Indiana Deaf Mother’s Babblings

Oh brother. I see that we get hot under our collars when it comes to certain words such as deficit thinkers, Deafhood, colonization, and now blame shifters. The fingerpointing gets old fast, ya know? The words are really relative and we all have our own definitions of the words and we have our own perspectives of how life should be spent. Is it right or wrong? There is no right nor wrong, really. However, I have seen MILLIONS of times on the DeafRead that the words tend to be taken out of the context and twisted around to fit the reader’s perspective, nothing more. There is really no need to get all emotional about it… we are just flawed human beings and it is PERFECTLY okay that we are opinionated. Everyone has a right to say whatever he/she wants, but we could learn to listen and not to whine…. each to his/her own opinion. We don’t need to make enemies of people we never meet except in the cyberworld just because we differ in our opinions.

Anyway, it has been a year and half since my son went mainstreaming at a local elementary school, and he has two months left before completing the 5th grade curriculum. Overalls, he has been doing very well, so well that it is almost a disadvantage. Why?

So far he has been getting support services which are an ASL interpreter, speech therapy twice a week, and CAN (computer assisted notetaking) and FM system. He sees his TOD (Teacher of the Deaf) once a week, for 20 minutes… no, he does not go to the resource room at all, since he does not have a need for tutoring, being an honor roll student and doing the 6th grade math (he is in 5th grade.) He easily passed the state exams. Over this school year, my son did not spend much time watching the ASL interpreter, opting to listen to the teacher with his FM system and following the CAN. So his TOD emailed and informed me that the interpreter would be let go , meaning my son would have to rely only on the CAN and FM system. Of course, he got upset and he did not want to see his interpreter to be let go. Sigh. Luckily, the interpeter has a job offer. So far, the tentative plan for next school year is for him to go back to Indiana School for the Deaf but he wants the dual enrollment (mornings at the local middle school and afternoons at ISD.) The problem is that the local school district’s superintendent passed down the no-dual enrollment rule which means he could have a full-time placement at either a local middle school or at ISD, no part-time mainstreaming. We are still working on having the rule to be bent a little so that my son could have the best of two worlds. If the no dual enrollment rule still stands, he’d go back to ISD full time. What interests me is that despite his being a strong aural learner, he appears to be ready to learn to become a visual learner. Kudos. What is important to me is that he got to taste what mainstreaming was like. He has enjoyed talking, singing (he is on the 5th grade choir), the challenge of academics, etc. He did mention that making friends in the mainstream setting was a bit of challenge for him, which is one of the reasons for him to want to go back to ISD.

We will have a case conference at the end of this month to decide his placement for next year and he will be sitting in the meeting so it would be a good experience for him to observe how the decision is made. So far he visited two schools… ISD and a local middle school in the last two months and we have had several discussions of pros and cons of the placements… my husband and I have played devil’s advocate so that he could learn to think and to explore pros and cons. If he does the dual enrollment, he’d have NO ASL interpreter at the local middle school just because he is aural and due to his English level being sufficient for him, he’d have to rely on the CAN all the time… and other time, he’d be exposed to ASL at ISD, so the balance would be very ideal for him, to strengthen the bridge between two worlds.

I am proud of him and I know he’d be all right in whatever adventures he is undertaking and will undertake. He knows he has his parents’ full support and that we make it very CLEAR to him that he has very right to steer his path as a person in his own right. We also let him know that it is his journey, not our journey. We are in his life as his parents, giving him the foundation through love.

I have been following NCSD’s situation closely, because I am a parent of two deaf children (one attending ISD and another being mainstreamed at a local elementary school who just expressed an interest in going back to ISD.) I noticed, with a slight disappointment, that there is a little attention paid to deaf education on DeafRead (other than the calls for ASL education.) That is where our future deaf leaders are…in schools (deaf and mainstream schools.) I am not interested in Deafhood, anti-/pro-CIs, etc. My heart lies more in the deaf education.

