Examples of 'ideal' educational and language environments for deaf children

Gma said:
Yeah, silly me. That would require them to take up a common cause for the good of the children and I guess that is not possible - but I be darn if they can't put together a DNO once a month.
Click to expand...

Let's see, are you in Kansas City now??


Maybe someone there can find you some assistance in your fight to educate your family.
 
My grandson is stuck in a public school with two other students in his class that he has nothing other than deafness in common with, and the deaf in the state allowed the state to turn the state deaf school into a hell hole. WTF!!!
Click to expand...
Huh? How did the DEAF turn the state deaf school into a hell hole? You know, the deaf school option has NOT been the norm for decades now. Most kids who attend deaf schools end up there after being underserved in the mainstream. THAT is really what the problem is.
There are some really good deaf schools believe it or not..........why cant your grandson move to a state where there are better deaf schools/deaf ed options? Kansas School, Wisconsin School, the California Schools, RMDS, TLC, all good deaf schools.. How old's your grandson? Maybe when he's a bit older he could go to MSSD.
I'm actually kind of surprised that the Hampton mainstream programs aren't better. I know back in the old days when Hampton had the School for the Deaf and Blind, they had academic kids. i would have thought there would still be some good established mainstream programs as a result.
 
You should take it with a grain of salt followed by a Margarita, and I am in Hampton. The deaf school in Hampton became multi-handicapped. Prior to this move I sent my daughter to Staunton. They have since closed Hampton and combined the schools so that now Staunton is now a multi-handicapped school not a deaf not a deaf/blind.....

Where as my grandson has a teacher who is fluent in ASL and fortunately she is also deaf - academics is fine...social not so much. Like this weekend we have to go to Richmond to give him the opportunity to play with deaf children, yet the Tidewater area has the greatest population of deaf kids in the state other than the northern area near d.c. I know there are really good state schools, but the financial ability to move. If there could just be some activities for kids locally it would be great, but there seems to be absolutely no interest. I hear the same from other parents too. Deaf adults should be seeking out these parents to support them and get support from the hearing parents for such things as a deaf school thats not turned into mush.
 
Gma said:
You should take it with a grain of salt followed by a Margarita, and I am in Hampton. The deaf school in Hampton became multi-handicapped. Prior to this move I sent my daughter to Staunton. They have since closed Hampton and combined the schools so that now Staunton is now a multi-handicapped school not a deaf not a deaf/blind.....

Where as my grandson has a teacher who is fluent in ASL and fortunately she is also deaf - academics is fine...social not so much. Like this weekend we have to go to Richmond to give him the opportunity to play with deaf children, yet the Tidewater area has the greatest population of deaf kids in the state other than the northern area near d.c. I know there are really good state schools, but the financial ability to move. If there could just be some activities for kids locally it would be great, but there seems to be absolutely no interest. I hear the same from other parents too. Deaf adults should be seeking out these parents to support them and get support from the hearing parents for such things as a deaf school thats not turned into mush.
Click to expand...

Why do you think it has became so scattered? :cool2:
 
deafdyke said:
Didn't want to have a novel long post, so dividing up my responses.
Well....bi-bi is still really new. I think they were putting on the finishing touches with this approach when I was still in school. Also, bi bi/deaf school with a kid who has hoh listening level abilties is really new. I do have to bring up something.
I think ASL and spoken English fluent kids will do the best overall.
Click to expand...

Thanks DD, I know that after Stokoe's work promoting the legitimacy of sign in the early 60's, ASL and cued speech and then the manual codes became more common in the classroom. TLC established its bi-bi program in 1970, and apparently there were a few other schools nation-wide -- mostly res. schools -- doing the same by then.

When we researched CIs, I'd gotten access to several of the now-young adults who were implanted in the first wave as children -- but these all followed the AVT approach and none were using ASL. Now, CIs have only been part of the full educational experience since ~ 1990. So that's really new, and yet there's a significant number of 20 year olds who can give their direct perspective and a sense of how they did in their environment.

