Laurent Clerc: A Deaf Teacher

Laurent Clerc was considered as one of the first outstanding deaf teachers in the United States, considering that he was born in France. Clerc was born on a village over by Lyons, France in 1835. He was born with hearing, that is until when he was just a year old that he fell into a fire that led to him losing his hearing and smell. It would also leave him with a badly burned face on his right side, plus he would be scarred for life, which would something he would later be recognized for. At the age of twelve, Clerc entered into the Royal Institution for the Deaf in Paris, in which he was excellent in his studies. When he graduated, the school had asked him if he could stay at school and become a teacher, in which he would accept.

About a few years later, Clerc went to England to

He was taught so much to many people, from Gallaudet, to his students, even to men who wanted to study about sign language. During his time, Clerc would later meet Eliza Boardman, one of his students that he taught to. The two would later marry and have a kid, named Elizabeth Victoria, the first of what would be six kids they would have. Elizabeth would actually later go to ASD and be taught sign language. Considering that Laurent had never gone to college, some of them gave him special honorary degrees for his pioneering work in deaf education. Laurent Clerc would later on spend a total of fifty years teaching sign language to students. He would retire from teaching in 1858, at the age of seventy-three. He passed away in 1869 at the age of eighty-four. His work in Old French Sign Language would later lead to a pathway into American Sign Language, as thirty schools for the deaf would later be established in the U.S. during his lifetime. He, along with Thomas Gallaudet, is considered as two pioneers that would help bring deaf people together by learning about sign language in the United