Now, the majority of deaf schools are under the state’s department of health/human services, which makes the schools “agencies”—subject to the regulations of the department of health/human services. Yes, there are a few deaf schools operating independently but still subject to the state budgets for the agencies. This knowledge can be a little confusing… since not all deaf schools are agencies. Another problem is the tendency of parents to trust the school administration to know what they are doing with the children’s needs. There are very good comments on how to get involved in the deaf schools on Mishka’s blog.

One needs to become familiar with the federal, state, and municipal (local) politics. Here in Indiana, the majority of the legislators in the districts often have full time jobs (farmer, doctors, teachers, etc….you name it) come and meet for a few months (from December through February, which the state congress is in session, for voting. The proposed bills need to be turned in by November. The rest of the year is usually focused on the committees.) Anyway, often the district legislators do not know much about deaf education (they have very limited exposure to deaf people.) I do not know about other states’ legislative procedures though. Anyway, we need to make ourselves known to the district legislators, through emails, letters, etc. (set up listservs) and have them become aware that the deaf children are just like other normal children. We need to show to them that ASL is a language that the majority of deaf children could easily take to and that it is the desirable language for teaching in the classrooms, to help them bridge to learning the 2^nd language, English.

As long as the deaf schools are viewed as “agencies” (often the parents do not know about deaf schools seen that way), they are at greater risk for budget cuts, not recognizing as academic institutions in their right, etc. Also, the problem is that deaf schools usually do not fare well on the state tests which do not look good in the hearing society’s eyes—which is frustrating.

Yes, parents could help the deaf schools by getting involved in PTO, PSA, PSO, or PTCO… but often these organizations involve a lot of fundraising, setting up the campus activities, etc. The deaf schools need more parents who could act as “liaisons” between the deaf schools and their municipal/state governments. I attended the legislative training workshop last fall at ISD and I learned a lot about the state government’s role in the running of the state agencies. Believe me, I am still learning. Yes, learn about IDEA, IEPs, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), to name a few. It is like trying to untie a Gordian knot.

 Post Script:  I am speaking of deaf schools in GENERAL… I am really happy with Indiana School for the Deaf for its academic excellence, despite the fact that ISD is seen as an agency.

Okay, as many of you already know, my 7-year-old daughter attends Indiana School for the Deaf and her 1st grade class undergoes the rigorous English curriculum, meeting the Indiana’s Academic Standards. She reads and writes at or above grade level and she is very fluent in ASL.

Her class participates in a cool project which is called The Traveling Bag of Books, in which each student reads 4 books a week, writes a journal entry, and does 2 activities related to the books. It is done to help expand the reading comprehension.

The books that she brought home last week were about stars and one of the activities she chose was to write a “song” about the star and I asked her if she’d not mind that I printed her song on the DeafRead so that readers could have some idea of how the academic teaching of English is done in the first grade class at Indiana School for the Deaf :o)

Remember she is in 1st grade, so be gentle in your comments since she is very proud of her song.

 

The Night Star

Sometimes I look in the sky.

I see the shining star look at me

hoo I love that star. Everyday I

saw that star and make a wish

hoo I love to make a wish.

I sing to a star. I wish for

a song every day I sang

a song every day hoo.

I wish for many things. I can’t

stop that everyday because

I love that star. Then the

Star told me that he is a boy

then he give me the thing

what I wish for. Hoo I love

that star I love that star

hoo. He is so small he is a

person I can’t believe it I

play with that star. Then

I let him go hoo I love

that star!

 

Post Script: This activity she chose was based on a book called The Night Sky, written by Patricia Ann Lynch, about a Native American story of how the sisters became stars, with a little brother chasing after them up the tree.

