It's vitally important for teachers to recognize what happens on the other end, with Deaf kids. This can be tough for a hearing teacher who has no clue what Deaf people go through on a daily basis or what it's like from the Deaf end. This is often exacerbated by the distance inserted by using an interpreter, para, or external aid. Here's some observations from five years working in the mainstream which I hope will benefit teachers:
1. Eyes get tired. Kids in mainstream programs using interpreters sometimes go into zombie mode; their eyes get exhausted and they can no longer make the muscles function (this is especially true with the high-glare halogen lights used in many public classrooms.) I certainly did, and I had students who do. Even kids with teachers who are themselves Deaf will go into zombie mode. Watching interpreters or signing for long periods of time takes practice, and even then, the eyes still need a rest. Looking is active. This can have positive effects; active watchers are more likely to process and analyze information. What to do about this? When I see kids go into zombie mode–and I don't know how easy it is for people to identify this, but I can always see the eyes glaze over–I encourage them to go get water or go to the bathroom. A couple minutes of eye-rest can make sure the student is engaged for all but those two minutes of class–while ignoring the problem means the student may miss half the information provided! Another solution: bring in lamps and use that lighting instead, if legal in your area. Such a solution may not be useable during state examinations, however.
2. Kids with limited communication at home have limited power. I applaud the parents in this article who are trying to learn BSL, but the same situation applies here in the US: while the government will spend thousands on experimental audiological equipment which only works on a functional level for less than half of the recipients, they will not spend a far smaller amount to help parents learn a language which will last forever and works for all Deaf kids. There is no Deaf student who cannot learn ASL. 100%. (This is why I support the use of both: until the student reaches the age of complex language use, it's tough to determine how functional those audiological aids are on a practical level; I have seen students graduate with very little OR very much benefit, and none have complained about knowledge of ASL.)
When kids can't communicate at home, they often have less power to control their daily lives. This past summer I had students come to me desperate because parents scheduled appointments on days when students had tests–without consulting those students.
Further, when students don't have the ability to communicate they and their needs are often infantilized at home. I've had parents tell me summer school wasn't important, and behind that is the unspoken assumption that the student themselves is limited. I was fortunate to have parents who insisted on including me in scheduling appointments and ensured students had the most opportunities to achieve.
How to solve this? Teachers are sometimes the only voice in support of students having increased responsibility. Pointing out that, later, students need to be independent and self-supporting, and discussing strategies to do so, is very important… but not always successful. Sometimes parents and I will discuss things in depth, and then at the IEP meeting they'll get nervous. Giving parents opportunities to learn ASL, to help bridge the communication gap, are important.
It's also equally important to encourage kids to bridge those gaps. I have students who think there's no point, or who are so overwhelmed by the power dynamics of the family that they don't think of trying to engage in dialogue. Helping students figure out how to frame their needs can be vitally supportive.
3. Hearing aids and audiological aids aren't always pleasant. Mine often sound like someone screaming at me. They demand attention. And the training makes you react to hearing aids the way hearing people react to telephones ringing: GOTTA ANSWER GOTTA ANSWER GOTTA ANSWER! I often take off my hearing aids to think and process. I've discussed this with my students; some of them report no problem at all (about one-third;) others report lots of problems. The design and structure of the hearing aid/implant itself is also an issue: when you are paying attention to a speaking teacher and suddenly your left ear goes WEEEEEEEEEEE TIME TO CHANGE THE BATTERY! and you have to leave class, sometimes you decide to sit there and endure the sirens so you don't miss a point.
And then there's the gym-ey sweat issue... don't get me started!
Talking to students about their needs and experiences is vital. Asking students what works well for them gives them independence and empowerment, and makes them begin the process of analyzing those needs. Is sitting in front REALLY the best place for the student? Not with all hearing aids; some use technology to localize voices. The student might find sitting in the center or on the side more profitable. Or they might want to be in back, because it helps them visually locate other students/teachers/etc.
4. The parent's perspectives, prejudices, and problems with Deafness sometimes extend to the student. Infantilization again; when a parent has an 18 year old, six-foot Deaf son and they require that person to go on the little yellow bus from mainstream school "for safety reasons," what is actually happening? Is the student really more "safe," or is it just the parent's worry that's assuaged? And practically, what happens with that bus? Buses sometimes don't show, and students miss class. Buses need to leave on time, and students leave class early. Those fears spill over into other areas of the students' life–and when you grow up with that kind of hemmed-in limitation, you often don't question it. The result is often a student, already in need of more context, having even less.
How to deal with these fears? Being a Deaf teacher in a mainstream school helped me enormously. Parents saw an educated, capable Deaf adult, and often asked me how I got that way. It's tough to be a model, and it's important to remember all Deaf kids are different: there's plenty who do warrant such fears! Sitting down with parent and student and helping them engage in dialogue is vital.
These are all problems I encountered and experienced as a teacher. There's no easy solutions. Everything occurs in process, and the process will continue for the family and the Deaf student/individual way past graduation. Recognizing this takes some of the pressure off: even a tiny push to create better dialogue is a great step. Recognizing those small achievements makes the process even more beneficial.
Showing posts with label bilingual classroom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bilingual classroom. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
37: Teaching While Deaf: Choosing Texts
Three simple principles: accessibility, contextualization, inclusiveness. It's not easy to apply these principles when designing a unit for Deaf kids. I wanted to teach US History and make sure my Deaf students knew that Deaf people had a place in making America–and that, like my students, there were many kinds of Deaf people. Many tribes, if you will. What texts would be helpful and show Deaf people's place in American history?
What do those three terms mean? Not what you think. Accessibility, to me, means that you can approach the topic in many ways–physical, visual, verbal, interpersonal, intrapersonal, all those intelligences and minds that educators discuss. I have observed that in many classrooms when a teacher works with a Deaf student or a minority student, the tendency is to start with verbal English then "go downwards"–i.e. make the explanation easier and easier, and then ending by repeating verbal structures. The emphasis is on the primacy of English. When teachers work with students who are hearing, or like the teacher, the emphasis is on discovering the student's strength in learning and addressing that strength with a teaching of equal complexity. It's not easier ways, it's different ways, and there's no primacy given to one way over another.
Contextualization means to provide the outside story of whatever you're talking about. A challenge for Deaf kids is they have access to less information than hearing kids. Less movies have captions. Radio isn't captioned at all. Hearing parents are sometimes unavailable. These blocks close a door in the mind, the door of inquiry, the door essential for learning. Teachers have to find the door of inquiry and shove it open, then feed context into the child's brain until the door stays open and the kid starts asking questions themselves. Otherwise education will be unsuccessful. (This is true for all kids, not just for Deaf kids, and the deep bone-down reason why you can't use testing to decide how good a teacher is. You have to see how many doors they've tried to open, and nobody can see that, except the teacher themselves.) The more context you provide, the more the child will understand.
Inclusiveness means to place the Deaf kid in the context of the story. Many other writers have addressed how history departments fail to reach kids, how textbooks fail to reach kids, by dehumanizing and de-diversifying (is that a word?) history. We rarely, if ever, see Deaf people in history classes, except Helen Keller–and even she is circumcised, cut off at age 4 with her hand in running water. We never see her 13 books on socialism, and sadly, many of those books no longer survive, it seems. It also means recognizing all the different ways Deaf people live and have lived, because the stories we include need to reflect our own stories.
