Survey of Bi-Bi programs - Empirical Article

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shel90 said:
It was used in a distored fashion for me by putting me in classrooms full of 30 plus hearing kids without any visual aids. The solution was to put me in front of the class with adequate lighting. Like I can lipread and catch what everyone is saying 100% of the time. I think it was more like 10% of the time. That is called a distorted use of my IEP.
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Exactly. That kind of junk happened all the time when I was in HS. Granted, one of my classes had an interpreter, but not all of them. The poor deaf kid sitting next to me was always asking me... "What'd he/she say?"

This was usually done when said teacher was walking around the room as he/she yapped about the subject of the day.
 
Oceanbreeze said:
Exactly. That kind of junk happened all the time when I was in HS. Granted, one of my classes had an interpreter, but not all of them. The poor deaf kid sitting next to me was always asking me... "What'd he/she say?"

This was usually done when said teacher was walking around the room as he/she yapped about the subject of the day.
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That's the story of my educational life. Practically no access to anything except for seeing what people are doing in my classes.
 
Tousi said:
Ok, but I wasn't referring to your world.
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oh.. you didn't specify. One thing to keep in mind is that regardless of our educational backgrounds we all fall somewhere on the curve. That doesn't mean the system failed us. I would agree that if within a given system everyone is landing on the same low spot on the curve then there might be a problem with the system. With regards to TC I have not seen any evidence that supports that.
 
Oceanbreeze said:
Exactly. That kind of junk happened all the time when I was in HS. Granted, one of my classes had an interpreter, but not all of them. The poor deaf kid sitting next to me was always asking me... "What'd he/she say?"

This was usually done when said teacher was walking around the room as he/she yapped about the subject of the day.
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Were you guys in oral only mainstream then?
 
rockdrummer said:
Were you guys in oral only mainstream then?
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Some of us. I was in the mainstream, yes. Some of the deaf students at my school were in self contained classes as well. It depended on what their IEPs indicated.
 
shel90 said:
I was...from when I was born all the way to high school and into my early college years.
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thanks. I would never put a profoundly deaf child in an oral only environment. Not to slight your parents. I just don't believe that would be fair.
 
Oceanbreeze said:
Some of us. I was in the mainstream, yes. Some of the deaf students at my school were in self contained classes as well. It depended on what their IEPs indicated.
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If you don't mind me asking... how many years ago was that?
 
rockdrummer said:
thanks. I would never put a profoundly deaf child in an oral only environment. Not to slight your parents. I just don't believe that would be fair.
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They were doing it 20 yrs ago and they still do it today.
 
rockdrummer said:
If you don't mind me asking... how many years ago was that?
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You do understand that Oceanbreeze is not deaf?

I did the oral mainstream until I graduated in 1974, but I am really on the edge between severe and profound.
 
I was raised oral only. However, I did go to a private school so I could utilize the smaller classes (my classes were never more than 20 kids compared to Shel's 30+) and because of the smaller classes, the teachers were more mindful of their students and made sure I understood everything. I remember in 3rd or 4th grade, my teacher KEPT on turning around for the blackboard, forgetting about me (not on purpose, old habits die hard), so after school, I joked with her "Come on! You keep looking at the board!" And she said "Im so sorry! I keep forgetting, please just yell out to tell me to turn around." I didn't want to attract attention, so I told her that the code name for turning around is if I simply call out her name. So from then on, I simply called out "Ms Davis" and she'd nonchalantly turn around and resume her teaching, and no one's the wiser (or at least people think she simply didn't hear me, bwah hahaha!).
 
And now, I promised AlleyCat an explanation regarding IEPs and accommodations based on her personal experience, so now that I am done with my other obligations for the day, I will get that done. Thanks for being patient, AC.
:ty:

Let's start with the decision not to provide you with an intepreter prior to 3rd grade. I am assuming the decision was based on the philosophy that when the material got more difficult, they would worry about a terp. The reason I am assuming that is because I was told the same thing regarding my son, took the school district to due process, and got his terp from kindergarten until he was transferred to the school for the deaf. I find that reasoning absurd. If a child is unable to get the material in the first few grades, simply providing a terp in the later grades will not help, as they have not been given the foundation necessary to do the work in the latter grades. So, at that point, not only is a terp necessary, but remedial work, as well, usually in the resource room. Had the child been provided a terp from the very beginning, they would have had a much greater chance of getting the foundation necessary.