Kudos to Mishka opened up the discussion of cochlear implants with her series of CI postings which was not easy. We immediately saw the schism appearing very wide in our deaf community. The CI people are very much part of the deaf community. We all have to remember the the community is usually consisted of subgroups like cued deaf people, oral deaf people, to name several subgroups.We have to remember that at least 90% of deaf people is born to hearing parents and that there is a rising number of deaf children getting cochlear implants. So we need to embrace the hearing parents and the CI children, and to acknowledge that the CI children might feel more at home with English than ASL. I sense that there is an unspoken agreement that ALL deaf children have an inner need for ASL. I don’t agree with the word “all”, due to the amount of residential hearing the deaf people happen to have. There is a minority of deaf children who would be labeled as the auditory learners, compared to the majority of deaf childing as visual learners.

What disturbs me is the oppression of CI people by Deaf people. CI people would be accepted only if they know ASL. It does not make sense to me… because that is very conditional, very isolating, a way to let them know that they are not normal until they learn ASL. Are we seeing oppression in action now, in DeafRead? Instead, while they claim to welcome CI people because they are deaf just like them, BUT only if… the CI people took up ASL. If they see no need for ASL, fine, the doors are then slammed shut in their faces, proving the claims of the deaf community as being exclusive sadly correct. Where is Deafhood in this?

There will always be a deaf community I foresee in the future that the deaf community will at the end accept CI people as part of the deaf community AND a part of Deaf Culture and that CI people will be the excellent leaders of the deaf community/culture, ASL or not. I believe it is what terrifies some Deaf people, so they call CI people as “robots”, “cyborgs”, etc., as an intent to isolate them. Change is not easy and terrifying, which explains the reactions of some Deaf people.

BUT, CI is very much part of the deaf community, same as very much part of the hearing community and they are really the bridges between two worlds. They could help us understand the hearing world and they could help hearing people to understand the deaf world.

In other words, we have to embrace them. Through embracing them, they might be more willing to learn ASL and we would be happy to learn to communicate with hearing people more. There has to be some give and take.

Now… are CI people part of our deaf community? I say yes, they are, even though ASL may not often be their first language. I know that the rejection is more felt on the DeafRead than in the real world and I only hope that CI people know this fact and not be turned off by some v/bloggers and some commenters. Barb Digi’s blog about the statistics of the acceptance of CI people is higher, which gives me some hope that the oppression cycle would be broken soon. The way I see it, they are knocking on our doors, and their parents already make it clear that they are willing to let their children to learn about us. We often view ourselves as oppressed…and we at the end oppress not only CI people, but also cued deaf people, deafblind people, etc.

Deaf people, will you be willing to help break the cycle of oppression?

Long time no blogging nor vlogging…instead, I mostly commented all over DeafRead, as you already noticed ;o)

Over the last year, I had a chance to observe the dynamics of the bloggers and vloggers’ using their languages, especially at how they used English in blogging. I noticed that the majority of Deaf bloggers with excellent English skills more or less followed the rules of English up to boot, dutifully producing out the easy-to-read English blogs, making it easy for the readers to leave the expected, ordinary comments … called conformity. On the other hand, the minority of Deaf bloggers with-again-excellent English skills play with the rules, making English to come across as exciting, maddening, insulting, thrilling, etc., which explains the interesting (with a tongue in my cheek) comments from the readers who one would not expect… inconformity. I have seen at how some people who are used to conformity react as if they are threatened, not fully understanding what the word play means so they go ahead and try to “discredit” or “score the points”.

Yes, I acknowledge that there are excellent Deaf bloggers who have great research expertise and their blogs are worthy to read and to do research on and to take notes for the research papers and to practice in real life. I wish I have this kind of expertise! BUT… I also notice that they do not play with the words (it is kinda hard to play with the words when the rules of academic writing are followed, ya know.) I realized something… it is hard for Deaf people to understand semantics and phonics. Mind you, I do not have a good grasp of semantics and I write according to the memorized English grammatical rules, not knowing any better and I don’t understand the meaning of “bending” the English rules.