I want to get the same stories from those in their 20s whose educational and home language experience incorporated ASL. Bi-bi programs and sign in the classroom have been around (or 'back') for the past 40-50 years. I've corresponded with a few 20-somethings who graduated from my daughter's school, one was our family babysitter until she left for college at Gallaudet, and I know there's a well established group of deaf adults who have learned and lived in an ASL-based environment. I'm just surprised that this group doesn't seem to be represented here. I could be totally wrong on that, just haven't yet identified those who grew up with what many here are describing as the recommended approach: ASL language at home, bi-bi school for the deaf.
 
he deaf school in Hampton became multi-handicapped. Prior to this move I sent my daughter to Staunton. They have since closed Hampton and combined the schools so that now Staunton is now a multi-handicapped school not a deaf not a deaf/blind.....
Click to expand...
Gma, I don't think it was the Deaf that screwed things up. I think the state made the mistake of "Oh its called a deaf/blind school" Why does the state need TWO deaf-blind schools?" without realizing that most Hampton kids were multihandicapped. What they should have done, was sent the academic deaf/blind kids to Staunton, identified any multihandicapped kids at Stanton and turned Hampton into a mutlihandicapped school, a la the Helen Keller School that's a part of Alabama School for the Deaf and Blind, or like the way they turned Western PA and Maryland Schools for the Blind into a school for multihandicapped blind kids. Either that, or had a school within a school for the multihandicapped kids. I thought most Deaf Schools did that. I did think however, that most multihandicapped deaf kids are more on the LD/mild MR end of the spectrum, rather then moderate and below (most of those kids tend to be either in pediatric nursing homes or schools for kids with MR)

Where as my grandson has a teacher who is fluent in ASL and fortunately she is also deaf - academics is fine...social not so much. Like this weekend we have to go to Richmond to give him the opportunity to play with deaf children, yet the Tidewater area has the greatest population of deaf kids in the state other than the northern area near d.c. I know there are really good state schools, but the financial ability to move. If there could just be some activities for kids locally it would be great, but there seems to be absolutely no interest.
Click to expand...
Well at least academics are good! I thought you were bashing the quality of the academics...Why is it so hard to get people togehter to hang out? Maybe you could start a regional organization.....kind of a regional playgroup or something. There's also summer camps and stuff.
 
nd I know there's a well established group of deaf adults who have learned and lived in an ASL-based environment. I'm just surprised that this group doesn't seem to be represented here. I could be totally wrong on that, just haven't yet identified those who grew up with what many here are describing as the recommended approach: ASL language at home, bi-bi school for the deaf.
Click to expand...
That's b/c most young adults of today were either solotaire, may have attended a poorly run TC public school program, or learned ASL after attending CID, Clarke or St. Joseph's. Did you know Clarke's boarding program was BOOMING just 15 years ago? (45 students) I think too.....our hearing losses were idenfied at a late age (compared to today), so a lot of education was basicly just catching up.
 
The multi-handicapped kids are not necessarily deaf and most are not. I just wish there were more opportunity for kids to socialize and hearing parents to meet deaf adults. I was lucky enough to have those experiences with my daughter and find it a shame that there is no strong deaf group here in the Tidewater area.
 
The multi-handicapped kids are not necessarily deaf and most are not. I just wish there were more opportunity for kids to socialize and hearing parents to meet deaf adults. I was lucky enough to have those experiences with my daughter and find it a shame that there is no strong deaf group here in the Tidewater area.
Click to expand...
Are they mostly blind multihandicapped? I'm kind of confused about why the presense of multihandicapped kids at a deaf-blind school would screw up education for the Deaf Department.
And yeah...you'd think it would be easier now with the net and stuff....Maybe someone is just waiting for someone to organize something. I bet there are a lot of kids in dhh classes or even solotaire who are wondering where the other dhh kids are to play with.
 
Funds and focus are no longer for the deaf education at this multi-handicapped school. Schools don't want to lose the Medicaid funds so the last thing the public schools wants is to ship these kids out to a state school and in the same breath they want the multi-handicapped kids shipped out because Medicaid doesn't foot the whole bill. These kids require highly skilled and caring staff. I would never begrudge these kids a darn thing, I am just saying deaf adults, parents, educators, etc., should have fought to keep the deaf schools deaf and let the Hampton School remain for the multi-handicapped.
 
Well, yes; I do have examples of children and adults who were educated in what I consider to be an ideal environment. But I have more examples of those who were not and the negative consequences created by such, as those are the ones I deal with daily. Not to mention that we have an abundance of posters who tell their own stories about that here.