The American Revolution was a challenge. In addition to information about the causes of that war and its resultant laws–particularly the Constitution, of course–I wanted to provide information about how Deaf people lived. John Brewster, Jr., made it in–and let me make connections to Goya, and how there were some spaces a little more fluid, a little easier to move in for artists. John Lamberton, slave-ship owner and one of the founding fathers of Martha's Vineyard. Rebecca Nurse, burned as a witch for her blunt declaration, basically, that witchburning is stupid (it is.) These stories don't directly connect to the war, but they embroider it, giving the glitter of reality to the cross-stitch of plain facts. (Sometimes you need a tempting glitter, to open that door.) Add to that the fact that Adams and Franklin were interested in what l'Epee was doing in his school in France–but most of this is text, so while this gives me context and inclusion, it doesn't necessarily give me accessibility. I plan some skits and acting out to help impress the information on students in a variety of ways. We have vocabulary lists also, and these I teach in ASL and English.
The War of 1812–also a challenge. There's rumors and bits, of course. The origin of oral education, and maybe the war between oral Deaf Americans and sign-using Deaf Americans, in the story of John Braidwood, ne'er-do-well scion of the Braidwood family, collapser of two Deaf schools and enemy of Thomas Gallaudet, safe in America from arrest by the British thanks to the war. There's pictures now, of most of these things, so I can at last satisfy more easily the need for accessibility as well as contextualization and inclusion. Deaf Heritage was my friend there, and the Deaf History Reader, and a little booklet written by Alexander Graham Bell, interestingly enough. Maps and pictures of weapons and buildings and paintings... visual and tactile as well as verbal and other methods.
The Mexican-American war gives me a nice little goose-egg: the story of Deaf Smith, Smith the Mumbler, Smith the war-leader, who like Lamberton spoke little and did that strange motion with the ear. He's the perfect frontiersman, the guy who can give me the opening to explain the independent Texas spirit, that short-lived but glorious Texas Republic, and the slotting-into-place as Texas–on its own terms–became part of America. He's also a strange amalgam: in descriptions of him I recognize many types of Deaf people, and it's clear Deaf Smith, like Jean-Jacques Massieu, was an independent icon.
And my students make the connections themselves. "Blunt like me," signs one Deaf girl, about Rebecca Nurse. "I like to stand by the side watching my friends sometimes," says another Deaf boy, with mostly hearing friends, thinking about Deaf Smith. "Why do hearing people use the same word for "impress" (she signs with her thumb in a palm, meaning to astonish, entertain, or gain credit) and "impress" (she signs the sign used also for "recruit," and she's talking about the habit of impressment of Americans by the British in the war of 1812)?" I try to explain, and point out that in ASL we also sometimes use the same sign for different concepts. In tests they are improving steadily, but after two weeks we already have 75 vocabulary words, and they're starting to complain.
To which I reply, reasonably, that it's their own fault; they picked the words themselves.
Feel free to suggest texts and topics!
What do those three terms mean? Not what you think. Accessibility, to me, means that you can approach the topic in many ways–physical, visual, verbal, interpersonal, intrapersonal, all those intelligences and minds that educators discuss. I have observed that in many classrooms when a teacher works with a Deaf student or a minority student, the tendency is to start with verbal English then "go downwards"–i.e. make the explanation easier and easier, and then ending by repeating verbal structures. The emphasis is on the primacy of English. When teachers work with students who are hearing, or like the teacher, the emphasis is on discovering the student's strength in learning and addressing that strength with a teaching of equal complexity. It's not easier ways, it's different ways, and there's no primacy given to one way over another.
Contextualization means to provide the outside story of whatever you're talking about. A challenge for Deaf kids is they have access to less information than hearing kids. Less movies have captions. Radio isn't captioned at all. Hearing parents are sometimes unavailable. These blocks close a door in the mind, the door of inquiry, the door essential for learning. Teachers have to find the door of inquiry and shove it open, then feed context into the child's brain until the door stays open and the kid starts asking questions themselves. Otherwise education will be unsuccessful. (This is true for all kids, not just for Deaf kids, and the deep bone-down reason why you can't use testing to decide how good a teacher is. You have to see how many doors they've tried to open, and nobody can see that, except the teacher themselves.) The more context you provide, the more the child will understand.
Inclusiveness means to place the Deaf kid in the context of the story. Many other writers have addressed how history departments fail to reach kids, how textbooks fail to reach kids, by dehumanizing and de-diversifying (is that a word?) history. We rarely, if ever, see Deaf people in history classes, except Helen Keller–and even she is circumcised, cut off at age 4 with her hand in running water. We never see her 13 books on socialism, and sadly, many of those books no longer survive, it seems. It also means recognizing all the different ways Deaf people live and have lived, because the stories we include need to reflect our own stories.
The American Revolution was a challenge. In addition to information about the causes of that war and its resultant laws–particularly the Constitution, of course–I wanted to provide information about how Deaf people lived. John Brewster, Jr., made it in–and let me make connections to Goya, and how there were some spaces a little more fluid, a little easier to move in for artists. John Lamberton, slave-ship owner and one of the founding fathers of Martha's Vineyard. Rebecca Nurse, burned as a witch for her blunt declaration, basically, that witchburning is stupid (it is.) These stories don't directly connect to the war, but they embroider it, giving the glitter of reality to the cross-stitch of plain facts. (Sometimes you need a tempting glitter, to open that door.) Add to that the fact that Adams and Franklin were interested in what l'Epee was doing in his school in France–but most of this is text, so while this gives me context and inclusion, it doesn't necessarily give me accessibility. I plan some skits and acting out to help impress the information on students in a variety of ways. We have vocabulary lists also, and these I teach in ASL and English.
The War of 1812–also a challenge. There's rumors and bits, of course. The origin of oral education, and maybe the war between oral Deaf Americans and sign-using Deaf Americans, in the story of John Braidwood, ne'er-do-well scion of the Braidwood family, collapser of two Deaf schools and enemy of Thomas Gallaudet, safe in America from arrest by the British thanks to the war. There's pictures now, of most of these things, so I can at last satisfy more easily the need for accessibility as well as contextualization and inclusion. Deaf Heritage was my friend there, and the Deaf History Reader, and a little booklet written by Alexander Graham Bell, interestingly enough. Maps and pictures of weapons and buildings and paintings... visual and tactile as well as verbal and other methods.
The Mexican-American war gives me a nice little goose-egg: the story of Deaf Smith, Smith the Mumbler, Smith the war-leader, who like Lamberton spoke little and did that strange motion with the ear. He's the perfect frontiersman, the guy who can give me the opening to explain the independent Texas spirit, that short-lived but glorious Texas Republic, and the slotting-into-place as Texas–on its own terms–became part of America. He's also a strange amalgam: in descriptions of him I recognize many types of Deaf people, and it's clear Deaf Smith, like Jean-Jacques Massieu, was an independent icon.
And my students make the connections themselves. "Blunt like me," signs one Deaf girl, about Rebecca Nurse. "I like to stand by the side watching my friends sometimes," says another Deaf boy, with mostly hearing friends, thinking about Deaf Smith. "Why do hearing people use the same word for "impress" (she signs with her thumb in a palm, meaning to astonish, entertain, or gain credit) and "impress" (she signs the sign used also for "recruit," and she's talking about the habit of impressment of Americans by the British in the war of 1812)?" I try to explain, and point out that in ASL we also sometimes use the same sign for different concepts. In tests they are improving steadily, but after two weeks we already have 75 vocabulary words, and they're starting to complain.
To which I reply, reasonably, that it's their own fault; they picked the words themselves.
Feel free to suggest texts and topics!
Saturday, June 16, 2012
29: conversations on education, over a year
A co-teacher and I walked down a quiet school hallway.
"You need to share your methods with other teachers," she urged. "They're effective. Students are improving."
