Deaf Teacher in Schools

ScrappyKat

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My ASL teacher is deaf and honestly she is a total godsend. I am just curious what you all think. I am an info freak.. what can I say?
 
I don't know your ASL teacher, wouldn't know what to say about her. I don't understand your question here. :confused:
 
That's cool! My ASL teacher is deaf as well. I'm HOH and wouldn't want to learn ASL from a hearing person, they don't understand what it's like for deaf/HOH people who need it. Hearing ASL teachers make stupid general assumptions about deaf/HOH people and how to speak to people who use ASL. In the book we're given, it was written by a hearing person. It has stupid shit like, "Approach the deaf/ HOH person slowly. Always make eye contact. Tap them on the shoulder to get their attention. Never interupt them" Stupid stuff like that. Whatever happened to just "Approach the deaf/HOH person as a PERSON and not something different."?? I hate it when people make assumptions which in the end make us out to be less than we are?
 
My future daughter in law will take ASL class in two weeks and she will have a deaf teacher. I knew him and wish her well to take his class. Very hard to get A in his class.
 
Most of my ASL teachers were Deaf; and it was fantastic. They really knew what they were doing because they used the language everyday of their lives.

The other thing they did was to make sure we really understood what a sign meant by *how* it was used. The few hearing teachers I've had are kind of lax on this. They would give us an english definition for the sign if we were having trouble. The problem with this is that a single sign can mean many english words depending on the context. With the Deaf teachers we understood that range of meaning better

The only hearing person I had as a teacher that was as good as the Deaf teachers was a CODA and an interpreter.
 
that s great! IMO, I felt there are needed more deaf asl teachers at colleges for ASL classes for skillful interpreters..
 
That great!!! But I would like to see more of Deaf English teacher cuz when I was in public school, I could never understand how to make a sentence in English. So one day I had a deaf English teacher and boy oh boy, she explain every detail how to make a sentence for english and I passed. I was so happy. :D
 
THANK YOU BREEZY! my point. my whole damn 1st period calss wirth the exception of like 5 students and alot of her other classes treat her like crap. that have had deaf ASL teachers b4 and it never works out. this woman is a saint! i jus dont get it.
hmmm... *ponders*
ok...
well, i would not want to learn ASL from a hearing teacher either. it is just kinda odd. I mean i was petrified at first and am often thought of as odd for being hearing and signing more than i talk, but who really cares?!?!?! huh? LMAO! ok... well.. i am a crappy topic starter and am glad this is decent here... YAY!! :)
 
I had a deaf high school teacher in the late 1980s, and we learned a lot from him. the kids also liked him too, and called him "Dr. Death" when he teasing them saying "Do you want to die?" when they say something off the wall (the Dr. part was that they knew he was smart). :) Today, he now wears a C.I....when I had him as a teacher, he wore a body worn aid. :)

Nancy
 
C.I's are overrated.

don't get me started. please!

ok.. i am off to go journal. i wil have to post the links to my stuff here huh...

:dj: :wave:

SUPERBOWL!!! :party: :beer:
 
Im thinking of becoming a Teacher of the Deaf, but Im not too sure. Its a lot of work to become a teacher, even more so to be a teacher for the deaf. I know I definately want to work with deaf children though.

I suppose I think that I want to be a teacher cos my first teacher was deaf. I sometimes wonder if I didnt have her, would I still think "Im going to be a teacher" cos I may not know that deaf people can teach.
 
Thats the best way to learn ASL.

Hi Kat,
Thats how I learned my ASL is from a deaf person.
I've known ASL for 30 yrs.
You will learn alot from her, also practice what you learn outdside of class.
Get together with your friends and pracitce.
Good luck!
Margie
Dir. of Communciation Services
OCDAC
 
I have had three professional ASL teachers. One was Deaf and the other two hearing. I'm sorry to say the Deaf teacher was not very good. She was wonderful when it came to Deaf culture -- my first exposure to it -- but her method of teaching was extremely outdated. Basically it consisted of giving us lists of vocabulary. My notes from that class are just pages of words I wrote down. No explanation of grammar, nothing. I didn't remember anything from that class afterwards.