My experience is directly correlated to the stories told here, and what the research shows. Those educated in a bi-bi environment, or even those that have a bi-bi environment but only accommodation in the educational environment are not only better able to grasp abstract concepts, have a better use of both languages, and have the cognitive benefits of early language acquisition, but they are more socially and psychologically well adjusted.
 
These kids require highly skilled and caring staff. I would never begrudge these kids a darn thing, I am just saying deaf adults, parents, educators, etc., should have fought to keep the deaf schools deaf and let the Hampton School remain for the multi-handicapped.
Click to expand...
Ditto...It was politicans fault for lumping in ALL low incidence disabilties.
JW, are we talking about nursing home multihandicapped or more like mild mental disabilty plus blindness?
Or maybe a good idea might be to have the Staunton School create an academy within the school, especially for multihandicapped kids?
 
replying to GrendelQ

Hello GrendelQ,

I am a 34 year old woman who was born Deaf to Hearing parents. ;-)

My parents did not find out I was Deaf until I was 18 months old - fortunately, my mom had prior experience with the Deaf as she was Best friends with a girl whose father was the Super of the Montana School for the D & B when she was in Jr. High so she had some exposure. She still freaked out when she found out I was Deaf though.

Montana at that time (and is a bit somewhat now)still are behind in regards to Deaf Awareness. The doctors in MT did not tell my parents what was wrong so they took me to U. of W. in Seattle and there, they found out I was Deaf. They were pretty devastated.

So they first started out by putting me in oral program and that quickly was abandoned because we were all very frustrated with communication issues so we ended up going to the U. of Montana sign language classes and I quickly took off in communicating in sign language with my mom trying to scramble to keep up with me! LOL

I started going to speech therapy & school at 2 years old and went to school all day and then when I got home, she would work with me building up more vocabulary.

That went on for YEARS. By elementary school I was pretty sick of it all ;-)

I had one big factor that helped me build my vocabulary and was able to read at college level by Jr. high school and that was loving to read books. I read books by the pile pretty much every day.

I have been mainstreamed my whole life with a stint at the Deaf school at Washington School for the Deaf for 3 months during my sophomore year to get some experience with Deaf social.

I have had interpreters in school the whole duration of my schooling. I took Advanced Placement and Honors classes during my high school years. I was the only Deaf student in my grade and there were 200 kids in my graduating class and I graduated at #14 - with Honors at 3.98 GPA. I was pretty bored at this high school because it was not "challenging" enough as it was a public school. I did apply to my brothers private Catholic high school and I did get accepted but ended up not attending that because of interpreter issue (as no one accepted the job) so that majorly sucked as I know that I would have gotten more quality education and challenges and end up being interested in school.

I grew up with a group of Deaf kids that were either a year or 2 older / younger than I was. There was about 10 of us, and only 2 other kids' parents besides my parents who signed at home and we 3 were more successful in being mainstreamed full time and could read at college level. But we all lived so far apart so it was not really possible to have the social life like at a Deaf school.

My stint at WSD was a big shock academically and socially. Academically, there was NO Advanced Placement and Honors classes offered there, it was pretty much all just very basic / remedial classes so I ended up going to a local high school being mainstreamed there and then I took crafts / physical education classes at WSD. Socially, I had a very hard time making friends there because it was so very much "cliquey" because it was an institution school and I had been "mainstreamed" so I experienced one of my first discrimination from the Deaf community, and the other issue was my "signing" - I was not "ASL" enough for them - as you can see I am pretty fluent in English but I do know ASL - I just can't do the "FULL" ASL grammar when signing. I can sign "ASL" but not in grammar form if that makes sense?

Anyways, my parents and brother knows sign - my brothe and my dad are more of "home sign". My mom interpreted for me in a lot of situations and by Jr. High / High school, I just wanted SPACE from her! LOL I did not appreciate all that she did for me then but now, I do.

It is VERY vital that families communicate with their Deaf child and encourage them, to let them be who they are, and expect a lot from them to be successful. And reading a lot is very important. This doesn't just apply to Deaf kids but for hearing kids as well. Too much tv & video games and not enough reading is a big problem for todays' kids for sure!