They were. In the past several weeks I'd seen many positive developments in my so-called "special education" students. These kids were linguistically delayed–an amenable disability, often created by society, when a Deaf child remains extremely unsophisticated in their language use. This disability is caused by many things, but primarily by a lack of two-way communication in the home. Deaf children are talked to or told to do things, but rarely taught to themselves communicate. The literature blames this on lack of speech, but it's more correctly lack of language; ASL, or other signed languages, are equally effective at preventing language delay. I believe this disability can be repaired with an appropriately structured teaching curriculum. It's a question of teaching them to fish and giving them a rod, instead of teaching them to come to you to get a fish. Most people just give them fish because it's faster. But it isn't permanent.
I was frustrated for reasons I couldn't quite name. "I don't know," I said. "There's just so much-" a thought flashed by, and I grabbed it. "It's about support," I babbled. "Some of those teachers don't even believe these kids can succeed–"
"But we have evidence," my friend complained. "They saw the results."
I sighed. My frustration didn't vanish, but it sort of greyed out a bit. "Listen," I said. "A couple days ago I was on a bus and just had a conversation with a strange woman. We talked about a few news items and things. It was pleasant and we understood each other well. Then I took off my hat and she saw my hearing aids and asked if I was deaf. When I confirmed it was as if a switch turned off–she could no longer understand me, no matter what I said or how loudly I spoke–"
"It's okay, I got you," my friend signed, holding up a hand to stop me from continuing. Her face had gone slightly grey. But it's true. Sometimes, who you are and what you do doesn't matter. Sometimes, it's the label that gets in the way.
I think this is unfortunately true for Deaf people in public education. You can have as many degrees as you like. You can learn to speak their language perfectly, even imitating accents. It doesn't matter because what really needs to change is not the Deaf person but the other person's perception of the Deaf person. This perception–maybe conviction is a better word–can sometimes supersede even the evidence of their own eyes, like the Moon eclipsing the Sun. Their perception of the Deaf student and colleague is eclipsed by the perspective of the Deaf student and colleague. You can wash this off, like dirt from a window, but it comes back, inexorable as waves.
I remember two people, one hearing, one Deaf, conversing by notepad, and then the Deaf person's expression of surprise as the hearing person–and this was after a conversation writing about weather and politics and books, mind you–asked the Deaf person if they could read and write.
The Deaf person finally wrote, No. And put the notebook away and left.
Now you could say maybe the Deaf person should have stayed, laughed at the situation, played the clown as we are wont to do. Maybe they should have just waved the papers and conversation in the hearing person's face and asked "What do you think?" Maybe they should have spoken–people sometimes assume you need to speak to be able to think or read or write. I found the actual response more elegant. Smile, write No, and leave. When I spoke with a Deaf writer, once, who I won't name without permission, I asked them if they thought it was possible for hearing people to experience Deafhood. I mean, it did seem to me in many ways to be a range, like sexuality. The writer said something very telling. Whether they did or not, he said, that experience would always be superseded by the hearing person's privilege in society. The private law of society (privilege, I believe, comes from private law) eclipses and distorts the dynamics of reality and experience. In the example I gave, the Deaf person made their own law, embraced the paradox of their own existence in larger society: for, I ask you, if you couldn't write, how could you write No? Or read and respond to the question in the first place?
Sometimes we get exhausted of making peace. Sometimes even embracing the paradox is hard. Sometimes we get tired of always waiting for hearing people to catch up. (And imagine–always, while they're puffing and screaming behind, they're reminding us how slow we are. And don't forget to laugh.)
"You need to share your methods with other teachers," she urged. "They're effective. Students are improving."
They were. In the past several weeks I'd seen many positive developments in my so-called "special education" students. These kids were linguistically delayed–an amenable disability, often created by society, when a Deaf child remains extremely unsophisticated in their language use. This disability is caused by many things, but primarily by a lack of two-way communication in the home. Deaf children are talked to or told to do things, but rarely taught to themselves communicate. The literature blames this on lack of speech, but it's more correctly lack of language; ASL, or other signed languages, are equally effective at preventing language delay. I believe this disability can be repaired with an appropriately structured teaching curriculum. It's a question of teaching them to fish and giving them a rod, instead of teaching them to come to you to get a fish. Most people just give them fish because it's faster. But it isn't permanent.
I was frustrated for reasons I couldn't quite name. "I don't know," I said. "There's just so much-" a thought flashed by, and I grabbed it. "It's about support," I babbled. "Some of those teachers don't even believe these kids can succeed–"
"But we have evidence," my friend complained. "They saw the results."
I sighed. My frustration didn't vanish, but it sort of greyed out a bit. "Listen," I said. "A couple days ago I was on a bus and just had a conversation with a strange woman. We talked about a few news items and things. It was pleasant and we understood each other well. Then I took off my hat and she saw my hearing aids and asked if I was deaf. When I confirmed it was as if a switch turned off–she could no longer understand me, no matter what I said or how loudly I spoke–"
"It's okay, I got you," my friend signed, holding up a hand to stop me from continuing. Her face had gone slightly grey. But it's true. Sometimes, who you are and what you do doesn't matter. Sometimes, it's the label that gets in the way.
I think this is unfortunately true for Deaf people in public education. You can have as many degrees as you like. You can learn to speak their language perfectly, even imitating accents. It doesn't matter because what really needs to change is not the Deaf person but the other person's perception of the Deaf person. This perception–maybe conviction is a better word–can sometimes supersede even the evidence of their own eyes, like the Moon eclipsing the Sun. Their perception of the Deaf student and colleague is eclipsed by the perspective of the Deaf student and colleague. You can wash this off, like dirt from a window, but it comes back, inexorable as waves.
I remember two people, one hearing, one Deaf, conversing by notepad, and then the Deaf person's expression of surprise as the hearing person–and this was after a conversation writing about weather and politics and books, mind you–asked the Deaf person if they could read and write.
The Deaf person finally wrote, No. And put the notebook away and left.
Now you could say maybe the Deaf person should have stayed, laughed at the situation, played the clown as we are wont to do. Maybe they should have just waved the papers and conversation in the hearing person's face and asked "What do you think?" Maybe they should have spoken–people sometimes assume you need to speak to be able to think or read or write. I found the actual response more elegant. Smile, write No, and leave. When I spoke with a Deaf writer, once, who I won't name without permission, I asked them if they thought it was possible for hearing people to experience Deafhood. I mean, it did seem to me in many ways to be a range, like sexuality. The writer said something very telling. Whether they did or not, he said, that experience would always be superseded by the hearing person's privilege in society. The private law of society (privilege, I believe, comes from private law) eclipses and distorts the dynamics of reality and experience. In the example I gave, the Deaf person made their own law, embraced the paradox of their own existence in larger society: for, I ask you, if you couldn't write, how could you write No? Or read and respond to the question in the first place?
Sometimes we get exhausted of making peace. Sometimes even embracing the paradox is hard. Sometimes we get tired of always waiting for hearing people to catch up. (And imagine–always, while they're puffing and screaming behind, they're reminding us how slow we are. And don't forget to laugh.)
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Many Tribes Episode 2: Internet Captioning and HR 3101
The impact of limited captioning on the internet and the importance of H.R. 3101 is discussed in this vlog.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
26: Why Bother Saving Deaf Schools?
One of the questions buzzing around on blogs recently is this: why bother saving Deaf schools? To me the answers have become obvious after two years of working in the public school system, and many years as a mainstreamed student in the public school system. I ask people to please consider these reasons. They are drawn from personal experience.