Now how does this apply to a bi-bi environment? In a bi-bi environment, the curriculum in the classroom is provided in sign, making a terp uneccessary. Therefore, the IEP accommodation providing the terp is unnecessary. Rather than providing an extra service, a bi-bi environment creates the classroom where the extra service is unnecessary.

In a bi-bi atmosphere, a terp would not be necessary to facillitate communication between teacher and student. They would share the language, keeping instruction on a dydactic level rather than having to add third party interpretation. This keeps the interaction between student and teacher more natural and individualized. This is especially important in the early grades. Likewise with communication between the student and his/her classmates. The bi-bi environment is designed to address the needs of the deaf student. A mainstream environment is designed to address the needs of a hearing student, and therefore, accommodations are necessary in the mainstream that are not necessary in a bi-bi classroom. Therefore, the IEP specifying the use of an interpreter would not be necessary.

In a bi-bi environment, it would not be necessary to waive regular class time to utilize the resource room under an IEP specification. The classroom would already have provided the information in a manner that is available to the student. The purpose of resource time is to help the deaf student in the mainstream clarify that which was not made clear during regular class time due to the fact that the classroom was designed for the instruction of hearing students. In a classroom environment designed for deaf students, those clarifications are addressed during regular classtime, thus reducing the need for resource time to be written into an IEP.

So, instead of placing a student in an environment designed to address the needs of a hearing student, and then using an IEP to make up for the needs of the deaf student that are not addressed in such an environment, it makes more sense to me to place the student in the environment that is designed to address their needs in the classroom without the added services. Not only is this more efficient for the learning process, but is more cost efficient as well.

Can you begin to see where I am coming from now?
 
rockdrummer said:
I am not nitpicking but those are not quite the same statements. Maybe I missed something.
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Well, if literacy skills have not raised using those methods, then they are ineffective for increasing literacy skills, are they not? Had they been effective, we would have seen a steady rise over the last 25-30 years of the use of the MCEs.
 
Bottesini said:
You do understand that Oceanbreeze is not deaf?

I did the oral mainstream until I graduated in 1974, but I am really on the edge between severe and profound.
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Yes, I am hearing. What difference does that make ? I've had contact with the deaf. I had friends who were deaf. I shared the same crappy school experiences as my deaf counterparts. I saw how my deaf classmates struggled while trying to understand the material being tought.

Am I not allowed to comment about that?
 
Oceanbreeze said:
They were doing it 20 yrs ago and they still do it today.
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I'm glad my son is not in such a program. While he does attend a mainstream school he is in special classes for deaf kids where they do get individualized instruction of which much is determined based on goal setting during his IEP. Nobody ever pushed us to put him in a mainstream oral only class.
 
Oceanbreeze said:
Yes, I am hearing. What difference does that make ? I've had contact with the deaf. I had friends who were deaf. I shared the same crappy school experiences as my deaf counterparts. I saw how my deaf classmates struggled while trying to understand the material being tought.

Am I not allowed to comment about that?
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I think it makes a lot of difference. You are not deaf and you are not a qualified TOD. When anyone deaf with actual experience speaks up in one of these threads they are shot down.

Because you echo the thoughts of the most passionate, they just let you gol

Deaf people are told to get a teaching certificate and go out and teach.
 
rockdrummer said:
oh.. you didn't specify. One thing to keep in mind is that regardless of our educational backgrounds we all fall somewhere on the curve. That doesn't mean the system failed us. I would agree that if within a given system everyone is landing on the same low spot on the curve then there might be a problem with the system. With regards to TC I have not seen any evidence that supports that.
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How about the overall literacy rates, and the number of deaf students graduating from post secondary programs in proportion to the number of hearing students graduating from post secondary programs? Since TC has been the instruction model most often in use for the past 25-30 years, there is a correlation between the two. How exactly would you explain the overall problems with literacy in deaf students?
 
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