Teacher of deaf for Cook Islands

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32778, 1 December 1971, Page 22

Teacher of deaf for Cook Islands

The first specialist teacher of the deaf in the Cook Islands will complete his year’s training in Christchurch next week.

He is Mr Teremoana Tangauru, a 32-year-old Rarotongan primary school teacher, who will return to the Cook Islands in January after a brief tour of New Zealand. Apart from sending a few deaf children to Auckland for therapy, very little had been done for the deaf on the islands, Mr Tangauru said vesterday. there being no facilities at present for helping them. With the aid of another teacher who will arrive in Christchurch for a year’s training next January, he hoped to begin a programme which would integrate the deaf child into island society. “It will be a big challenge which will have to be met in several ways,” Mr Tangauru said. Firstly he would gain an impression of the extent of deafness and try to instil an awareness that the deaf person could be helped. He would then work with deaf children, teaching them how to communicate with parents and teachers. He had been given the New Zealand Film Unit’s recent production “A Deaf Child in the Family,” , testing equipment and hearing aids.

Since he arrived in New Zealand in January, Mr Tangauru has visited a deaf school in Auckland for two weeks and has worked with the itinerant teacher of deaf children and parent guidance instructor.

Mr M. Parsons, lecturer in charge of special education at Christchurch Teachers’ College, said Mr Tangauru was very popular with his pupils, parents and fellow teachers. He would face a difficult job because the extent of deafness, although not known, was already putting considerable pressure bn the education system and was serious enough for the attention of at least two full-time teachers.