My mom did ask me if I wanted CI when I was about 14 and I was not ready and I said no way! ;-) But, I did get a CI in 2005. I believe to be successful with CI is if the Deaf person is motivated enough, already have the ability to lip read and can use the most out of having CI's.

I can lip read fluently and can speak pretty well.

Interpreters are great but for information I prefer CART; why? CART is verbatim and uses the vocabulary that the hearing person is using and wow it's amazing at how much information a Deaf person can get by using CART compared to interpreters. For other situations, I'd not mind interpreters but for like education, learning about whatever - getting information - I'd rather have the CART. It's really mind blowing for sure with the comparisons. I had my first experience with CART last year and I couldn't believe how much information I had been missing using an interpreter! WOW!

I often catch interpreters subsituting words or not using words what the speaker is saying and that upsets me because how can we expect the Deaf community to build up our knowledge if we are denied the information and / or the opportunity to learn new words and to interact with others on the same level? We don't need "dumbed down" information.

My biggest obstacle that happens often in my life is "interpreters" because I often would love to go to church (a Religious Science spiritual growth church) and there's no interpreter available because NO ONE wants to interpret for this "type" of church. Or even taking classes at that church - still the same issue. Ugh.. or even an community event / class / work shop or educational class in the community - same thing... it's about $, non-available, etc and so on. CART is pretty expensive compared to interpreters.

Anyways - I think I should stop for now LOL Feel free to ask me more questions via email if you'd like. I'd be more than happy to answer them if I can. ;-) Have a great week!

Take care
 
Grendel,

I was raised oral and mainstreamed from K-Year 8....but what I would like to share with you is something completely different. I would say I had the most success in education when I was doing school at home, with a self-instructional workbook K-12 curriculum. I began this when I was 14 and the first year was in a church community school using the same curriculum. Due to having to move back to Australia when I was 15, my mother arranged for me to continue with the same curriculum via correspondence with the same school that I had attended the previous year. I excelled in leaps and bounds doing it at my own pace in the comfort of my own home in my family environment. At graduation, my hearing brother was vale-dictorian and graduated with honours and 2 years of college credits. I also graduated at the same time as my brother, though he was 15 months older than me. I graduated Year 12 with an average grade but 2 years early. I was only one month short of my 16th birthday.

One of my daughters graduated from the same curriculum, being homeschooled and is now attending University studying Nursing and will go on to Medicine. My 4 younger children ranging from 17 - 7 are being homeschooled with the same curriculum. As you know, all my children are hearing. So this is successful for both Deaf and hearing.

My one and only regret is that I didn't have access to sign language growing up.
 
Thank you so much for sharing this TravelingNomad! That's a pretty amazing story, so much great input. I can see that you aren't a regular here, but if you do happen to return, I do have a question about CART: can you think back and pinpoint a rough age range when you might have benefitted from CART in your school? High school? Earlier? When do you think you would have first been able to follow the text while participating in a class?


TravelingNomad said:
Hello GrendelQ,

I am a 34 year old woman who was born Deaf to Hearing parents. ;-)

My parents did not find out I was Deaf until I was 18 months old - fortunately, my mom had prior experience with the Deaf as she was Best friends with a girl whose father was the Super of the Montana School for the D & B when she was in Jr. High so she had some exposure. She still freaked out when she found out I was Deaf though.

Montana at that time (and is a bit somewhat now)still are behind in regards to Deaf Awareness. The doctors in MT did not tell my parents what was wrong so they took me to U. of W. in Seattle and there, they found out I was Deaf. They were pretty devastated.

So they first started out by putting me in oral program and that quickly was abandoned because we were all very frustrated with communication issues so we ended up going to the U. of Montana sign language classes and I quickly took off in communicating in sign language with my mom trying to scramble to keep up with me! LOL

I started going to speech therapy & school at 2 years old and went to school all day and then when I got home, she would work with me building up more vocabulary.

That went on for YEARS. By elementary school I was pretty sick of it all ;-)

I had one big factor that helped me build my vocabulary and was able to read at college level by Jr. high school and that was loving to read books. I read books by the pile pretty much every day.

I have been mainstreamed my whole life with a stint at the Deaf school at Washington School for the Deaf for 3 months during my sophomore year to get some experience with Deaf social.

