What was school like for you?

dreama said:
No, It stands for Partial Hearing Unit. A unit for the deaf and HOH within a mainstream school. Wouldn't have been so bad if it worked but they were oralist and so didn't provide terps so were only ever helping the teachers with extra disopline for the deaf.
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ah ok , thanks for the answer, but i reckon that should be illegal to NOT provide terps, and also same goes for expensive "specialist" teachers.....
 
dreama said:
No, It stands for Partial Hearing Unit. A unit for the deaf and HOH within a mainstream school. Wouldn't have been so bad if it worked but they were oralist and so didn't provide terps so were only ever helping the teachers with extra disopline for the deaf.
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ah ok , thanks for the answer, but i reckon that should be illegal to not provide interpreters, and also same goes for expensive "specialist" teachers.....
 
It sometimes seems like a lot of educational people think that b/c a person is oral, they don't require as much as a Sign person.............arughhh.........
 
Grummer said:
ah ok , thanks for the answer, but i reckon that should be illegal to not provide interpreters, and also same goes for expensive "specialist" teachers.....
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That would be a good thing.

DeafDyke: Yes. That's true. The sad thing is that orally taught deaf end up with MORE problems... It should have said something that too many of the kids were doing badly.
 
I can remember a hearing test at High School. We had to turn and face the wall and a lady had explaines that she wanted me to repeat certain words after her. I faced the wall and waited. Nothing. After about 2 minutes she came up behind me and grabbed my arm, furious that I had not repeated these words. A teacher was summoned and the medical person wanted to know if I was one of the naughty ones. I was asked to explain. I knew what I had to do but i was waiting for the lady to start speaking. I wasn't aware that she had started and finished and I had heard nothing. After an operation and 20yrs later a hearing aid, I would love to go back to that woman and take her to court for prejudice, poor attitude and cruel behaviour to a 14 year old child. I wept buckets out of fear. What about the scary thing that my hearing wasn't normal and I hadn't known anything was wrong before this.
 
deafdyke said:
It sometimes seems like a lot of educational people think that b/c a person is oral, they don't require as much as a Sign person.............arughhh.........
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I was reading "Through Deaf Eyes" (I hope I got that right) at my work's library while my students were in library class. There was one quote from one deaf woman about growing up oral. She said that by speaking so well, it gave people the false impression that she doesnt need visual cues so she was denied them and suffered greatly. According to her, because of her experiences growing up oral only, she refuses to use her speech skills again.
 
Hard of Hearing: Deaf school for two years, public school afterwards. Mostly a positive experience. Graduated in a class of 90 kids. Struggled not academically, but socially. Currently in University. Graduate May 09. I still struggle with social skills but have awesome hearing friends. I wish to learn ASL and did take a year of classes at uni, but too shy to go out and interact with other deaf people in the area. I wish to go to a deaf graduate school, but I haven't had luck with finding deaf graduate schools that include physics.

Jaden
 
Hmm, I went to a public school where I would have been the only HOH in my school. Small district. Town population only 5,000. I was fortunate that my mother had spent hours with me at speech therapists, and she worked with me a lot so I do not have deaf accent, I have normal speech. Regardless, when I got to school, the teachers wanted me out, they wanted me send to special ed school, or to belleville school for the deaf. I was too much of a potential inconvenience for them, since I wore HA's and a moderate to severe loss at the time.

My parents fought hard to keep me in school. Even had professionals from belleville coem down to meet with teachers, and teach them how to deal with me. I got front row seats. I excelled in english, as I did a LOT of reading, and eventually got bored with english, by grade 4, they were givign me books from the grade 7 and 8 classes to do my book assignments on.

By grade 6, the school agreed to purchase an FM system for my personal use, I only used it for grade 6. I didn't like feeling so "special" among all the hearing folks, and the FM systems back then in 1982 were big and clunky, about 4" x 3" in side, and I had one on each side of my belt, with wires to my hearing aids....

Teachers had to wear the mic, about 12"-14" long with a 12" antenna on it.... ugly brown thing. They would forget to turn it off, and when they'd go to staff room down hallway, or washroom, I had the priviledge of listening... ugh!

By high school, there were 3 of us in whole school with HA's. The other 2 spoke with deaf accent. They came from catholic school, and from a smaller school 20 minutes away. I never knew them growing up.... basically, my entire childhood, I was the only one I knew with HA's... very lonely.

I rebelled in high school.... I scored well in tests, and I was put into advanced classes, I develoepd an ability back then to read, learn, and more or less memorize books, which made listenign to teachers mostly irrelevant... What few friends I had, were put in general level, and I didn't want to be in advanced... so I ended up failing History and Science on purpose..... however, I quickly snapped out of it, and repeated and scored well second year...

