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Mieke said:
Glad to hear that, and those who use ASL at home are getting a bilingual education. And I assume chances are high that the kids who learn ASL at home will also use it with their school friends so they will have an opportunity to learn.

I'm not judging you, I just want those kids to get all opportunities just like I would for any kid
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None of the kids sign at school. They are very young but they understand that signing doesn't "help" at school because no one understands them.
 
If students don't how learn to sign in school how will they be able to communicate with deaf people at deaf events if they want to do to them ??
 
Teacherofthedeaf said:
Parents have gone through Early Intervention and have chosen spoken language before they get to me. I am not going to force a different choice on them. My parents are all very well informed. Believe it or not, out of the 5 students I work with, one has a Deaf mother and one has a Deaf uncle. They both use ASL at home.
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Would these same parents be willing to have their kids learn a 2nd language like Spanish, French, German? If so, then they should allow you to teach a second language - ASL - to their kids.
 
Teacherofthedeaf said:
Before I worked at this school I was an itinerant teacher of the deaf, so I do know what happens to these students as they get older.
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This post that I have quoted still has me thinking that she is an employee that is not in a position to decide what the curriculum is. I wish we did know more about how much say our OP, Teacherofthedeaf, has in what is offered as part of the curriculum.
 
Mieke said:
And I'd argue with that, that you as a teacher who has an insight into ASL and the strength of the language, should offer the kids you work with all opportunities.

Do the parents or family, know Deaf culture, have you explained them ?
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The problem is that a lot of the ones who chose oral only are generally buying into the thinking that a comprehensive approach ignores speech. Decades ago Daniel Ling publicized these Sign using programs that only offered 15 mintues of speech a week and that in turn became an argument for an oral only approach. Also some of them are absolutly fixtated that they NEED an oral kid. They're very against Sign or using anything that reminds them that their kid is indeed dhh/ different.
 
Teacherofthedeaf said:
Parents have gone through Early Intervention and have chosen spoken language before they get to me. I am not going to force a different choice on them. My parents are all very well informed. Believe it or not, out of the 5 students I work with, one has a Deaf mother and one has a Deaf uncle. They both use ASL at home.
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That is not that unusual. Some kids who have exposure to ASL, will attend an oral preschool to work on improving speech. They've already got the ASL part down pat, so they need some intense exposure to work on speech skills. In fact at the Clarke School Northampton program, they allow ASL out of class. A few years ago some of the students even transferred to TLC in MA
 
LoveBlue said:
Would these same parents be willing to have their kids learn a 2nd language like Spanish, French, German? If so, then they should allow you to teach a second language - ASL - to their kids.
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*waves hands* You get it!!! Unfortunatly, traditional oralism views ASL as " special needs"/ not "needed" . It's the same mentality that says that blind/low vision kids should function as sighted as possible with little no usage of things like Braille, O&M, short term courses at the blind school or even knowing other blind/low vision peers, it's the same mentality that insists a wheelchair is "disabling" and that physically disabled kids should want to walk and function as Normally As Possible. And the thing is, ASL is even more helpful then those spoken languages b/c it provides a backup/safety net for dhh kids!
 
Teacherofthedeaf said:
Before I worked at this school I was an itinerant teacher of the deaf, so I do know what happens to these students as they get older.
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The students that you see at the oral deaf preschool, specificly or dhh students in general? Also exactly how would you know? Do you talk with their mainstream teachers, or do you just go by the 15 minutes that you spent with the kid? 15 mintues a week isn't exactly a great amount of time to get to know someone on a deeper level. I have a lot of friends who are regular ed teachers.....and guess what? They're still seeing the exact same things. A mom who is a public school teacher and who had a dhh kid put her kid in the Deaf school b/c she had witnessed what mainstreamed and oral kids went through in public school.
 
Jane B. said:
This post that I have quoted still has me thinking that she is an employee that is not in a position to decide what the curriculum is. I wish we did know more about how much say our OP, Teacherofthedeaf, has in what is offered as part of the curriculum.
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Yes, I am just a teacher. I don't decide on communication policy.
 
deafdyke said:
The students that you see at the oral deaf preschool, specificly or dhh students in general? Also exactly how would you know? Do you talk with their mainstream teachers, or do you just go by the 15 minutes that you spent with the kid? 15 mintues a week isn't exactly a great amount of time to get to know someone on a deeper level. I have a lot of friends who are regular ed teachers.....and guess what? They're still seeing the exact same things. A mom who is a public school teacher and who had a dhh kid put her kid in the Deaf school b/c she had witnessed what mainstreamed and oral kids went through in public school.
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15 minutes a week? What are you talking about? I have never known any student who was served 15 minutes a week.

I knew my students' backgrounds and where they went to school as young children. Most of my job as an itinerant was to help the general education teachers serve my students when I wasn't there. Collaboration and education was critical.
 
deafdyke said:
That is not that unusual. Some kids who have exposure to ASL, will attend an oral preschool to work on improving speech. They've already got the ASL part down pat, so they need some intense exposure to work on speech skills. In fact at the Clarke School Northampton program, they allow ASL out of class. A few years ago some of the students even transferred to TLC in MA
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Who are you talking to at Clarke that says that students are signing outside of class? I am sure that ASL is not forbidden, but I am friends with Dan Salvucci who ran Smith College's Deaf Education program, and they train the teachers at Northampton, and that simply isn't the case.
 
