Advice? We want our son to be mainstreamed. He wants to go to the School for the Deaf

That's fine if u don't want to go to Gallaudet. Not everyone HAS to go there. I am truly sorry that u had a bad experience.

It is unfair to simply say that all Deaf schools are bad. Did u experience attending all of the Deaf schools.

Iam not telling u what u don't know about your own experience despite what u think.

Some people don't like them while others loved them.

If I remener correctly, it was in the 60s when u attended the deaf school. That's a long time ago and how dou know if things have changed for the better or not?
 
I don't want to get into any debate. I've been to both deaf and hearing schools so here's my personal opinion.

I enjoyed going to hearing schools than deaf schools. Two important factors that I think that any deaf or HoH children at this age are better off going to hearing schools:

1. Advanced technology (computers w/ internet access, cellphones or pdas with text/video capabilities, TTY, instant-messaging and many devices or gadgets that allow easier communication w/ others)

2. Oral communication skills

Considering my occupation, those two are very vital in my life. It has allowed me to communicate with hearing people on a comfortable level, including my employees. Without oral skills, I'd be totally lost. I don't think I can live with sign-language alone since it limits my communication capabilities big time. Today's technology has allowed easier communication and even hearing people are using communication devices to communicate with one another, anywhere and anytime.

Again, this is just my personal opinion. I'm just a humble guy in his early twenties who's running a small business with 5+ employees.
 
Deaf schools have all these technology and have oracy.
 
Deaf schools have all these technology plus more (smartboards in each classrooms) and have oracy.
 
I agree with everyone for listen your child´s wish.

I wish you best of good luck, Jason. :)
 
Jason, you and your (obviously) caring parents brought us some great discussions. It was great "meeting" you all. I, for one, hope you stay around and keep posting. You seem like really nice and intelligent folks. It would be very nice "watching" you grow up, and how you fare in school. Say, what was your final choice? Deaf School, Mainstream??
Nosy Granny Needs To Know! ; )
 
jazzy said:
Don't go to deaf school. They are not worth it.
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That's unfair to say that as a whole. I didn't go to a deaf school, but not because I didn't think it would be worth it. See below:

shel90 said:
Granted Deaf schools have their flaws and so do public schools.

I am sorry that u had a bad experience but not everyone has had a bad experience.
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This is what I've been trying to say all along. There has been bashing (not by me) of people in this forum who have different (and not always bad) experiences. That's why so many of these threads get closed. Every single program out there has their flaws, and their positives, whether they're sign, oral, bi-bi, TC, deaf school, mainstreamed, whatever. These kinds of responses seem a little bit hypocritical.
 
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Nan_Mathews said:
Jason, you and your (obviously) caring parents brought us some great discussions. It was great "meeting" you all. I, for one, hope you stay around and keep posting. You seem like really nice and intelligent folks. It would be very nice "watching" you grow up, and how you fare in school. Say, what was your final choice? Deaf School, Mainstream??
Nosy Granny Needs To Know! ; )
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Awww..what a sweet post!
 
AlleyCat said:
That's unfair to say that as a whole. I didn't go to a deaf school, but not because I didn't think it would be worth it. See below:



This is what I've been trying to say all along. There has been bashing (not by me) of people in this forum who have different (and not always bad) experiences. That's why so many of these threads get closed. Every single program out there has their flaws, and their positives, whether they're sign, oral, bi-bi, TC, deaf school, mainstreamed, whatever. These kinds of responses seem a little bit hypocritical.
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TC, bi-Bi, oral and signs are not deaf schools. That's the difference.

Wanted to clarify this... in the other threads, the methodologies were argued and they got locked. I dont recall arguing about schools so please correct me if I ever did. My memory is failing me right now. However, this thread is about schools not about methodologies so only schools were discussed and I dont see anyone discussing methodologies here unless I overlooked some posts. :dunno:

I have always stated that deaf schools have their flaws as well as public schools. All schools could use room for improvement.

The topic is more about physocio-emotional needs rather than a communication need.
 
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I agree with other members. I offer you listen to your son's wish. If he isn't happy in mainstream school. Then let him go to deaf school for experience. Let him social with deaf through ASL. It depend on your location where you guys are coming from. In case if you live close to deaf school. That will be great!

