talk. Our whole history, educational philosophy, and programs revolve around this simple, yet powerful, statement.

School Information

The Memphis Oral School for the Deaf is located in Germantown,TN and works to empower deaf children to listen, learn, and talk. MOSD has been located in the Memphis community for over fifty years, serving families from all over the Mid-South. At MOSD NO SIGN LANGUAGE is used, instead using speech and language therapies and audiological services in conjunction with our preschool classes to help profoundly deaf and hard-of-hearing children ages birth to six years old. These specialized techniques help the children develop the necessary listening and spoken language skills to become a part of, rather than apart from, a world of sound.

Statistics on MOSD

• We are a member of the OPTION Schools network, working with 49 other schools to advance excellence in listening and spoken language education
• Our average school enrollment is 30 children
• Our average student to teacher ratio is 4 to 1
• MOSD is accredited by the Tennessee Department of Education. Our highly qualified staff of audiologists, speech pathologists, and educators is licensed in the state of Tennessee and meet the state requirement for continuing education each year. We partner with several state early intervention programs in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama
• We serve as an observation and training site for Audiologists and Speech/Language Pathologists from the University of Memphis and Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, TN, the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS, and Southern Mississippi University in Hattiesburg, MS.

Statistics on Oral Education

Expectations for deaf children have been raised substantially. The improved technology of cochlear implants and programmable hearing aids have had a dramatic impact of the achievement of deaf children. To learn more about OPTION Schools, click here. According to the OPTION Schools' data:

• Hearing is a first-order event for spoken language, reading, and learning
• Listening experience in infancy is critical for the development of both speech and language in young children and a strong spoken language base is essential for reading
• Better speech, spoken language, and auditory outcomes are associated with greater emphasis on spoken language. Since 1992, over 90% of children with profound hearing loss developed intelligible spoken language.
• Children enrolled in a program focused on listening and spoken language showed an average of one year of language growth for each year in the program. At the end of a four-year period, the gap between chronological age and language age was nonexistent.
• With the technology (hearing aids and cochlear implants) and early auditory-verbal intervention available today, a child with hearing loss CAN have the same opportunity as a child with typical hearing to develop audition, speech, language, cognition, conversational competence, literacy skills and academic skills.