Our mascot, whom we affectionately call Cali, is a creation of love.

Cali represents the ultimate goal of COL. Her name is an acronym for Color-Coded Approach to Language Instruction. Our aim has always been and continues to be to develop a literacy curriculum that makes language acquisition as accessible to Deaf children and it is to hearing children. The beginning years of COL have kept us busy with basic vocabulary development products and now we are beginning to develop the grammar and syntax products that will be based on a color-coded English instruction system called Patterned Language.

We introduced Cali and her family in the vocabulary development products such as the Who? Series: Family? where children get to know Cali?s family and then create books showing pictures and Sign Names of their own family.

She is a young deaf girl with bright red hair, freckles and loads of personality. She communicates freely with the hearing, hard of hearing and deaf members of her immediate and extended family and through ASL, leads us into learning the basics of the English Language. In the Beginning and Intermediate Levels, a large vocabulary is introduced allowing for introduction in the Advanced Levels to the rules and structures of the English language by comparing it with the rules and structures of ASL.

Recent research is showing that an understanding of the principle, syntax and structure of ASL is essential to the understanding and use of English. Students who have that foundation tend to become proficient readers. Those without it, struggle with reading comprehension.