Do we need hearing teachers in deaf ed at all?

jillio said:
Exactly. It has actually increased the bond between my son and I. Mutual understanding.
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Knowing this, makes it really weird how some of the people on this board use incredible amounts of energy to do anything for their deaf child, except of what deaf adults tell them to do.
 
faire_jour said:
But you are talking about "disallowing" people...hearing people. Why do you think that a late deafened, or oral deaf person would understand ASL or Deaf culture more than a hearing person? Just because their ears are different?
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It's a bigger change a late deafened or oral deaf person will understand deaf culture than a hearing person because those deaf people have experienced deafness in person and quite often, know more about the situation of other deaf people. I think oral deaf children would benfit great from oral deaf adults in oral schools, but somehow this perhaps goes against the oral philosophy..
 
flip said:
It's a bigger change a late deafened or oral deaf person will understand deaf culture than a hearing person because those deaf people have experienced deafness in person and quite often, know more about the situation of other deaf people. I think oral deaf children would benfit great from oral deaf adults in oral schools, but somehow this perhaps goes against the oral philosophy..[/QUOTE]

Yes it seems to be in the case. How many deaf people are teachers in the oral-only programs? I have yet heard of one. My friend who is hoh tried applying for an oral only deaf ed program and during the interview, they saw that he had a hearing aide and they asked him if he was deaf. He said that it doesnt matter..what matters that he is qualified to teach and feels that he can work with their students. He didnt get the job and guess what? The job went to a hearing rookie teacher ..my friend had 15 years of teaching experienced. Kinda makes you wonder doesnt it? :hmm:

I feel that the oral-only programs discriminate against deaf adults.
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shel90 said:
flip said:
It's a bigger change a late deafened or oral deaf person will understand deaf culture than a hearing person because those deaf people have experienced deafness in person and quite often, know more about the situation of other deaf people. I think oral deaf children would benfit great from oral deaf adults in oral schools, but somehow this perhaps goes against the oral philosophy..[/QUOTE]

Yes it seems to be in the case. How many deaf people are teachers in the oral-only programs? I have yet heard of one. My friend who is hoh tried applying for an oral only deaf ed program and during the interview, they saw that he had a hearing aide and they asked him if he was deaf. He said that it doesnt matter..what matters that he is qualified to teach and feels that he can work with their students. He didnt get the job and guess what? The job went to a hearing rookie teacher ..my friend had 15 years of teaching experienced. Kinda makes you wonder doesnt it? :hmm:

I feel that the oral-only programs discriminate against deaf adults.
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Prior to the Mialn Congress, it was standard practice that deaf adults taught deaf children. After the Milan Congress and the push to switch deaf education to the oral philosophy, deaf teachers systemactically lost their jobs all over the U.S. Once deaf teachers were removed from the arena of deaf ed, jobs in the field were unavailable to them. For many, many years, if a deaf adult wanted to work anywhere in the field of deaf ed, they were limited to positions such as a house parent at a residential school, or perhaps a custodian. One of the primary results of this has been a huge contribution to the underemployment of deaf adults historically...a problem that continues today. Add to that the undereducation that has occurred since the Milan Congress, and we see the negative effects on a wide spread basis.

It is way past time to get deaf teachers back in the classroom of the deaf student. We have allowed this negative situation to continue for 128 years. We have devoted over 100 years to waiting to see oral education under the auspices of the hearing will work. The conclusion is, after all this time, that for the vast majority of deaf students, it does not work. How many more years are we going to find it acceptable to sacrifice out deaf children to an outdated and largely ineffective system of education?
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shel90 said:
flip said:
It's a bigger change a late deafened or oral deaf person will understand deaf culture than a hearing person because those deaf people have experienced deafness in person and quite often, know more about the situation of other deaf people. I think oral deaf children would benfit great from oral deaf adults in oral schools, but somehow this perhaps goes against the oral philosophy..
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Yes it seems to be in the case. How many deaf people are teachers in the oral-only programs? I have yet heard of one. My friend who is hoh tried applying for an oral only deaf ed program and during the interview, they saw that he had a hearing aide and they asked him if he was deaf. He said that it doesnt matter..what matters that he is qualified to teach and feels that he can work with their students. He didnt get the job and guess what? The job went to a hearing rookie teacher ..my friend had 15 years of teaching experienced. Kinda makes you wonder doesnt it? :hmm:

I feel that the oral-only programs discriminate against deaf adults.
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Yeah, it's a puzzle that parents put their children in schools that will reject the same children when they grow up!
 
