http://www.deafeducation.org/stories/teacher.html
The Day We Drove A Teacher Out of Her Job
This is a true story. When I was about 10 years old and the youngest in a class of around 10 Deaf pupils at a School for the Deaf. It was one who followed Milan 1880 approach, being strong oralist school.
Sign Language was not allowed at all times, but we, as true Deafies, continued to use BSL during playtime and after school hours.
Lessons for many of us often a real boredom. Why? Because we always get so tired trying to lipread during lessons AND the hard work as teachers tried their hardest to groom us Deafies to use our speech and to lipread to meet the society's expectations - all that according to Milan 1880.
I remembered very vividly of one particular teacher who was absolutely rubbish to be a teacher of the Deaf. She, unfortunately, has terrible buck teeth like a bunny rabbit and she talks so fast which made it totally impossible for us all in that class trying to follow lessons.
Can you picture this, day in, day out for 12 months for us Deafies trying to follow lessons, hardly understood her. So bored we become, when a group of 2 or 3 Deafies started to fool about during lessons. This is when this teacher started to try to punish them but amazingly she was overpowered by 2 or 3 Deaf pupils who were strong and tough characters.
The more this teacher was losing her rag, the more the Deaf pupils were able to tease and torment her mercifully. Before long, the rest of the class, including myself as the baby of the class, joined them.
Together, we have been so strong over her so much that she could not cope any more to able to handle us and decided to give up her job teaching us before the term end.
In many ways, it was us, Deaf pupils who drove her out of job. As I looked back, I am sure we all felt terrible about this.
Then I thought, why did we drove her out of her job? Now I understand why. Because she was so difficult to lipread and having oralist method in school lessons, it was not enjoyable and not surprisingly, boredom started to set in. From that boredom, we started to enjoy better in our special world of sign language users by tormenting her.
Now I am in this position - were we wrong to force her out of job? No, I don't think so as it was the oralist approach that was wrong not us as BSL users pupils.
If they taught us in BSL, we would not become bored. We would be able to follow lessons better and enjoy.
As for meeting society's expectations, for us to have better speech of course failed miserably - I have another story to tell. See Another True Story
Brenda Hamlin [/quote]
The truth is here .. Whoo Hoo!
Thank you!
The Day We Drove A Teacher Out of Her Job
This is a true story. When I was about 10 years old and the youngest in a class of around 10 Deaf pupils at a School for the Deaf. It was one who followed Milan 1880 approach, being strong oralist school.
Sign Language was not allowed at all times, but we, as true Deafies, continued to use BSL during playtime and after school hours.
Lessons for many of us often a real boredom. Why? Because we always get so tired trying to lipread during lessons AND the hard work as teachers tried their hardest to groom us Deafies to use our speech and to lipread to meet the society's expectations - all that according to Milan 1880.
I remembered very vividly of one particular teacher who was absolutely rubbish to be a teacher of the Deaf. She, unfortunately, has terrible buck teeth like a bunny rabbit and she talks so fast which made it totally impossible for us all in that class trying to follow lessons.
Can you picture this, day in, day out for 12 months for us Deafies trying to follow lessons, hardly understood her. So bored we become, when a group of 2 or 3 Deafies started to fool about during lessons. This is when this teacher started to try to punish them but amazingly she was overpowered by 2 or 3 Deaf pupils who were strong and tough characters.
The more this teacher was losing her rag, the more the Deaf pupils were able to tease and torment her mercifully. Before long, the rest of the class, including myself as the baby of the class, joined them.
Together, we have been so strong over her so much that she could not cope any more to able to handle us and decided to give up her job teaching us before the term end.
In many ways, it was us, Deaf pupils who drove her out of job. As I looked back, I am sure we all felt terrible about this.
Then I thought, why did we drove her out of her job? Now I understand why. Because she was so difficult to lipread and having oralist method in school lessons, it was not enjoyable and not surprisingly, boredom started to set in. From that boredom, we started to enjoy better in our special world of sign language users by tormenting her.
Now I am in this position - were we wrong to force her out of job? No, I don't think so as it was the oralist approach that was wrong not us as BSL users pupils.
If they taught us in BSL, we would not become bored. We would be able to follow lessons better and enjoy.
As for meeting society's expectations, for us to have better speech of course failed miserably - I have another story to tell. See Another True Story
Brenda Hamlin [/quote]
The truth is here .. Whoo Hoo!
Thank you!