College.... went through normal system, no special assistance other than HAs. Again due to ability to read, memorize and understand, I did well, graduated with honours, never failed any classes.....This was a 2 year business degree.

I returned to larger city, (Ottawa) and went for 2 more years as well. I did need new HA's and worked with VRS to get during this time around.. I memorized all my text books, and did the labs on my own time.... (Computer system Technician)

Anyway.... school sucked only because I wasn't accepted, and had no friends in school... wasn't until college when I felt I had a life, and fit in with real people.... don't know if I would change very much though
 
School for me? Experiencing mainstreaming in a public school was so bad that I'm STILL getting therapy- I've graduated over 10 years ago. I was on the honor roll, participated in school, and had many friends...but nonetheless, the educational placement for me remained inappropriate.

I opened my presentation at a conference with this line: "Oral education for most deaf children is a legalized form of child abuse." (Not for all children- it can be appropriate for some - there are a lot of factors that are involved to determine what is the appropriate placement for that child. But for many - it is inappropriate because of many reasons, including lack of proper language support at home, etc.)

I learned to speak. But no one would listen. I learned to listen. But no one would look at me. And I learned to cry. And no one heard me.
 
deafbajagal said:
School for me? Experiencing mainstreaming in a public school was so bad that I'm STILL getting therapy- I've graduated over 10 years ago. I was on the honor roll, participated in school, and had many friends...but nonetheless, the educational placement for me remained inappropriate.

I opened my presentation at a conference with this line: "Oral education for most deaf children is a legalized form of child abuse." (Not for all children- it can be appropriate for some - there are a lot of factors that are involved to determine what is the appropriate placement for that child. But for many - it is inappropriate because of many reasons, including lack of proper language support at home, etc.)

I learned to speak. But no one would listen. I learned to listen. But no one would look at me. And I learned to cry. And no one heard me.
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:bowdown::bowdown::bowdown:

I understand exactly where you are coming from!
 
deafbajagal said:
School for me? Experiencing mainstreaming in a public school was so bad that I'm STILL getting therapy- I've graduated over 10 years ago. I was on the honor roll, participated in school, and had many friends...but nonetheless, the educational placement for me remained inappropriate.

I opened my presentation at a conference with this line: "Oral education for most deaf children is a legalized form of child abuse." (Not for all children- it can be appropriate for some - there are a lot of factors that are involved to determine what is the appropriate placement for that child. But for many - it is inappropriate because of many reasons, including lack of proper language support at home, etc.)

I learned to speak. But no one would listen. I learned to listen. But no one would look at me. And I learned to cry. And no one heard me.
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OMG....the people I wish would read this!
 
deafbajagal said:
School for me? Experiencing mainstreaming in a public school was so bad that I'm STILL getting therapy- I've graduated over 10 years ago. I was on the honor roll, participated in school, and had many friends...but nonetheless, the educational placement for me remained inappropriate.

I opened my presentation at a conference with this line: "Oral education for most deaf children is a legalized form of child abuse." (Not for all children- it can be appropriate for some - there are a lot of factors that are involved to determine what is the appropriate placement for that child. But for many - it is inappropriate because of many reasons, including lack of proper language support at home, etc.)

I learned to speak. But no one would listen. I learned to listen. But no one would look at me. And I learned to cry. And no one heard me.
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I'm sure you got their attention with that statement. As for myself, I still have scars from my 3 year stay in mainstream so I really can relate to your post. At times, I go thru bouts of extreme anger when I remember my days in mainstream.
 
shel90 said:
:bowdown::bowdown::bowdown:

I understand exactly where you are coming from!
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I'm glad you said that...for the longest time, I really thought I was the only one who felt that way...it sounds silly now but I really did at the time when I was growing up. That's the effect mainstreaming (as the only deaf child in the school) had on me...I was like, the only one and no one else could relate.
 
deafskeptic said:
I'm sure you got their attention with that statement. As for myself, I still have scars from my 3 year stay in mainstream so I really can relate to your post. At times, I go thru bouts of extreme anger when I remember my days in mainstream.
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I don't want to sound preachy...but therapy really helped me. So I find myself recommending it to everyone. I used to get so angry that I would engage in self destructive behaviors (almost NO ONE knew about that, though because I would only do it alone...)...if you're going through that, you might want to consider it. I wouldn't go for a long time because I was too embarrassed or something - plus there was the whole thing about finding someone who had a background in deafness and finding an interpreter who I could trust to keep his/her mouth shut...but when I finally did, whew. Anger is a secondary emotion that can really consume a person. That's never good. It's dealing with the primary emotions - that's the hard part.
 