1. Deaf children in mainstreamed programs are not - cannot - be given full access through an A.S.L. interpreter, except in lucky circumstances. Even NYC public schools, which have their own interpreting organization, cannot fill all available jobs. Should students want to join many extracurricular activities the problem would be far worse but I believe they are jaded and do not try. Parents! If your child becomes mainstreamed, find them programs they can be involved in. Better: find programs which have some Deaf children and maybe one or two Deaf adults. Give your child role models and don't let them feel alone as they grow!
2. Interpreters in education systems have a different role than regular interpreters which is highly important, often ignored and still not fully understood, especially when it comes to language development. The R.I.D., an organization which certifies interpreters and has done a magnificent job of raising standards, only began exploring this rich field a few years ago.
3. More confusingly, Deaf students need education in A.S.L. to develop their command of that language, especially if they are to use it to learn other languages!
4. Mainstreamed programs rarely have many other Deaf children, Deaf adults, or Deaf staff/faculty/administrator. This is important because students need models in how to communicate with each other. Not every student winds up with Invisibility Disease - some students are happy in mainstreamed programs (girls tend to do better than boys, possibly fitting more easily into gender roles. Boys tend to develop symptoms of frustration, especially if not given an outlet.)
5. This is also important because you have nobody checking that a) your child has appropriate access b) your child is being given appropriate expectations and c) your child has a good environmental setup that aids them in learning and even d) that your child's teachers have access to resources and materials to make all this happen on a regular basis. All of these things happen naturally in a Deaf school. An aggressive student in a mainstreamed program can force these things to become accessible, but the fight is draining and discouraging- especially without a Deaf adult in the school to stand by you and say yes, he's not exaggerating, he can't just teach another kid fingerspelling and have them walk with him all day every day at school! (Principals have actually suggested this before.)
6. This is also important because not having Deaf adults at the school your child goes to means that standards and challenges may not be as high for your child as it would be for "normal" children. Teachers have attitudes about Deafness as do other people.
Just some thoughts. I realize these may be difficult for people to accept but wanted to offer some observations.
1. Deaf children in mainstreamed programs are not - cannot - be given full access through an A.S.L. interpreter, except in lucky circumstances. Even NYC public schools, which have their own interpreting organization, cannot fill all available jobs. Should students want to join many extracurricular activities the problem would be far worse but I believe they are jaded and do not try. Parents! If your child becomes mainstreamed, find them programs they can be involved in. Better: find programs which have some Deaf children and maybe one or two Deaf adults. Give your child role models and don't let them feel alone as they grow!
2. Interpreters in education systems have a different role than regular interpreters which is highly important, often ignored and still not fully understood, especially when it comes to language development. The R.I.D., an organization which certifies interpreters and has done a magnificent job of raising standards, only began exploring this rich field a few years ago.
3. More confusingly, Deaf students need education in A.S.L. to develop their command of that language, especially if they are to use it to learn other languages!
4. Mainstreamed programs rarely have many other Deaf children, Deaf adults, or Deaf staff/faculty/administrator. This is important because students need models in how to communicate with each other. Not every student winds up with Invisibility Disease - some students are happy in mainstreamed programs (girls tend to do better than boys, possibly fitting more easily into gender roles. Boys tend to develop symptoms of frustration, especially if not given an outlet.)
5. This is also important because you have nobody checking that a) your child has appropriate access b) your child is being given appropriate expectations and c) your child has a good environmental setup that aids them in learning and even d) that your child's teachers have access to resources and materials to make all this happen on a regular basis. All of these things happen naturally in a Deaf school. An aggressive student in a mainstreamed program can force these things to become accessible, but the fight is draining and discouraging- especially without a Deaf adult in the school to stand by you and say yes, he's not exaggerating, he can't just teach another kid fingerspelling and have them walk with him all day every day at school! (Principals have actually suggested this before.)
6. This is also important because not having Deaf adults at the school your child goes to means that standards and challenges may not be as high for your child as it would be for "normal" children. Teachers have attitudes about Deafness as do other people.
Just some thoughts. I realize these may be difficult for people to accept but wanted to offer some observations.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
25: Speaking to me
Sometimes I wonder why all the effort in Deaf education is spent towards getting Deaf children to speak. It often doesn't matter. Your voice can be a rich patina of textured sound. As long as you are a Deaf person, that takes precedence... I have spoken to people who understand me perfectly until they are made to understand that I am Deaf. After that, no matter what I do, I am incomprehensible, and we must write to communicate. Other Deaf people have reported the same experience. Based on these casual observations, we can form the hypothesis that people's opinions and prejudices about Deaf people have much more power than any one individual's ability to learn to speak or hear better. The power of the stereotype, with all its opinions and prejudices, is deadly. It is those opinions and prejudices, in the end, which cost us more and keep us further away from success.
It almost does not matter whether or not you believe Deaf people are an individual people with their own culture and experiences and language. No matter what you believe, Deaf people will experience many of the same things such minorities do, including, as I've explained above, stereotyping. Reality is subject to the power of the stereotype. Just as there were once African Americans who, despite repeated evidence that they could produce remarkable calligraphy, were proclaimed illiterate, there are still unconscious prejudices which make people see Deaf people as terra incommunicado.
I experience this on a daily basis in my classroom. Some of the hearing kids I teach "get it" quickly, signing to me or speaking to me or otherwise trying to communicate with me. These are the kids I respect the most. Other kids have a hard time getting past their built-in audism. They ask their friends to talk or sign to me, or they don't even bother, or they look around for a substitute adult (in our school, we are lucky, since such adults are likely to reinforce my authority in the classroom and direct the child to talk to me. In a normal school, another adult would be more likely to take away from my authority, and take charge of the answer.) If there is an interpreter available, they whisper to him or her to ask him, ask him... Sometimes I feel rather like an ancient Greek oracle, accessible only to a chosen few.
I teach English, so communication becomes of even more importance. Rather than seeing my Deaf nature as a disadvantage, I see it as a huge advantage. Establishing protocols for effective communication and teaching children to learn how to use those protocols is highly beneficial. Teaching hearing children that very Deaf skill, the skill of being able to try communication method no. 1, then no. 2, then no. 3, until every possible method has been tried - teaching that could be very beneficial!
But getting kids over that communication barrier - the barriers they bring with them - is a very difficult job, and I haven't found a complete and easy solution yet. Take things one by one, I guess.
It almost does not matter whether or not you believe Deaf people are an individual people with their own culture and experiences and language. No matter what you believe, Deaf people will experience many of the same things such minorities do, including, as I've explained above, stereotyping. Reality is subject to the power of the stereotype. Just as there were once African Americans who, despite repeated evidence that they could produce remarkable calligraphy, were proclaimed illiterate, there are still unconscious prejudices which make people see Deaf people as terra incommunicado.
I experience this on a daily basis in my classroom. Some of the hearing kids I teach "get it" quickly, signing to me or speaking to me or otherwise trying to communicate with me. These are the kids I respect the most. Other kids have a hard time getting past their built-in audism. They ask their friends to talk or sign to me, or they don't even bother, or they look around for a substitute adult (in our school, we are lucky, since such adults are likely to reinforce my authority in the classroom and direct the child to talk to me. In a normal school, another adult would be more likely to take away from my authority, and take charge of the answer.) If there is an interpreter available, they whisper to him or her to ask him, ask him... Sometimes I feel rather like an ancient Greek oracle, accessible only to a chosen few.
I teach English, so communication becomes of even more importance. Rather than seeing my Deaf nature as a disadvantage, I see it as a huge advantage. Establishing protocols for effective communication and teaching children to learn how to use those protocols is highly beneficial. Teaching hearing children that very Deaf skill, the skill of being able to try communication method no. 1, then no. 2, then no. 3, until every possible method has been tried - teaching that could be very beneficial!
