Bio
Alee (Alexandra) Lee Capps is an early childhood educator and Stanford University affiliate working with the Graduate School of Education to support research in local Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) classrooms. She has worked in early childhood education for more than 15 years and currently serves as Director of The Learning Tree Preschool, a family-run preschool in Fremont, California, that has served the community since 1980.
Alee’s connection to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community is more recent and deeply personal. She is the hearing mother of a Deaf child born with bilateral microtia and atresia. Since her daughter’s birth, Alee and her family have been learning American Sign Language (ASL) and navigating early language access, education, and services for DHH children and their families. These experiences have made early language access and the prevention of language deprivation especially important to her.
At The Learning Tree Preschool, Alee has worked to make the early childhood environment more accessible and inclusive for DHH children and families, including creating opportunities for ASL and spoken English to be part of the school community. She is also a co-founder of Growing Peace Enrichment, which provides inclusive enrichment and after-school opportunities for children, and founder of Born to Belong, a community initiative focused on creating more inclusive and accessible opportunities for children and families.
Alee approaches her work in the Deaf community as a hearing parent and educator who is still learning. She strongly believes in Deaf leadership and that the voices, expertise, and lived experiences of Deaf people should guide work intended to serve Deaf children and communities.
Alee is especially interested in early language access, preventing language deprivation, and creating more inclusive early childhood experiences for DHH children and their families. Through her work at Stanford, she hopes to contribute her perspective as an early childhood educator and parent while continuing to learn from Deaf educators, researchers, families, and the broader Deaf community.