- February 14, 2020
Sister Mary Jo Logan: Volunteer, St. Joseph Institute for the Deaf, St. Louis
By: Jenny Beatrice, Director of Communications
What type of work are you doing at SJI?
I’m volunteering in the classroom on Wednesdays when they have a morning class of toddlers and an afternoon class of preschool children. So it’s a heavy day for Holly, the teacher. I’m an extra body in the room, an extra pair of hands—someone who can work with one child while she’s engaging with another. I’m really enjoying the work. It’s the highlight of my week.
What are you enjoying about it?
For my last 14 years of ministry, I worked in Alabama teaching daycare workers about recognizing red flags for children with disabilities. I'm putting that expertise into practice at the institute. And so a lot of the knowledge that I have been using in the past is coming right into play in my volunteering.
The students at SJI often have challenges in addition to their hearing loss so it sounds like your experience is a perfect fit for their student population.
I'm not a deaf educator. I'm special education. And so that really does fit in because they have children there that may be on the autism spectrum, children that are just having cognitive difficulties. The staff knows about the hearing aids and ear molds and cochlear implants and why something's buzzing, and I do the play therapy.
You may not be a “deaf educator,” but you do have experience at SJI.
I spent five years at the deaf institute back in the late '70s and early '80s in residential care. That's when kids came and
lived at the University City location. And so, from my
experience and what I learned from the teachers of the deaf there, I can now put into practice.
And I actually used most of the information that I learned at the institute about speech and language development when I did my 14 years of early child development for the daycare workers. And all of that really helped me in my job when I worked for United Cerebral Palsy. Now I'm just plugging it back in.
I really feel like my career has been sandwiched in between the SJI experience that started me off. And I'm now ending up there, so I think I've come full circle and I am glad that the opportunity presented itself.
Watching you in the classroom, I see you bring so much energy to it, and the kids really respond.
I do feel that early childhood education is one of my gifts. Now I worked many years at L’Arche with adults with disabilities, so I do feel that and special ed is my calling. But I was so grateful for being able to work with the deaf, especially back in my original stint at the institute, because I felt that it was putting me in touch with the original reason our sisters came to the United States.
In fact, I took my final vows while I was at the institute, and I really think the reason I decided to take finals was because I felt so rooted in the CSJ charism by being there and working with the deaf children.
How do you see this opportunity continuing to live out the CSJ mission today?
I'm really very pleased that, as a CSJ, I can be doing something with the institute on a regular basis because I think that it really helps to continue the charism. I feel like I'm very much carrying on the charism by volunteering there.