But getting kids over that communication barrier - the barriers they bring with them - is a very difficult job, and I haven't found a complete and easy solution yet. Take things one by one, I guess.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
22: Deafhood and Reflection: My Experiences as an ELA Student
My earliest memory of an English teacher is Ms. Finley, from 6th grade. I remember some other teachers before this, but vaguely. When you're a Deaf student you look at an interpreter most of the time. The teacher is a vague voice lurking static-filled in the background. Ms. Finley was one of those small but powerful Italian women; she taught English Language Arts, and I was infatuated with her and her energy. One day at the end of class I tried to go up to her and share poetry I'd written. Instead of looking her response was "You shouldn't write that in front of other people."
Oh well. I tried to connect. My interpreter thought the poem was nice.
I'd always done exceptionally well as a reader and writer. In Elementary School I was mainstreamed, on the strength of my native intelligence, with no interpreter in the classroom. I had the natural ability to put sentences together without thinking too much about it. My writing flowed cleanly and clearly, and I was able to well reproduce tone and rhythm. I expect my teachers thought this was enough, especially when I was compared to other, more troublesome students; I was often left alone and unchallenged in the classroom. I'd be given assignments that were simple for me; I wrote quickly and neatly, read speedily, finished whatever, and spent the rest of my class with a book hidden beneath the desk, in my own world.
In Middle School the state was finally kind enough to give me a "resource room" period and an interpreter. I was unique; the only student both in Advanced classes and Special Education. The school had to invent a new code just for me. The interpreter, Denise was, unfortunately, terrible. The state has much more stringent standards for interpreters now, with all types of certificates and experience required, but back then the only requirement was that you breathe - the first interpreter they'd hired, if you can believe it, was actually Italian, and translated my French class into Italian at me. (I am, to this day, grateful for the wide lenses of my glasses; his moustache blocked NADA. Nothing's fair in sixth grade.) Denise at least knew some American Sign Language, but her interpretation consisted of listening then saying, "Okay, you know, he's saying something about writing an essay, it's not important." Then she'd tell me stories about her children, which I found more interesting than a class I couldn't understand.
During this time my grades and motivation slipped severely. I understood nothing that was going on in class, the material was getting more complicated in every class and, as another teacher later told me, it was starting to reach the level where modelling was required, and when the student is looking at the interpreter, not the teacher, modelling doesn't work. I could no longer rely on my reading skills to catch me up, because I had to look at an interpreter ALL THE TIME instead of just reading the textbook, and nobody had taken into account the exhausting nature of staring at a single person eight hours a day. It was all new to me, and so was sign language, and I was learning several things at once, from a woman barely competent in the language. I had to unlearn several linguistic skills from that time, years later.
My fellow 6th, 7th and 8th grade students began exploring the concept of writing as a process. Reading as a process I certainly understood; I'd come to enjoy the concept of re-reading. But re-writing? Remember, my responses up till now had been hurriedly written, facile answers to facile questions. The questions were more complicated now. I do not think, in retrospect, that I did very well; as I said, my grades slipped somewhat, although I continued to do work. (Now, being a teacher, I know that simply getting students to finish work is a challenge, and I wonder how much of my good grades were due simply to compliance, or even pity.)
As a result my challenge in life has been developing the skills to meet challenge. When I want to write a story, my struggle isn't coming up with things to say; I have plenty. My struggle is obtaining stick-to-itiveness, in following a process where I have to do things step by step, after a life where all the assignments have been clear and the answers have been relatively easy. It's difficult to Get Things Done. This became exceptionally clear in 9th grade, when I had Ms. Rae Johnson in AP English. I'd made the conscious decision to attend a school for Deaf people in Washington, D.C. I left my family in the process, but I think the exchange was fair, if somewhat depressing.
Like Ms. Finley, Rae Johnson was a small woman, but Irish and English where Ms. Finley was Italian, calm where she was energetic, considering and private when others were public and thoughtless. I'd been put into the Senior AP English class, on the strength of my excellent test scores. I was emotionally unready for the class material, but intellectually I could deal with it - a weird combination. Now I go back and read texts I'd read at that time and see all the sexual innuendo I missed. Life experience is a big part of reading. Numbers make it easy to forget that.
Anyway, Rae (she bade us call her by her first name, the first teacher in my life to do so) challenged me on every level. She was a Deaf woman, with high competence in both languages, and criticized my ASL skills as well as my English skills, and was the first person in my life to ever offer me constructive criticism on signing. I may have learned the bones of writing from public schools in New York: I learned the meat and flesh of it from Rae. Everything after that class was just icing. The continual writing - being forced to achieve certain levels of work and maintain certain levels of communication - I was challenged in a way I'd never been challenged before. As I said I didn't understand everything. I didn't understand King Lear, or insanity. But writing as a process, the firming of my reading skills, exposure to challenging literature - yes. I learned.
And (he says, wryly, returning to the beginning, as all good essays are supposed to) it was the first time in my life I'd had a teacher who spoke directly to me, in her own words, and saw mine. She was still my friend at graduation, and I saw her a few years later when I returned to the school for a visit. I do not know where she is now, though I wish I did. When you're young you're flippant about such things. Only after you've grown enough to see a bit do you realize how rare such connections are, after years and years of not seeing and not being seen.
My earliest memory of an English teacher is Ms. Finley, from 6th grade. I remember some other teachers before this, but vaguely. When you're a Deaf student you look at an interpreter most of the time. The teacher is a vague voice lurking static-filled in the background. Ms. Finley was one of those small but powerful Italian women; she taught English Language Arts, and I was infatuated with her and her energy. One day at the end of class I tried to go up to her and share poetry I'd written. Instead of looking her response was "You shouldn't write that in front of other people."
Oh well. I tried to connect. My interpreter thought the poem was nice.
I'd always done exceptionally well as a reader and writer. In Elementary School I was mainstreamed, on the strength of my native intelligence, with no interpreter in the classroom. I had the natural ability to put sentences together without thinking too much about it. My writing flowed cleanly and clearly, and I was able to well reproduce tone and rhythm. I expect my teachers thought this was enough, especially when I was compared to other, more troublesome students; I was often left alone and unchallenged in the classroom. I'd be given assignments that were simple for me; I wrote quickly and neatly, read speedily, finished whatever, and spent the rest of my class with a book hidden beneath the desk, in my own world.
In Middle School the state was finally kind enough to give me a "resource room" period and an interpreter. I was unique; the only student both in Advanced classes and Special Education. The school had to invent a new code just for me. The interpreter, Denise was, unfortunately, terrible. The state has much more stringent standards for interpreters now, with all types of certificates and experience required, but back then the only requirement was that you breathe - the first interpreter they'd hired, if you can believe it, was actually Italian, and translated my French class into Italian at me. (I am, to this day, grateful for the wide lenses of my glasses; his moustache blocked NADA. Nothing's fair in sixth grade.) Denise at least knew some American Sign Language, but her interpretation consisted of listening then saying, "Okay, you know, he's saying something about writing an essay, it's not important." Then she'd tell me stories about her children, which I found more interesting than a class I couldn't understand.
During this time my grades and motivation slipped severely. I understood nothing that was going on in class, the material was getting more complicated in every class and, as another teacher later told me, it was starting to reach the level where modelling was required, and when the student is looking at the interpreter, not the teacher, modelling doesn't work. I could no longer rely on my reading skills to catch me up, because I had to look at an interpreter ALL THE TIME instead of just reading the textbook, and nobody had taken into account the exhausting nature of staring at a single person eight hours a day. It was all new to me, and so was sign language, and I was learning several things at once, from a woman barely competent in the language. I had to unlearn several linguistic skills from that time, years later.