I had an unusual upbringing.

I was homeschooled due to the fact that both of my parents were missionaries. The whole family, including my grandmother, got to travel to different parts of the world for year or two depending on my parents mission as my father was a doctor and my mother, a nurse.

So.....

The strange thing was returning back to the States and being enrolled in a public school for 6 months. I remember being placed in 4th grade class because of my age and was bored with the lessons that the teacher was teaching due to the fact that I already knew the subject.

The funny thing was meeting this teacher, Ms. Mithoff, and she was "talking" with her hands. I remember asking her, "Why are you talking with your hands, it looks funny?" :giggle: She was nice enough to explain and questioned me about where I've lived as well as what I been taught.

Being a 9 year old and teaching the teacher about Algebra was fun!

After that experience, I never been back to school as my parents took us kids and went back overseas.
 
I was mainstreamed in both elementary school and high school with a small group of hard of hearing and deaf classmates in a special education home room class. I have gone so much problems with trying to understand what the hearing teachers and hearing students said. When I was in the regular classes, there were no interpreters back in the middle 50's to the middle 60's. The problem was that it was very abusive to let a child, even a teenager tried to get a good grades only in special ed class which I get some better grade than in the regular class but still it was oral in both of the classes. I would love to have A+ or B+, just like my sister who is hearing, with a interpreter and a notetaker, but they don't. Also we, the Deaf/HOH, want to have a English Sign Language(that was before ASL), but the principal refuse to let us learn and communicate with sign language. He thinks that is a bad language. That makes us pissed off and we tried to protest to the principal about getting the sign language from our special education teacher who was formerly from a Deaf School in Faribault, Minnesota. He was told that he could not teach us sign langage otherwise he will get fire from the job. He really felt sorry for us not getting the sign language that we are hungry for. So we had to put up with oral only environment and had our grades going downhill but we managed to graduate from high school. We just don't want to think about how difficult it is to go through oral school. We are very upset with hearing authorities, professionals, doctors, audiologists and lastly parents for trying to fix us that we can lipread or be able to hear with hearing aid. They don't understand nothing about us struggling how hard it is to lipread and to speak. Are they learning from Alexander Graham Bell that it is okay to use oral only environment to pressure us into that kind of method which we despise. :mad2:
 
Bebonang said:
I was mainstreamed in both elementary school and high school with a small group of hard of hearing and deaf classmates in a special education home room class. I have gone so much problems with trying to understand what the hearing teachers and hearing students said. When I was in the regular classes, there were no interpreters back in the middle 50's to the middle 60's. The problem was that it was very abusive to let a child, even a teenager tried to get a good grades only in special ed class which I get some better grade than in the regular class but still it was oral in both of the classes. I would love to have A+ or B+, just like my sister who is hearing, with a interpreter and a notetaker, but they don't. Also we, the Deaf/HOH, want to have a English Sign Language(that was before ASL), but the principal refuse to let us learn and communicate with sign language. He thinks that is a bad language. That makes us pissed off and we tried to protest to the principal about getting the sign language from our special education teacher who was formerly from a Deaf School in Faribault, Minnesota. He was told that he could not teach us sign langage otherwise he will get fire from the job. He really felt sorry for us not getting the sign language that we are hungry for. So we had to put up with oral only environment and had our grades going downhill but we managed to graduate from high school. We just don't want to think about how difficult it is to go through oral school. We are very upset with hearing authorities, professionals, doctors, audiologists and lastly parents for trying to fix us that we can lipread or be able to hear with hearing aid. They don't understand nothing about us struggling how hard it is to lipread and to speak. Are they learning from Alexander Graham Bell that it is okay to use oral only environment to pressure us into that kind of method which we despise. :mad2:
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Like someone said...the hearing people are a burden on deaf people when they do things like that.
 
since i was the only hard of hearing/deaf girl at my middle school, I had an interpreter to interpret for me during my classes. And during recess, my friends know the ABC sign. Whenever I don't understand them, they use the ABC sign and sign to me into one whole sentence. From our agenda planner for what we use for our reminders and homework in, it had an ABC sign langauge in it. So most of the students at school memorized it for me so they can commuitcate with me. In gym I remember one time I always take off my CI so it wouldn't get treated badly. I had to change into my gym clothes. SO I asked my hearing teacher by talking what we were going to play in gym. I didn't understand her so a girl student my age signed to me and I understood. sometimes people would write something down on a piece of paper or type something in my sidekick (but i'm not allowed to bring cellphones or sidekicks to school against the rules.. :[ ) for me. So. That's how I manage to commuticate with hearing people in my hearing school. Will probably do it again in high school next year
 
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