jillio said:
Prior to the Mialn Congress, it was standard practice that deaf adults taught deaf children. After the Milan Congress and the push to switch deaf education to the oral philosophy, deaf teachers systemactically lost their jobs all over the U.S. Once deaf teachers were removed from the arena of deaf ed, jobs in the field were unavailable to them. For many, many years, if a deaf adult wanted to work anywhere in the field of deaf ed, they were limited to positions such as a house parent at a residential school, or perhaps a custodian. One of the primary results of this has been a huge contribution to the underemployment of deaf adults historically...a problem that continues today. Add to that the undereducation that has occurred since the Milan Congress, and we see the negative effects on a wide spread basis.

It is way past time to get deaf teachers back in the classroom of the deaf student. We have allowed this negative situation to continue for 128 years. We have devoted over 100 years to waiting to see oral education under the auspices of the hearing will work. The conclusion is, after all this time, that for the vast majority of deaf students, it does not work. How many more years are we going to find it acceptable to sacrifice out deaf children to an outdated and largely ineffective system of education?
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Milan Congress was really awfull. Sick people, jeez!
 
shel90 said:
flip said:
It's a bigger change a late deafened or oral deaf person will understand deaf culture than a hearing person because those deaf people have experienced deafness in person and quite often, know more about the situation of other deaf people. I think oral deaf children would benfit great from oral deaf adults in oral schools, but somehow this perhaps goes against the oral philosophy..[/QUOTE]

Yes it seems to be in the case. How many deaf people are teachers in the oral-only programs? I have yet heard of one. My friend who is hoh tried applying for an oral only deaf ed program and during the interview, they saw that he had a hearing aide and they asked him if he was deaf. He said that it doesnt matter..what matters that he is qualified to teach and feels that he can work with their students. He didnt get the job and guess what? The job went to a hearing rookie teacher ..my friend had 15 years of teaching experienced. Kinda makes you wonder doesnt it? :hmm:

I feel that the oral-only programs discriminate against deaf adults.
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Our oral school employs a profoundly deaf teacher.
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shel90 said:
I have noticed the same as well...when we get new students in our program who do not know ASL and have poor speech skills, the hearing teachers struggle to understand them but most of the deaf staff do not. I think it is cuz hearing teachers do not read lips and rely on solely the auditory input and with their speech not being clear, of course, they will struggle to communicate with these students. For us, deaf staff, we are so used to lipreading different kinds of mouth movements, we do not have struggles.

I forgot about that issue...interesting, isnt it?
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Yes, it's interesting. A few time I have helped her understand things that the teacher would not seem to grasp where they are getting confused at. I taught her how to work a crossword puzzle for vocabulary. I had to hide from the teacher because she didn't want to teach her for some reason. She was a smart girl, but she needed to be shown. I helped another student struggling with spelling. The teacher told me not to help her :roll:. I felt that the teacher were sometimes rough with the students trying to have them fend for themselves. I think this made their self-esteem go down a bit.
 
ClearSky said:
Yes, it's interesting. A few time I have helped her understand things that the teacher would not seem to grasp where they are getting confused at. I taught her how to work a crossword puzzle for vocabulary. I had to hide from the teacher because she didn't want to teach her for some reason. She was a smart girl, but she needed to be shown. I helped another student struggling with spelling. The teacher told me not to help her :roll:. I felt that the teacher were sometimes rough with the students trying to have them fend for themselves. I think this made their self-esteem go down a bit.
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I'd suggest that such tactics make a students self esteem go down a lot! Lucky to have you, Clearsky.
 
faire_jour said:
shel90 said:
My daughter is part of Utah School for the Deaf. They have a Bi-bi and oral (and TC preschool) program.
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I know of one deaf oral teacher, too. It's a good idea, but they are far less common than deaf teachers in bi-bi from what I have seen.

Utah School for the Deaf seems good to me. It's of less importance what program students are in, as long they can learn real stuff in the classroom and can play togheter with other deaf/HOH on the playground in whatever language they are comfortable with.
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flip said:
faire_jour said:
I know of one deaf oral teacher, too. It's a good idea, but they are far less common than deaf teachers in bi-bi from what I have seen.