My fellow 6th, 7th and 8th grade students began exploring the concept of writing as a process. Reading as a process I certainly understood; I'd come to enjoy the concept of re-reading. But re-writing? Remember, my responses up till now had been hurriedly written, facile answers to facile questions. The questions were more complicated now. I do not think, in retrospect, that I did very well; as I said, my grades slipped somewhat, although I continued to do work. (Now, being a teacher, I know that simply getting students to finish work is a challenge, and I wonder how much of my good grades were due simply to compliance, or even pity.)
As a result my challenge in life has been developing the skills to meet challenge. When I want to write a story, my struggle isn't coming up with things to say; I have plenty. My struggle is obtaining stick-to-itiveness, in following a process where I have to do things step by step, after a life where all the assignments have been clear and the answers have been relatively easy. It's difficult to Get Things Done. This became exceptionally clear in 9th grade, when I had Ms. Rae Johnson in AP English. I'd made the conscious decision to attend a school for Deaf people in Washington, D.C. I left my family in the process, but I think the exchange was fair, if somewhat depressing.
Like Ms. Finley, Rae Johnson was a small woman, but Irish and English where Ms. Finley was Italian, calm where she was energetic, considering and private when others were public and thoughtless. I'd been put into the Senior AP English class, on the strength of my excellent test scores. I was emotionally unready for the class material, but intellectually I could deal with it - a weird combination. Now I go back and read texts I'd read at that time and see all the sexual innuendo I missed. Life experience is a big part of reading. Numbers make it easy to forget that.
Anyway, Rae (she bade us call her by her first name, the first teacher in my life to do so) challenged me on every level. She was a Deaf woman, with high competence in both languages, and criticized my ASL skills as well as my English skills, and was the first person in my life to ever offer me constructive criticism on signing. I may have learned the bones of writing from public schools in New York: I learned the meat and flesh of it from Rae. Everything after that class was just icing. The continual writing - being forced to achieve certain levels of work and maintain certain levels of communication - I was challenged in a way I'd never been challenged before. As I said I didn't understand everything. I didn't understand King Lear, or insanity. But writing as a process, the firming of my reading skills, exposure to challenging literature - yes. I learned.
And (he says, wryly, returning to the beginning, as all good essays are supposed to) it was the first time in my life I'd had a teacher who spoke directly to me, in her own words, and saw mine. She was still my friend at graduation, and I saw her a few years later when I returned to the school for a visit. I do not know where she is now, though I wish I did. When you're young you're flippant about such things. Only after you've grown enough to see a bit do you realize how rare such connections are, after years and years of not seeing and not being seen.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
21: Summative Assessment, Part II: Lessons and What To Do With Them
I have learned a lot this year as a teacher. I expect every year to be somewhat similar. For this blog I'm focusing on the stuff I've learned that's related somehow to bilingual education and development. These are goals I hope to implement in the coming year.
1. Establish more stringent and clear rules for communication. When I showed up at my school last year, I assumed the school would take the time and trouble to work with the students at establishing communication rules. I didn't think it would differ from classroom to classroom, but it does, and students become confused and frustrated. Even in terms of interpreters, there's disparity - Deaf teachers work without interpreters while hearing teachers have them.
2. Achieve a target level of 10% inclusion in my English classes. By this I mean including stories and poetry by Deaf writers, comparative works in ASL, films about Deaf people, and maybe finding ways to include signs for vocabulary words. I want 10% of my class to show support for the bilingual goals of the school. I did some of that this year, but it was hard to get students to 'buy in' to the concept without having more support from the school overall.
3. Create a suggested reading list for each of my classes with ASL or Deaf related topics. I could also connect these books with works about other minority groups, women, etc. I want students to get the idea that discussions about identity and means of empowerment go on at all levels.
4. Discuss comparative literary elements. I won't test my students on these, but I want them to become aware of, say, the concept that metaphor exists in all languages. I wish I knew of good examples in Spanish too, and a few other languages. It strikes me that it would be ever so powerful, especially for a diverse classroom, to give an example of a metaphor and show all languages have them, then ask the class the question, "Why do we use metaphors?" and conduct an investigation for four weeks.
5. Behavior issues do come up with a bilingual classroom. I'm very concerned about cursing. It was hard for me at first because I believed my deafness was responsible for the surfeit of cursing in my room. I caught some of it, but not all of it. Later I had the opportunity to observe hearing teachers, and they also had to deal with cursing in the classroom. I have to find my own solutions in my own way, but it does feel good to know that... cursing is the ground state... of the ten year old... I don't like the way the sentence is going, but you get the idea. I think a modified Curse Jar concept could work, so I'm going to try that.
See how well I do at achieving these goals. At least I have a plan...
I have learned a lot this year as a teacher. I expect every year to be somewhat similar. For this blog I'm focusing on the stuff I've learned that's related somehow to bilingual education and development. These are goals I hope to implement in the coming year.
1. Establish more stringent and clear rules for communication. When I showed up at my school last year, I assumed the school would take the time and trouble to work with the students at establishing communication rules. I didn't think it would differ from classroom to classroom, but it does, and students become confused and frustrated. Even in terms of interpreters, there's disparity - Deaf teachers work without interpreters while hearing teachers have them.
2. Achieve a target level of 10% inclusion in my English classes. By this I mean including stories and poetry by Deaf writers, comparative works in ASL, films about Deaf people, and maybe finding ways to include signs for vocabulary words. I want 10% of my class to show support for the bilingual goals of the school. I did some of that this year, but it was hard to get students to 'buy in' to the concept without having more support from the school overall.
3. Create a suggested reading list for each of my classes with ASL or Deaf related topics. I could also connect these books with works about other minority groups, women, etc. I want students to get the idea that discussions about identity and means of empowerment go on at all levels.
4. Discuss comparative literary elements. I won't test my students on these, but I want them to become aware of, say, the concept that metaphor exists in all languages. I wish I knew of good examples in Spanish too, and a few other languages. It strikes me that it would be ever so powerful, especially for a diverse classroom, to give an example of a metaphor and show all languages have them, then ask the class the question, "Why do we use metaphors?" and conduct an investigation for four weeks.
5. Behavior issues do come up with a bilingual classroom. I'm very concerned about cursing. It was hard for me at first because I believed my deafness was responsible for the surfeit of cursing in my room. I caught some of it, but not all of it. Later I had the opportunity to observe hearing teachers, and they also had to deal with cursing in the classroom. I have to find my own solutions in my own way, but it does feel good to know that... cursing is the ground state... of the ten year old... I don't like the way the sentence is going, but you get the idea. I think a modified Curse Jar concept could work, so I'm going to try that.
See how well I do at achieving these goals. At least I have a plan...
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
20: summative assessment
Today we handed out awards in a classroom finally chilled to perfection. In one of the perpetual ironies of the system in which I am blessed to work, they totally missed the hot months of April and May and installed an airconditioner on the 25th of June.
