Iowa School for the Deaf

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[Tina Caloud] Iowa School for the Deaf is unique. When our students come here, they find their real identity. They learn who they are as a deaf person. They learn their language. They learn how to be a whole person. Identity, language, culture. They have access to direct instruction from their teachers. They don't need to use interpreters in order to communicate with their teachers and their peers.

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[Narrator] The Iowa School for the Deaf has been helping students thrive both academically and socially since 1855.

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[Narrator] Founded in Iowa City by Edmund Booth and William Ijams, the school's administrators eventually chose a more accessible location to accommodate years of growing enrollment.

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[Tina Caloud] In the western part of Iowa in Council Bluffs, there was an area, a strong railroad town where there was land available. 80 acres sold for $1,200. The state decided it was a good place for us to move. So, in 1870, we moved to Council Bluffs.

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[Narrator] A central building was constructed along with an industrial complex, a farm and a powerhouse. In the fall of 1870, underserved deaf and hard of hearing students from all over Iowa arrived at an educational facility built specifically with their needs in mind.

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[Tina Caloud] Students would come and stay during the school for nine months and go home in the summer. They used the railroad to travel home with no staff. Some kids, five, six, ten, all the way up to age eighteen rode the train by themselves across the state to meet their parents wherever their parents lived all around the state of Iowa.

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[Tina Caloud] In the 1870s there was a terrible fire. It destroyed the building. Some students were sent home at the time and they were not able to come back until the following year. Some students stayed in a part of the building that had not been damaged, but then later that year a tornado came through and damaged the remainder of the building. It was a terrible year for this campus. They built the administration building again and made sure that each floor was very thick to make the building stronger

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[Tina Caloud] Education for the deaf is so important that they built this building, they invested quite a bit of money in order to build it structurally sound so that the students would be safe, educated here. And we can see now it is still standing. It has lasted since that renovation. It was completed near 1910 and it has stood since.

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[Tina Caloud] The walls that you see are all original. Nothing has been removed or changed. In the dorm, the boys lived on one side and the girls lived on the other side. And our dorms are still there as they were. There used to be an infirmary on the fifth floor of this building. And as the years went on and our student population grew, the state realized that they needed to add additional buildings on campus. They added wings to this building. They added other buildings on campus. They built an infirmary building on campus and that was in the 1930s.

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[Tina Caloud] They built a barn. There was a barn there but, in the fire, it was destroyed so they built a new one.

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[Narrator] The front of this sturdy brick building is original to the renovation of 1910 and the shape has become iconic to the city of Council Bluffs.

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[Tina Caloud] After the great fire, the state spent quite a bit of money adding a roof with a particular design on it and that design is original. Up on the fifth floor where you see the cupula you see there is an open-air area around it. If you pull that rod down, it opens up the vents in order to allow open air circulation into the cupula. And our powerhouse does sometimes have to go up there and open it to let the area air out.

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[Tina Caloud] It is still up there for circulation. When you go up there, if you open those vents for circulation and you look through them, you can see across the river to Omaha, Nebraska. It's a really beautiful view.

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[Tina Caloud] Before I came here as a student, I did not have a full identity. I was in a mainstream program and I had to follow an interpreter around all day long. People saw me and said, oh she's the deaf girl. I was the deaf girl. But when I came to the Iowa School for the Deaf, I met people who were like me.

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[Tina Caloud] I didn't have to rely on interpreters. I sat in class with teachers who signed and I had direct interaction with them. I started to learn about who I am as Tina. People just saw me as Tina, not as the deaf person. And many of our students have the same experience when they come here. They find their identity. They find out who they are. They have access to language and to their culture. That makes this feel like home to many of our alumni. They do not face the same barriers here that they do in public schools. They are able to thrive academically. They are able to participate in different activities just like any other hearing student at a public school has that opportunity, our students have that opportunity here.

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[Narrator] For more than 150 years, Council Bluffs has welcomed students to the Iowa School for the Deaf to find self-expression and fraternity and to join the ranks of those whose lives were transformed at this historic campus.

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