In my experience with mainstream school. I was with deaf and hoh program in class. I wasn't happy with my hoh teacher forced me to use voice as oral without sign language. I couldn't understand because I am profound deaf since I was born. My hearing aids doesn't help me very well. The hoh kids made fun of me because I don't use my voice to communicate with hearing kids. I ended up with mainstream when I was in 4 grader. I moved to deaf school in 5 graders. I live 2 hours away from deaf school. I missed my parents. I always go home every on Friday and return to dorm every on Sunday.

Good luck for your son.
 
Nan_Mathews said:
Jason, you and your (obviously) caring parents brought us some great discussions. It was great "meeting" you all. I, for one, hope you stay around and keep posting. You seem like really nice and intelligent folks. It would be very nice "watching" you grow up, and how you fare in school. Say, what was your final choice? Deaf School, Mainstream??
Nosy Granny Needs To Know! ; )
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We love you, Nosy Granny. :D

Wow. Thank you all for your responses, advice, and the spirited discussion. We've learned a lot. We're still considering our options, and we don't have to make a decision for several more weeks, but thanks to your thought-provoking comments we (Mom and Dad) are much more open to the idea of Jason going to DS than we had been. We're checking out the academic achievement stats, and they look pretty good. Most importantly, you've helped us realize that our son is getting to be mature enough to make some of his own decisions, and that he's smart enough to do so intelligently.

Someone asked why we thought that we would be "limiting" him (that was the word we used) by sending him to DS. It's not that we think that hearing classmates are "better" than deaf. We know they're not. :D We just think that in order to teach our son how to function in the world, he needs to be exposed to a wide variety of people, and to learn to communicate on their terms. We're still concerned that we're giving some of that experience up by sending him to DS. That was the point we were trying to make, and we probably didn't express it very well.

Thanks again, everyone. We're really glad we found the site!

Jason's Obviously Caring, Really Nice and Intelligent Parents
 
ID said:
I don't want to get into any debate. I've been to both deaf and hearing schools so here's my personal opinion.

I enjoyed going to hearing schools than deaf schools. Two important factors that I think that any deaf or HoH children at this age are better off going to hearing schools:

1. Advanced technology (computers w/ internet access, cellphones or pdas with text/video capabilities, TTY, instant-messaging and many devices or gadgets that allow easier communication w/ others)

2. Oral communication skills

Considering my occupation, those two are very vital in my life. It has allowed me to communicate with hearing people on a comfortable level, including my employees. Without oral skills, I'd be totally lost. I don't think I can live with sign-language alone since it limits my communication capabilities big time. Today's technology has allowed easier communication and even hearing people are using communication devices to communicate with one another, anywhere and anytime.
Again, this is just my personal opinion. I'm just a humble guy in his early twenties who's running a small business with 5+ employees.
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Today's technology had made things easier to communicate with one another. If hearing people use those devices to communicate with one other, then the Deaf people can use those devices to communciate with hearing people as well.
 
Buffalo said:
Today's technology had made things easier to communicate with one another. If hearing people use those devices to communicate with one other, then the Deaf people can use those devices to communciate with hearing people as well.
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We are talking about the classrooms where the hearing teachers and the hearing students are discussing the subjects of their courses. I know you mean cell phones or computers but still we need an ASL interpreters to help them understand what is going on in the classrooms which mean in high school. It is okay for social interaction to communicate with cell phone like texting. Yeah, we can use computers for learning if we need help to understand what the subjects we need to know about like Math or English, or civic studies or any kind of subject that we need to learn from. In the 60's, we did not have those technologies like you all have but we need sign language interpreters and notetaker, but we are not allow to have them and we were very much in the dark not knowing what the teachers and the students were talking about and that was not fair at all. That is why we want to go to Deaf School so that we can understand with sign language (See and then later ASL) to be able to understand what we were suppose to learn in the classroom. AGB groups were wrong to have us do lipreading in a hearing classroom which we find it very hard to understand just because we were born deaf. Maybe some lipreaders can make it through high school from 7th to 12th grades with no problem but I know that they do have trouble understanding and struggling much like us. If we had those accommodations like you all have today, then life would be a little bit easier except for one thing - social interaction with our Deaf peers, even if we had one or two hearing peers. I was not very happy in the oral-only mainstream high school and so are my Deaf classmates. We all wanted to have sign language at our school, but the principal won't allow us to have it at all. We have to suffer through like this. AGB groups need to change their altitudes about why we, Deafies, are having problems in the mainstream schools including the social interaction. That is my rant. I hope you understand what I am trying to say. :cool2:
 
Right, Bebonang. I rather see the kid go to the school for the deaf where the education is on the par with hearing schools. I want the school to be Bi-Bi because I don't want the deaf kid to miss or misunderstood a single word. If the kid can speak, great. If not, that is okay as there are technologies where one can communicate with hearing people. What is so important to me is the level of the education the kids are getting, not how well they can speak.
 