My hearing teachers were excellent. They have been in the field for more than 20 years, have a deep understanding of Deaf culture, and are very well respected in the Deaf community.

I am not generalizing, this was just my own experience. I have sat in on classes with Deaf teachers (not as a student) who were excellent. My point is that just because a teacher is Deaf doesn't automatically mean they will be a better teacher than a hearing person. There are good and bad Deaf teachers and good and bad hearing teachers.

I have, of course, had wonderful Deaf teachers, but they were not professional teachers. They were the members of the Deaf community who would sit and chat with me at Deaf events or one-on-one tutoring, and were so patient and encouraging as they put up with me butchering their language as I learned. So you don't even have to have a great teacher to have a "great teacher."
 
ScrappyKat said:
my whole damn 1st period calss wirth the exception of like 5 students and alot of her other classes treat her like crap.

This is totally infuriating. I remember in my class with my Deaf teacher (who even though she wasn't the best teacher, I loved her class) there were hearing students who would talk under their breath during class and show disrespect. It made me nuts. And these were COLLEGE STUDENTS; no one was forcing them to be in the class!

At another point more recently, I was asked to be a proctor during a test given by a Deaf teacher in a beginning ASL class for high school students. Why? Because the students would talk to each other during the test otherwise. It still makes me sad that there had to be a "silence cop" (as I called myself) to keep the students from cheating and being disrespectful. There's just no excuse.
 
Honestly it is better to have a Deaf asl teacher. My first ASL teacher was haring but had two deaf sons. My teacher now is Deaf and she's great, I'm learning a lot more on Deaf culture, a very important aspect of ASL.

On a side note, try and make your questions more clear next time.
 
I remember, we had an excellent Deaf Science teacher. He taught us so much about Deaf culture and language. He went back to Gallaudet for his PhD degree somehow he died of cancer. We still talked about him because he was the first Deaf teacher expose us. We grew up oral from hearing teachers. We missed so much the terms and academic. I learned how to speak since I was very young for many hours.

I never learn much about history or science. I always struggled with those subjects since I was young. My favorite subjects are English and Art History.

Therefore; Deaf schools should hire more Deaf teachers !!
 
wow, it's super to have deaf teacher who understand their own languages. I had one at school time in England.

I wish deaf teachers should be hire in Bavaria, Germany. :ugh2: They are still fighting to have deaf teachers.
 
I think it's great to have someone Deaf teach ASL. I just took a Spanish class for the first time ever and I think it would have been sort of strange if someone named Mademoiselle Francois had been teaching it!!!!! ;)
 
interpretrator: OMG! that is so what like 2 of us have ot do. she hears enought o know when we are talking but me and two ther students are her ears basically. if there are students screwing around and cursing a her or something we have to ratt. it maes me feel bad and i lost a friend because of it but she is so much of a godesnd that it really does not matter. hey come to think of it i get to see ehr tonight at starbucks! YAY!

Margie: THANKS!
 
ScrappyKat said:
if there are students screwing around and cursing a her or something we have to ratt. it maes me feel bad and i lost a friend because of it but she is so much of a godesnd that it really does not matter.

Yeah, luckily I was about 12 years older than these kids and didn't know them, so I felt perfectly happy in being a bitch when they spoke during the test. I was just sad it was necessary to have me there.

I still think having a Deaf teacher for ASL is not automatically better than having a hearing teacher, but I do agree that it's impossible to become fluent in ASL without learning from native speakers. If you have hearing teachers, no matter how good they are, also find a native ASL tutor or spend a lot of time at Deaf events with the ASL users (often hearing people tend to hang out with people who sign more English style). Just my opinion.
 
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