The day before the last day of school. *rim shot*
I'm in class right now. I've gone ahead and submitted my final paper, not because it's in any sense done - I plan to keep working with this, it's just the bare bones of the curriculum for next year. I plan to teach a full year's curriculum on "Literacy for Empowerment." This is based somewhat on the half-assed news unit I taught to seventh grade this year. I've expanded it and revised it to include writing essays - so the reading component has a writing component. My co-teachers might scream, but I'd love to have seventh grade for double periods next year. Or eighth. The specific unit I'm focusing on designing for this class revolves around learning to construct arguments and deconstruct the arguments of others. Not fights in any traditional sense, but arguments in the philosophical sense - logical constructions. IF is an exception to the rule - but I notice many of my Deaf students have a problem with logical constructions and arguments. My work with this group has mostly centered on forcing them to make such logical connections. I have a tentative hypothesis as to why, but it's not a pretty one. I suspect many of the students with such problems come from hearing families and grow up used to the concept that they are not going to get an explanation for why things happen. The communication difficulties in such families often mean that the connections between cause and effect are inherently invisible. As a result, the kids don't ask questions. To make it worse, the lowered standards of the hearingfolk (with respect to the abilities of Deaf children) make them take the docile, accepting expression as the natural state of the poor deaf child (this type of audism is more unconscious than conscious.) When I gave them a space to ask questions, they blossomed.
Not that the hearing students are any better with logic. But they have been taught that they don't have to do anything they don't want to. So with hearing students, it takes a lot of convincing to get them to buy in to something. With Deaf students - they can be very willing - but because of their background, often they don't really invest themselves because their natural curiosity has been stunted.... just like the students I used to go to school with in mainstreaming programs.
I'm starting to let my mind wander. I wanted this to be a simple summative assessment, and all I'm doing is sharing impressions. One more thing, though.
Up til now I've always said that, ideally, the best place for the Deaf student is in the Deaf school where incidents like that I've just described rarely happen. Deaf people see the look for what it is - confusion - and, remembering their own times lost in the clouds, try to clear it up. Unfortunately, my experience is that Deaf schools are often insular and therefore unable to access and incorporate the latest research. Moreover, there are a variety of political and sociocultural imperatives which affect their acceptance of the implications and demands of using such research in the classroom - big words for saying they'll be tired, or burned out, or the research isn't adapted for use with Deaf kids, or the Deaf staff need to have some concepts bridged into their own language for full comprehension, or the hearing staff are looking for an "easy" job...
I was wrong about the Deaf school. It's too insular, and it runs the risk of stagnation. I am starting to believe that the type of bilingual, combined school - a type of which I have only dreamed - is the only place where both students can achieve full development. Not just because of research and people seeing whether you're confused or not, but those are definitely parts of it....
I guess this summative assessment will continue on for another couple blogs. For now, adieu.
Today we handed out awards in a classroom finally chilled to perfection. In one of the perpetual ironies of the system in which I am blessed to work, they totally missed the hot months of April and May and installed an airconditioner on the 25th of June.
The day before the last day of school. *rim shot*
I'm in class right now. I've gone ahead and submitted my final paper, not because it's in any sense done - I plan to keep working with this, it's just the bare bones of the curriculum for next year. I plan to teach a full year's curriculum on "Literacy for Empowerment." This is based somewhat on the half-assed news unit I taught to seventh grade this year. I've expanded it and revised it to include writing essays - so the reading component has a writing component. My co-teachers might scream, but I'd love to have seventh grade for double periods next year. Or eighth. The specific unit I'm focusing on designing for this class revolves around learning to construct arguments and deconstruct the arguments of others. Not fights in any traditional sense, but arguments in the philosophical sense - logical constructions. IF is an exception to the rule - but I notice many of my Deaf students have a problem with logical constructions and arguments. My work with this group has mostly centered on forcing them to make such logical connections. I have a tentative hypothesis as to why, but it's not a pretty one. I suspect many of the students with such problems come from hearing families and grow up used to the concept that they are not going to get an explanation for why things happen. The communication difficulties in such families often mean that the connections between cause and effect are inherently invisible. As a result, the kids don't ask questions. To make it worse, the lowered standards of the hearingfolk (with respect to the abilities of Deaf children) make them take the docile, accepting expression as the natural state of the poor deaf child (this type of audism is more unconscious than conscious.) When I gave them a space to ask questions, they blossomed.
Not that the hearing students are any better with logic. But they have been taught that they don't have to do anything they don't want to. So with hearing students, it takes a lot of convincing to get them to buy in to something. With Deaf students - they can be very willing - but because of their background, often they don't really invest themselves because their natural curiosity has been stunted.... just like the students I used to go to school with in mainstreaming programs.
I'm starting to let my mind wander. I wanted this to be a simple summative assessment, and all I'm doing is sharing impressions. One more thing, though.
Up til now I've always said that, ideally, the best place for the Deaf student is in the Deaf school where incidents like that I've just described rarely happen. Deaf people see the look for what it is - confusion - and, remembering their own times lost in the clouds, try to clear it up. Unfortunately, my experience is that Deaf schools are often insular and therefore unable to access and incorporate the latest research. Moreover, there are a variety of political and sociocultural imperatives which affect their acceptance of the implications and demands of using such research in the classroom - big words for saying they'll be tired, or burned out, or the research isn't adapted for use with Deaf kids, or the Deaf staff need to have some concepts bridged into their own language for full comprehension, or the hearing staff are looking for an "easy" job...
I was wrong about the Deaf school. It's too insular, and it runs the risk of stagnation. I am starting to believe that the type of bilingual, combined school - a type of which I have only dreamed - is the only place where both students can achieve full development. Not just because of research and people seeing whether you're confused or not, but those are definitely parts of it....
I guess this summative assessment will continue on for another couple blogs. For now, adieu.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
16: Understanding By Design: liveblogging the reading
The following is part of an ongoing reflection during the reading of Understanding by Design, a textbook on curriculum design. This is an extremely useful textbook, and this reflection documents the attempt to devise a curriculum which is at once accessible and bilingual, for deaf and hearing kids.
My immediate thoughts following the first chapter of Understanding by Design were that I had been following a system sketchily like that which is outlined in these two sections; more importantly, it filled in and organized some things I had been guessing at, but now made sense with a remarkable clarity.
The templates used in the first chapter will be highly beneficial to us as we plan units together for a team-taught course next year. I will be working with my co-teacher at school, also a Fellow, to work with our school’s standards to create “curriculum maps” for the year identifying the goals, assessments and individual skills/understandings we will be achieving, at least for the school’s English classes.
I feel very comfortable with the concept of backwards planning, maybe because it feels similar to my outlining process for fiction writing – start with the major “scenes,” then work your way downwards into the things you need to write to make those scenes work. As a teacher I’m creating a narrative for my students to follow, and if my narrative isn’t logical they won’t understand the story I’m trying to tell. Fair enough.
One disagreement I had with the text was when it states on p. 15 that it’s a mistake to just “throw some content and activities against the wall and hope some of it sticks.” Sometimes I find teaching English literature at this age is a combination of teaching the structure of language and exposing kids to sharp, brilliant pieces so that they get interested for life. For example, during our Valentine’s Day celebration (a long and interminably pink and sticky week,) I held a very simple poetry reading in my 7th grade English class as part of an assessment of their familiarity and skill with reading poetry. The aim of the lesson was, ostensibly, to learn how to read aloud – pacing; what seeing a comma on the page suggested we do while reading aloud, or with ASL; suggested phrasings on the wall, etc. The kids were intrigued by the concept that punctuation had more than one meaning. Then I passed out envelopes randomly; each envelope contained a poem with a different perspective on love. Dorothy Parker had her say and so did Ms. Millay; we even read Annabel Lee.
The kids came forward and read what was in their envelopes and wrote an exit slip with one thing they learned or enjoyed before they left the classroom; that was pretty much the end of it. It was the day of the Valentine dance, so it kept them from exploding: an important consideration in middle school teaching. (Any single event can set off the hormonal insanity.) I found this lesson to be one of the most valuable in the year. It forced students to slow down and think about what they were reading, almost everyone asked if they could keep their copy of the poem they read, and I got some further information about what kind of poetry would be appropriate for this grade level at the beginning of a pretty successful poetry unit. I grant it’s not something you should do every single lesson, but it’s fun.