I have a friend who worked at Clarke (now retired) and she said the same thing. Instruction and philosophy is oral only but students do sign outside of class. In her words "they no longer punish kids for signing". She is deaf and was raised orally (don't recall if she went to Clarke) but she signs. Her husband also deaf is oral and does not sign. They are both pro-oral education. She had said that if they had had a deaf child her husband was adamant that the child would be raised orally. She agreed but only if the child would also be given access to sign. As it turned out they had three hearing children.
 
whatdidyousay! said:
If students don't how learn to sign in school how will they be able to communicate with deaf people at deaf events if they want to do to them ??
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(sarcasm) Didn't you know? Speech allows a dhh child to magically assimulate into society so that they don't NEED that sort of stuff! (/sarcasm)But yeah, some kids will learn ASL if they get placed in dhh programs, or when they are teens and they start really strugging socially and emotionally.
 
Teacherofthedeaf said:
Who are you talking to at Clarke that says that students are signing outside of class? I am sure that ASL is not forbidden, but I am friends with Dan Salvucci who ran Smith College's Deaf Education program, and they train the teachers at Northampton, and that simply isn't the case.
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Really? You cannot believe that a philosophy can be flexible? Did you know that at the two big oral deaf schools in the UK, they allow Sign out of class? And yes, it's true. I know the TOD program at Smith is very strongly oral, with a bit of Sign thrown in......but again just b/c you know the former leader of the Smith College teacher training program, it doesn't mean anything. Auditory oral is actually kind of flexiable...it's not like Auditory Verbal which absolutly forbids ASL or even speechreading.
 
zephren said:
I have a friend who worked at Clarke (now retired) and she said the same thing. Instruction and philosophy is oral only but students do sign outside of class. In her words "they no longer punish kids for signing". She is deaf and was raised orally (don't recall if she went to Clarke) but she signs. Her husband also deaf is oral and does not sign. They are both pro-oral education. She had said that if they had had a deaf child her husband was adamant that the child would be raised orally. She agreed but only if the child would also be given access to sign. As it turned out they had three hearing children.
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Thank you Zebren. A mother who has her kid at Clarke School for the Deaf, mentioned it in a group I am in on Facebook. And yes, in some circles there are parents whose kids Sign, but send them to oral schools b/c the parent went there, or the child may need more work on speech. Sign is no longer verboten at Clarke School, which is how it should be. Almost all Schools and programs for the Deaf offer speech services and HOH style interventions (basicly speech, FM, soundfield and working with residual hearng)
 
Teacherofthedeaf said:
15 minutes a week? What are you talking about? I have never known any student who was served 15 minutes a week.

I knew my students' backgrounds and where they went to school as young children. Most of my job as an itinerant was to help the general education teachers serve my students when I wasn't there. Collaboration and education was critical.
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So in other words, you really didn't work one on one with your students, and they didn't really tell you a lot of the deep emotional issues right? It's very easy for a kid to superfically fake it....but even the superstars, the ones who get the AG Bell scholarships often struggle on a deeper level.
 
zephren said:
I have a friend who worked at Clarke (now retired) and she said the same thing. Instruction and philosophy is oral only but students do sign outside of class. In her words "they no longer punish kids for signing". She is deaf and was raised orally (don't recall if she went to Clarke) but she signs. Her husband also deaf is oral and does not sign. They are both pro-oral education. She had said that if they had had a deaf child her husband was adamant that the child would be raised orally. She agreed but only if the child would also be given access to sign. As it turned out they had three hearing children.
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I absolutely believe that was true ten or more years ago. I am talking about the school today.
 
deafdyke said:
Really? You cannot believe that a philosophy can be flexible? Did you know that at the two big oral deaf schools in the UK, they allow Sign out of class? And yes, it's true. I know the TOD program at Smith is very strongly oral, with a bit of Sign thrown in......but again just b/c you know the former leader of the Smith College teacher training program, it doesn't mean anything. Auditory oral is actually kind of flexiable...it's not like Auditory Verbal which absolutly forbids ASL or even speechreading.
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Smith College no longer has a training program. Dan ran the program for a number of years. Auditory oral is an outdated term that people are moving away from. AVT and AVEd are now combined and what you would see at a listening and spoken language school would not be very different from what you would see in AV therapy.
 
deafdyke said:
So in other words, you really didn't work one on one with your students, and they didn't really tell you a lot of the deep emotional issues right? It's very easy for a kid to superfically fake it....but even the superstars, the ones who get the AG Bell scholarships often struggle on a deeper level.
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No, that isn't what I said at all. My job is to educate the general education teacher on how to better serve my student when I am not there. They are the primary teacher. When I do have pull-out, which is always more than your "15 minutes a week", I work on self-advocacy, as well as any academic or language deficits they still have.
Can you pass on the contact information you have for all these A.G. Bell scholarship winners who are now unhappy and struggling. I would love to hear their stories rather than your interpretation of their feelings.
 
deafdyke said:
(sarcasm) Didn't you know? Speech allows a dhh child to magically assimulate into society so that they don't NEED that sort of stuff! (/sarcasm)But yeah, some kids will learn ASL if they get placed in dhh programs, or when they are teens and they start really strugging socially and emotionally.
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Yeah just like sticking a hearing aid in their ear and magically they're all caught up in the grade they didn't pass !
 
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