Utah School for the Deaf seems good to me. It's of less importance what program students are in, as long they can learn real stuff in the classroom and can play togheter with other deaf/HOH on the playground in whatever language they are comfortable with.
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Yeah, that doesn't happen. The oral classes are in hearing school and the bi-bi school is somewhere else. The oral teachers and parents refuse to have a single campus for the deaf school. They want their kids with hearing students and away from signers.
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Buffalo said:
I agree, I agree. Oralism has done some serious damage to family relationships, in my opinion. It also make a deaf child feel so alienated. I know that because I really do feel isolated in the sea of non-signers.
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Same here...the point of putting me in an oral only program was so I can interact with the "normal" kids but instead, I felt isolated almost all the time.
 
faire_jour said:
flip said:
Yeah, that doesn't happen. The oral classes are in hearing school and the bi-bi school is somewhere else. The oral teachers and parents refuse to have a single campus for the deaf school. They want their kids with hearing students and away from signers.
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That's terrible. I really despite people like that.
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The Real Questions is

Do we need deaf education at all?

How can we learn from an education that doesn't hear at all?
HAHA.

But really, Education for the deaf is sorta low and weak when all the other education is on the same level. It could be the teachers, but it's the IDEA of isolating deaf to deaf only when they could live among the people on this planet with one disability, deafness. I never had the idea that we're all different, I know we are the same, but we just can't hear.

Why not promote the idea of having deaf only to deaf teachers only for the hearing and hearing teachers only for the deafs?

Wouldn't the results be better?
 
As you know, I'm teaching college English to underprepared deaf students. I don't believe there's any way I could do my job if I hadn't gone through an ITP and been an interpreter for a while. As good an understanding as possible of Deaf culture is required in my classroom. Hearing teachers would probably be shocked at the amount of off-topic discussion and signing out of turn that goes on, but as a third culture person, I'm able both to have my classroom be Deaf-friendly as well as teach my material.

I'm not saying you have to have been an interpreter; there's lots of paths to the same place, but that place has to be one of personal experience and knowledge of Deaf culture (and ASL, that goes without saying). Just knowing how to sign is not enough, I believe. My classroom is a sometimes difficult balance between academic formality -- the point is to get these students ready for mainstream college classes -- and Deaf informality, but it is really a joy to teach in.
 
imdeafsowhat said:
The Real Questions is

Do we need deaf education at all?

How can we learn from an education that doesn't hear at all?
HAHA.

But really, Education for the deaf is sorta low and weak when all the other education is on the same level. It could be the teachers, but it's the IDEA of isolating deaf to deaf only when they could live among the people on this planet with one disability, deafness. I never had the idea that we're all different, I know we are the same, but we just can't hear.

Why not promote the idea of having deaf only to deaf teachers only for the hearing and hearing teachers only for the deafs?

Wouldn't the results be better?
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Good idea. I think results would soar if deaf teached hearings and hearings teached deaf because hearing people would realize that they can't teach shit to deaf people, and require deaf people to teach properly to hearing children.:hmm:
 
Interpretrator said:
As you know, I'm teaching college English to underprepared deaf students. I don't believe there's any way I could do my job if I hadn't gone through an ITP and been an interpreter for a while. As good an understanding as possible of Deaf culture is required in my classroom. Hearing teachers would probably be shocked at the amount of off-topic discussion and signing out of turn that goes on, but as a third culture person, I'm able both to have my classroom be Deaf-friendly as well as teach my material.

I'm not saying you have to have been an interpreter; there's lots of paths to the same place, but that place has to be one of personal experience and knowledge of Deaf culture (and ASL, that goes without saying). Just knowing how to sign is not enough, I believe. My classroom is a sometimes difficult balance between academic formality -- the point is to get these students ready for mainstream college classes -- and Deaf informality, but it is really a joy to teach in.
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Interesting. Cultural competence is a big advantage interpreters got. It's as much about culture as it's language. I am sure your students appreciate your work.

It's still a puzzle how some hearing teachers, after 20 years of teaching deaf people, still don't understand anything about deaf culture. Sure, knowing a language isn't enough, but so is interacting with deaf people, it's obviously not enough for many people. I have met interpreters with bicultural education, that still don't know how to threat deaf people or handle deaf culture. I suspect a third factor plays in here: attitude(common saying in ASL). "Good attitude" is essential, and requires knowledge how much one can fit into the deaf culture and personal limits and strengths. This in addtition to language, culture and skills in pedagogy. The funtion of beeing a role model is still limited, but that's another dicussion.

This is my theory, and that's why I think it's much harder for hearing people to fit into high level deaf edcuation, in spite of the much larger pool of hearing people and the fact that hearing people aren't worse or better than deaf people as human beings.

The best hearing teachers I've had, have usually been ex-terps :)
 
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