Buffalo said:
Today's technology had made things easier to communicate with one another. If hearing people use those devices to communicate with one other, then the Deaf people can use those devices to communciate with hearing people as well.
Click to expand...

I work at a Deaf school during the regular school year and work at a public school during the summer. The public school I work at is one of the best and richest school districts/county in this state. None of the classrooms have Smartboards in them while at the Deaf school where I work at, every classroom has a smart board, FM system, captioned announcement, flashing lights and more. Where I work at during the summer has none of that because it is more hearing-centered so my deaf students and I have to constantly depend on my hearing coworkers for a lot of things while at the deaf school, we dont. Because the public schools doesnt have all those technologies, my students get frustrated by the lack of access sometimes and I have use a lot of my prep time to give them the same access to information, sometimes even for myself so it can get frustrating sometimes. I have brought that up wtih teh administrators because these students go there during the school year but it has been 5 years and I havent seen any changes. Oh well. At least the staff are very nice and try their best to ensure that we are included so I am very thankful for that. It is the administration that doesnt understand.

That's why I feel Deaf schools are better suited to meet deaf children's needs than the public schools but to each to its own.
 
^^

Is it because the administration doesn't want to or their budget wouldn't allow it? Honestly, looking at schools from a purely financial perspective, I wouldn't pay a crapload of money to kind of help a few students that goes to my school for less than 1/3 of the year. It wouldn't even be THAT much of a help. Yes it would be easier for them, but is it really worth it? They probably know it's more cost effective to ask the teachers to spend an extra hour a day to prepare materials for those students.

That's life.
 
Daredevel7 said:
^^

Is it because the administration doesn't want to or their budget wouldn't allow it? Honestly, looking at schools from a purely financial perspective, I wouldn't pay a crapload of money to kind of help a few students that goes to my school for less than 1/3 of the year. It wouldn't even be THAT much of a help. Yes it would be easier for them, but is it really worth it? They probably know it's more cost effective to ask the teachers to spend an extra hour a day to prepare materials for those students.

That's life.
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Most of these students go to their schools full time along with some of my students from the Deaf school for 1/3 of the year...I got the contract because their regular TODs dont want to work during the summer.

I dont know about the budget but this is the 2nd richest county in MD so a few accodomations cant really hurt their budget. Therer are none..my hearing aide acts as my terp and her signing skills are very poor. Again, that's another issue I have with the administrators...aides are not qualified to be the terp.

If there is a Deaf school nearby, why not the parents take advantage of it? (It is only 20 mins away from this county) That's a whole another topic, itself. Not going there so I will stop here.

However, because of that the kids dont really have equal access to everything during the school year and in my eyes, that's unfair. They dont really socialize with the hearing kids themselves. I have tried and tried to encourage them but they said that communication is too hard and prefer to socialize within themselves. I dont know if they socialize with them during the school year but during the summer, there is almost zero interaction between the deaf and hearing kids.

Yep, that's life but I try to instill Deaf culture awareness with them so they dont feel ashamed to be deaf.
 
sevenhudsons said:
We love you, Nosy Granny. :D

Wow. Thank you all for your responses, advice, and the spirited discussion. We've learned a lot. We're still considering our options, and we don't have to make a decision for several more weeks, but thanks to your thought-provoking comments we (Mom and Dad) are much more open to the idea of Jason going to DS than we had been. We're checking out the academic achievement stats, and they look pretty good. Most importantly, you've helped us realize that our son is getting to be mature enough to make some of his own decisions, and that he's smart enough to do so intelligently.

Someone asked why we thought that we would be "limiting" him (that was the word we used) by sending him to DS. It's not that we think that hearing classmates are "better" than deaf. We know they're not. :D We just think that in order to teach our son how to function in the world, he needs to be exposed to a wide variety of people, and to learn to communicate on their terms. We're still concerned that we're giving some of that experience up by sending him to DS. That was the point we were trying to make, and we probably didn't express it very well.

