Commemoration

Samuel Greene was the first deaf teacher to teach deaf children in the Ontario school system.  An American by birth, he was educated at the National Deaf Mute College, now Gallaudet University, in Washington, D.C.  After graduating in 1870 he came to teach at the new provincial school for the deaf in Belleville (later Sir James Whitney School).  Believing that the education of deaf children should be based on solid language skills, Greene devised a progressive and highly successful method of teaching that used sign language and written English.  So-founder and first president of the Ontario Association of the Deaf, he was renowned for his eloquent public addresses and poetry recitations in sign language.