The Sarah Fuller Home for Little Deaf Children was the first organization of its kind in the country to recognize the urgent importance of beginning the education of a deaf child as early as possible. Mrs. Francis (Louisa) Brooks of West Medford, Massachusetts, established the home in 1888, as a boarding school. Mrs. Brook's own daughter was deafened in infancy by scarlet fever. She hired a private teacher to instruct her daughter and later invited other mothers of deaf children to bring their children to her home for instruction. Eventually, a building on Mrs. Brook's estate was converted into a school. Because she had been assisted and encouraged by Ms. Sarah Fuller, an instructor of the deaf, Mrs. Brooks named the school the Sarah Fuller Home for Little Children Who Cannot Hear. The school provided instruction for pre-school children between the ages of two and five, who were too young to begin attending the Horace Mann School for the Deaf, in Boston, where Ms. Fuller was principal.

Sarah Fuller (February 15, 1836 – August 1, 1927) began teaching at the Boston School for Deaf-Mutes in 1869. In 1877 the name of the school was changed to the Horace Mann School for the Deaf. Ms. Fuller served as the school's principal for 41 years. Incidentally, one of Ms. Fuller's students was Helen Keller. Alexander Graham Bell, in a letter to Ms. Fuller in 1922, regarding a school designed for deaf children expressed the opinion that "their [the deaf child] normal environment with hearing associates should be interfered with as little as possible." This philosophy was carried on in the school and continued through home visits after financial difficulties forced the school's closure. Children were taught to speak through tactile, visual and auditory methods.

In 1925, financial difficulties forced the school to close. The endowment set up to run the school was utilized to establish the Sarah Fuller Foundation for Little Deaf Children. In 1927 a program of home teaching was substituted for the little boarding school, under the direction of Miss Dora I. Gay. Teachers visited the homes of deaf children to instruct them. The objective of the program was to provide better evaluation and planning for the education of deaf children. Ms. Gay also believed that deaf people could and should be taught to speak. She and the other teachers believed in teaching children early to read lips so as to enable them to be prepared when they went to school to assimilate better into hearing society. The mother's also played an important role in continuing on this education outside of the home visits. The School was an advocate of integration and assimilation, treating the children not as handicapped but as ones who communicated in a slightly different manner. Learning to speaking-was highly encouraged.

In 1957, the Sarah Fuller Foundation became integrated into the Hearing and Speech Clinic at Children's Medical Center, Boston (now Boston Children’s Hospital). Today, the Department of Otolaryngology and Communication Disorders at Boston Children's carries on this work, via research, educational planning and comprehensive evaluation and consultative services to deaf and hard of hearing children.

Sources:

Snedeker, Lendon. One Hundred Years at Children's. Boston: Privately printed, 1969.

James Ronald Morris. A Little Out of Hand: The Prestige of Science and Rise of the Oral Movement in Nineteenth-Century American Deaf Education. Thesis: Harvard University, March 1988.