Leahea F. Grammatico (1927 – 1995) founding director of what was once called Peninsula Oral School for the Deaf, was a pioneer in Listening, Spoken Language and Cognition. She became the director of the school and managed it until her retirement in 1991. During this time she expanded the school’s offerings with parent-babies, pre-school, kindergarten, lower school and private tuition. She promoted a learning environment that maximized residual hearing and the development of spoken communication through engaging, interactive and cognitive curricula. With the development of spoken language skills in small groups and daily individual therapy, in which parents were also involved, the students gained self-confidence and motivation to learn.

Cognitively, Mrs. G, (as many called her), always thought outside of the box. She collaborated with a hearing aid company and developed a master hearing aid, the audiometer, with which she could determine the individual hearing needs of each child so that the hearing aid company could adapt the hearing aid specifically to the child. When cochlear implants were introduced, she was highly motivated to learn more about this new technology.

Along with innovative strategies to improve hearing, these children were able to learn natural spoken language. Leahea Grammatico’s had a global reputation and her program combined listening, language and cognitive development in an exemplary manner. One of her gifts was the concept of divergent questions that were critical to language expansion. The children, sometimes even those that were pre-verbal had ideas, and Mrs. G taught us so brilliantly how to listen and watch carefully so that we could model and reinforce their ideas and expand upon their language. Children absolutely delighted her and their ideas were pure joy for her.