Thanks again, everyone. We're really glad we found the site!

Jason's Obviously Caring, Really Nice and Intelligent Parents
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Ah, thanks for clarifying.

Glad all the posts helped. Best of luck in everything. :)
 
sevenhudsons said:
Hi everyone,

Our son Jason, 13, has been deaf since birth and mainstreamed all the way through school. We primarily sign but he also speaks and lip reads. He has an ASL interpreter in the classroom and spends one period a day in speech therapy as an elective class. Other than that, he's a typical middle schooler.

He's a wrestler, and very good at it. Last year as a 7th grader, he wrestled high school JV. They had an away meet at the state school for the deaf and blind. He won his match against an 11th grader. He came home and we had the following conversation:

"I want to go to deaf school."

"Why?"

"I spent the day with people like me. I want to do that all the time. I want to be with people who understand me when I sign, and who I can understand. I don't like trying to speak to people who can't understand me. I don't like trying to lip read people I can't understand. I don't like wearing hearing aids and pretending they help me understand better, 'cause they don't. I am a DEAF PERSON and I want to be with DEAF PEOPLE!"

We're at a crossroads. We want Jason to be able to function in the wider world, so we've always brought him up around hearing people. We don't want to limit him. He doesn't like the school where he is; part of that is related to his deafness and part of it isn't. We want him to be happy. He's a smart boy, and we think he's got a good understanding of what would make him happy. But we don't want to pull him out of the mainstream. This is a big step for us. What advice would you give us?

Thanks,

Alexandra and John, Jason's parents
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I'm a student at a hearing high school. I have an ASL interpreter. I lost my hearing when i was 3 years old due to Auto Immune Hearing Loss. My left ear is completely deaf but my right ear is hard of hearing. I used to wear hearing aids in both ears but i got a implant when i was 8 years old. And now i'm almost 16.

I used to go to a deaf school. But that was only for a few months. I didn't really like going there because it was so far away from home and it was pretty strict there. I was in a deaf class for about 2 years in a elementary school. But it was in a hearing school where they had a deaf class. So bascilly it was a hearing school.

My parents wants me to have a deaf culture as much as a hearing culture. Because I'm always in the hearing world everyday. But its rare for me to be with my deaf family. And there are times where I want to be around deaf people because of when i'm fustrated with whats going on with my FM systems, or with not understanding people or with when an subsitute interpreter is not available or with the many issues that we have in everyday life. I'm pretty glad to have deaf friends, as well as from here on AD and from reality. Because they're the ones i can tell my problems to and they can understand what i'm dealing with and they can help me. I can understand your son's situation. If i were him i would want to go to a deaf school too. But for me, I'm kind of used to being in the hearing world than deaf because i'm always with hearing people. But I would want to be with deaf too. But i'm always busy with school, band, etc. I never have enough time to be with deaf.

Hearing aids, well, they dont help as much than the implant does. They just help make things louder. It takes a few years for people with hearing aids and implants who were either born deaf or lost their hearing or people of old age to understand speech with their hearing aids or implant. Even when I actually have my implant and my hearing aid on, I still have diffculty understanding people. But sometimes i manage to figure out a few words of what they're actually saying. Sometimes I don't.

I'll give an example The sounds processes to the brain. As a deaf person I have a 2 lane highway, which is your hearing aid or implant processing sounds to the brain to your other ear . But with some bumps on the roads or rush hour or accidents on the highway. It takes awhile for the speech and sounds to process. But with a hearing person its a 4 lane highway. Which the sounds processes to the left ear, to the brain, and to the right ear, and back to the left ear. With no rush hour, no bumps on the road, and no rush hour. And easily to process things.

But listen to your son. If he wants to go to a deaf school let him. IT'll give him a chance to actually be with deaf people and communicate and be friends and so much more. It'll make him happy.

Sorry if i went off-topic. I'm just giving advice of what i can give when i was growing up, learning new ways to cooperate and dealing with being deaf and explaining how much i can hear being deaf with my HA and CI.

Hope this helps out a little.
 
If you are worried about having your child loose time with hearing children, you can always make sure he participates in activities with both deaf and hearing children,
 
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