So when I come across a few bloggers who have different, unique English skills… it is because they understand the semantics and phonetics and all, so they play with the rules and they show they have fun in this area, giving us a sense of freedom to comment in anyway we want, such as Paotie’s blog, Mr. Sandbox’s Sandbox, deafbuzz’s blog, to name a few. To understand better, you could look up in the writings of Shakespeare… see how he played with words practically all the time and you could tell that he had a blast, exciting, angering, confusing, warming the readers’ emotions. So this minority has the deeper understanding of how English is played out and they could entertain us… exciting, angering, confusing, warming, etc. our emotions.  When our emotions are stirred, they accomplish the goal.

Hearing people are not different from deaf people in this matter as well.

English is a great language… so is ASL, especially with the facial expressions… cool also!

Just my take.

Hey, Ella, Genie, DE, Paddy Ladd, and whoever are leading Deafhood Workshops…

I have been hearing and reading about Deafhood Workshops. I have yet to attend one… will do when it comes to Indianapolis :o). Anyway, it seems to me that the workshops are centered to the deaf adults… what about deaf children/deaf youths? After all, they are our future and we need to start educating them. Think about it… at least 80% of deaf children are raised orally/mainstreamed, and when they arrive at a certain age when they decide to explore the deaf communities, they would want to be welcomed with open arms and less judgemental. One incident occurred last night while I was at work that made me think… one deaf girl from ISD came here with my son’s good friend and she told my son he was brainwashed at mainstream school… huh, she does not know the full story with my son, but it shows me that judgement and selection of certain people start at home and at school.

So how about setting up a Deafhood workshop (or retreat) for deaf children and deaf youths? Or better still, plan summer camps with deafhood theme for them next summer? We need to help educate deaf children/youth to fully understand deafhood and to be in a better place to welcome orally/mainstreamed deaf people in the future. That way, our deaf children would not be facing a lot of divisions in our community that we are facing now.

Summer is almost upon us… meaning no school for children! Of course, with an exception for some children who’d be attending summer schools. Anyway, I suggest that deaf children read COMICS… why? Because comics are a great way for them to develope an understanding of sequences, plots, themes, characters, you name it… due to the comics being very visual. The parents can be involved in helping the children to read “text clouds”, by acting out the characters. My children love reading comics (newspapers, books, etc.) Of course, there are some concerns about the contents of violence and sex in the comics, so check the comics before giving them to your child/children. Reading should be fun!

Any suggested readings for deaf children, you are all welcome to leave comments :-).

Comments have power to inspire and to belittle people. We all want to be heard, so we leave comments, sharing our perceptions. Perceptions are really egos talking, nothing more. If we give a lot of power to the commenters, we’d feel good and supported by the positive commenters and we’d feel belittled and upset by the negative commenters. When we post our opinions, we open ourselves up to the possible of waves of applause or to the thumbs-down boo’s. I know there are some people who are dealing with anger and when they take it out on us, they are asking to be heard and to see their pain. Instead, we react… we are, by nature, reactive instead of proactive. I quickly learned it was best not to feed fire with fuel… it would lead to loss of sleep ;o).

Just remember… comments are just egos talking. We all love to be heard. It is human nature. However, if one feels strongly about anything, it would be a good idea that one emails privately to the person instead of leaving the comments, because words have power to affect other people. Again, it is all about respect.

I’d like to discuss oracy for SOME deaf children. I recently learned that Bi-Bi philosophy supported oracy, along with ASL and literacy, ONLY for SOME deaf children who have aptitude for it. I know it is a sticky subject for deaf adults who feel that ASL is the only language for deaf children. But let’s think about it… there are some deaf children who LIKE using voice, hearing voices, etc., and as long as they have “talent” for oracy, let them refine it. Speech therapy is not enough… why not use it in the general education classrooms? Of course, there should be checks on it, to make sure that oracy does not dominate the teaching method. Oracy should be taught as a 2nd language, just like written English.

The problem is that there is not enough information on oracy, except that it includes three skills: speaking, listening, and speechreading. Anyway, enjoy my vlog