Specialists from a world leading institute on educating hearing-impaired children are assisting teachers at CedarBridge Academy and Gilbert Institute this week in efforts to improve their instruction skills.

The Ministry of Education and Development recently established a relationship with The Clarke School for the Deaf Mainstream Centre in Massachusetts in the United States, to provide professional development for local teachers and other professionals.

The school?s pioneering auditory/oral programmes have taught deaf and hard of hearing children to listen and talk for more than 130 years and they have trained hundreds of teachers for placement in schools around the world.

The director of Outreach Training Programmes and Oral Transliterating, Clare Troiano, and Allison Holmberg who is the auditory programme co-ordinator at Clarke School, will be assisting teachers at CedarBridge this morning and Gilbert Institute this afternoon.

The Ministry of Education designated Gilbert Institute as the primary school for students with severe to profound hearing loss.

However, CedarBridge teachers are also benefiting from the programme and plans are underway to extend its reach to Prospect Pre-school and Dellwood Middle School.

The focus of the workshop is on developing and supporting teams in the assigned schools and assessment teams that will include speech language pathologists from the Ministry of Health and Family Services.

In a brief interview yesterday, Ms Holmberg said teachers in Bermuda were ?eager and unbelievably warm and beautiful people who were anxious to learn and very receptive?.

She and Ms Troiano sat in on classes during their first day on the Island to see teachers interacting with pupils.

?We met with teachers later in the day to identify goals that needed to be worked on,? she said.

Ms Holmberg praised the Bermuda Government for providing the training.

?It?s a wonderful gesture by the Government to provide these services for teachers and ultimately for pupils,? she said.

Ms Holmberg said there were a handful Bermudian children attending Clarke School for the Deaf in the US and over the last few years teachers have also attended various workshops at the school.

She said they were hopeful that teachers would visit the school more often to undergo additional training and that this was something the Bermuda Government was still discussing.

There are between 25 and 30 hearing impaired children in Bermuda who will ultimately benefit from the training teachers, speech pathologists and psychologists are receiving this week.