I have had interpreters in school the whole duration of my schooling. I took Advanced Placement and Honors classes during my high school years. I was the only Deaf student in my grade and there were 200 kids in my graduating class and I graduated at #14 - with Honors at 3.98 GPA. I was pretty bored at this high school because it was not "challenging" enough as it was a public school. I did apply to my brothers private Catholic high school and I did get accepted but ended up not attending that because of interpreter issue (as no one accepted the job) so that majorly sucked as I know that I would have gotten more quality education and challenges and end up being interested in school.

I grew up with a group of Deaf kids that were either a year or 2 older / younger than I was. There was about 10 of us, and only 2 other kids' parents besides my parents who signed at home and we 3 were more successful in being mainstreamed full time and could read at college level. But we all lived so far apart so it was not really possible to have the social life like at a Deaf school.

My stint at WSD was a big shock academically and socially. Academically, there was NO Advanced Placement and Honors classes offered there, it was pretty much all just very basic / remedial classes so I ended up going to a local high school being mainstreamed there and then I took crafts / physical education classes at WSD. Socially, I had a very hard time making friends there because it was so very much "cliquey" because it was an institution school and I had been "mainstreamed" so I experienced one of my first discrimination from the Deaf community, and the other issue was my "signing" - I was not "ASL" enough for them - as you can see I am pretty fluent in English but I do know ASL - I just can't do the "FULL" ASL grammar when signing. I can sign "ASL" but not in grammar form if that makes sense?

Anyways, my parents and brother knows sign - my brothe and my dad are more of "home sign". My mom interpreted for me in a lot of situations and by Jr. High / High school, I just wanted SPACE from her! LOL I did not appreciate all that she did for me then but now, I do.

It is VERY vital that families communicate with their Deaf child and encourage them, to let them be who they are, and expect a lot from them to be successful. And reading a lot is very important. This doesn't just apply to Deaf kids but for hearing kids as well. Too much tv & video games and not enough reading is a big problem for todays' kids for sure!

My mom did ask me if I wanted CI when I was about 14 and I was not ready and I said no way! ;-) But, I did get a CI in 2005. I believe to be successful with CI is if the Deaf person is motivated enough, already have the ability to lip read and can use the most out of having CI's.

I can lip read fluently and can speak pretty well.

Interpreters are great but for information I prefer CART; why? CART is verbatim and uses the vocabulary that the hearing person is using and wow it's amazing at how much information a Deaf person can get by using CART compared to interpreters. For other situations, I'd not mind interpreters but for like education, learning about whatever - getting information - I'd rather have the CART. It's really mind blowing for sure with the comparisons. I had my first experience with CART last year and I couldn't believe how much information I had been missing using an interpreter! WOW!

I often catch interpreters subsituting words or not using words what the speaker is saying and that upsets me because how can we expect the Deaf community to build up our knowledge if we are denied the information and / or the opportunity to learn new words and to interact with others on the same level? We don't need "dumbed down" information.

My biggest obstacle that happens often in my life is "interpreters" because I often would love to go to church (a Religious Science spiritual growth church) and there's no interpreter available because NO ONE wants to interpret for this "type" of church. Or even taking classes at that church - still the same issue. Ugh.. or even an community event / class / work shop or educational class in the community - same thing... it's about $, non-available, etc and so on. CART is pretty expensive compared to interpreters.

Anyways - I think I should stop for now LOL Feel free to ask me more questions via email if you'd like. I'd be more than happy to answer them if I can. ;-) Have a great week!

Take care
Click to expand...
 
Curious - do you think the drop in vocational programs has to do with labor needs these days? And possibly correlates to rate of high rate of employment?
 
Wow, Traveling Nomad, you and I sound like opposites. I was very successful in school as well, but the difference is that I never knew ASL, used C-Print when I got to my second semester of college, and am just NOW switching to interpreters and prefer that. I'll be going to Gallaudet as well. I wasn't educated in a way I consider ideal, but I still did very well. Kinda funny that I had almost your same situation (minus ASL) and switched to deaf culture, but you are the other way around!
 
TheOracle said:
Curious - do you think the drop in vocational programs has to do with labor needs these days? And possibly correlates to rate of high rate of employment?
Click to expand...

I wish they would keep the vocational programs but add technology development skill (such as robotics, engineering, and science) since future jobs will need people who are strong in those areas.
 
Back
Top