Remembering this lesson brings up a question. One problem I had with that lesson came when I included the deaf students. We’re a bilingual school, but the rules of ASL/English in school aren’t yet clear: I’m part of a committee set up to help develop these rules. Even so, sometimes we come up against these frustrating SHOULDAREALIZED moments... I had one during this lesson. I have bicultural, bilingual classes. This means that I gave all my students a poem in English to read – but since some of these students don’t speak, they were effectively asked to provide a translation in ASL on the spot. That certainly wasn’t a part of my goal!
Of course, we ask the same miracle from sign language interpreters on a daily basis, but it was an unfair burden to put on these kids. How to resolve it, and still introduce the kids to the wonder of poetry? Next year I’ll give them the envelopes the day before, or a week before, and swear them to secrecy. It’ll make a big difference, and I can differentiate if necessary by choosing specifically the type of poem, and provide video suggestion for the signing too (thank god for MacBooks!) If I do it right, I can give the Deaf kids some pointers about how to use metaphor in ASL poetry, give the hearing kids some exposure to it. If they started in kindergarten like the lovely hypothetical models say they should, it would be the perfect age to expose them to comparative metaphor. (Of course this requires a lot of extra work from the teacher – maybe even a committee of teachers.)
It seems to me, though, that there needs to be a place for this kind of thinking in the structure for planning which Understanding by Design proposes, and I can’t for the life of me decide where it should be placed in my mental “chart.” After all, you need to consider the appropriateness of assessments, goals, lessons, projects… it affects almost everything you do. Having a diverse classroom – in all senses of the word - can be a crazy experience… It’s more than accessibility – for either the Deaf or hearing students - when you’re forced to consider the requirements of bilingual education, far more.
The following is part of an ongoing reflection during the reading of Understanding by Design, a textbook on curriculum design. This is an extremely useful textbook, and this reflection documents the attempt to devise a curriculum which is at once accessible and bilingual, for deaf and hearing kids.
My immediate thoughts following the first chapter of Understanding by Design were that I had been following a system sketchily like that which is outlined in these two sections; more importantly, it filled in and organized some things I had been guessing at, but now made sense with a remarkable clarity.
The templates used in the first chapter will be highly beneficial to us as we plan units together for a team-taught course next year. I will be working with my co-teacher at school, also a Fellow, to work with our school’s standards to create “curriculum maps” for the year identifying the goals, assessments and individual skills/understandings we will be achieving, at least for the school’s English classes.
I feel very comfortable with the concept of backwards planning, maybe because it feels similar to my outlining process for fiction writing – start with the major “scenes,” then work your way downwards into the things you need to write to make those scenes work. As a teacher I’m creating a narrative for my students to follow, and if my narrative isn’t logical they won’t understand the story I’m trying to tell. Fair enough.
One disagreement I had with the text was when it states on p. 15 that it’s a mistake to just “throw some content and activities against the wall and hope some of it sticks.” Sometimes I find teaching English literature at this age is a combination of teaching the structure of language and exposing kids to sharp, brilliant pieces so that they get interested for life. For example, during our Valentine’s Day celebration (a long and interminably pink and sticky week,) I held a very simple poetry reading in my 7th grade English class as part of an assessment of their familiarity and skill with reading poetry. The aim of the lesson was, ostensibly, to learn how to read aloud – pacing; what seeing a comma on the page suggested we do while reading aloud, or with ASL; suggested phrasings on the wall, etc. The kids were intrigued by the concept that punctuation had more than one meaning. Then I passed out envelopes randomly; each envelope contained a poem with a different perspective on love. Dorothy Parker had her say and so did Ms. Millay; we even read Annabel Lee.
The kids came forward and read what was in their envelopes and wrote an exit slip with one thing they learned or enjoyed before they left the classroom; that was pretty much the end of it. It was the day of the Valentine dance, so it kept them from exploding: an important consideration in middle school teaching. (Any single event can set off the hormonal insanity.) I found this lesson to be one of the most valuable in the year. It forced students to slow down and think about what they were reading, almost everyone asked if they could keep their copy of the poem they read, and I got some further information about what kind of poetry would be appropriate for this grade level at the beginning of a pretty successful poetry unit. I grant it’s not something you should do every single lesson, but it’s fun.
Remembering this lesson brings up a question. One problem I had with that lesson came when I included the deaf students. We’re a bilingual school, but the rules of ASL/English in school aren’t yet clear: I’m part of a committee set up to help develop these rules. Even so, sometimes we come up against these frustrating SHOULDAREALIZED moments... I had one during this lesson. I have bicultural, bilingual classes. This means that I gave all my students a poem in English to read – but since some of these students don’t speak, they were effectively asked to provide a translation in ASL on the spot. That certainly wasn’t a part of my goal!
Of course, we ask the same miracle from sign language interpreters on a daily basis, but it was an unfair burden to put on these kids. How to resolve it, and still introduce the kids to the wonder of poetry? Next year I’ll give them the envelopes the day before, or a week before, and swear them to secrecy. It’ll make a big difference, and I can differentiate if necessary by choosing specifically the type of poem, and provide video suggestion for the signing too (thank god for MacBooks!) If I do it right, I can give the Deaf kids some pointers about how to use metaphor in ASL poetry, give the hearing kids some exposure to it. If they started in kindergarten like the lovely hypothetical models say they should, it would be the perfect age to expose them to comparative metaphor. (Of course this requires a lot of extra work from the teacher – maybe even a committee of teachers.)
It seems to me, though, that there needs to be a place for this kind of thinking in the structure for planning which Understanding by Design proposes, and I can’t for the life of me decide where it should be placed in my mental “chart.” After all, you need to consider the appropriateness of assessments, goals, lessons, projects… it affects almost everything you do. Having a diverse classroom – in all senses of the word - can be a crazy experience… It’s more than accessibility – for either the Deaf or hearing students - when you’re forced to consider the requirements of bilingual education, far more.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
10: notes from the holistic bilingual classroom
...and what's amazing is that out of 17 kids the two who refuse to sign are the deaf ones!
It seems contrary at first. The concept of Deafhood helped me understand the implications. They still leave me bemused, but pleased. I'm proud to say that in some aspects I think I've achieved a fully multicultural classroom. I type these notes unobtrusively on my Blackberry in the back of the classroom while watching my students act in an anger management and conflict resolution program run by ENACT. Their goal is to act out common school behavior problems - What To Do About The Annoying Kid, for example - and help students realize better ways to resolve those concerns than the usual (death and dismemberment.)
For today's activities we have two interpreters present in the room, both for my students and myself as well as the actors. I've got two Deaf students, fifteen who hear, in this bilingual English classroom which utilizes both English and ASL as languages of instruction, in keeping with our school philosophy. The Deaf students in my classroom are new to ASL. They've had a mostly oral background, with the support of hearing aids and special staff. I'm probably the first adult they've seen signing regularly, though one came to school knowing some sign language. Their background has been one of being picked on for being different. Here in our school, with Deaf teachers and administrators visible, these students have begun to have pride in themselves, but there are still barriers, and the obvious use of interpreters is one of them. (In a discussion with my Principal we realized these students probably had never been trained or instructed in how best to use interpreters, information all students probably could use.) Instead of paying close attention, they glance at the terps out of the corners of their eyes and (which action showing me they are at least paying attention) sometimes absentmindedly imitate signs; the hearing students try to sign with them but get frustrated at their embarrassment and instead REFUSE TO SPEAK for the visiting team leaders! Instead, several of my hearing students have become true members of the signing community. They feel comfortable, apparently, using ASL interpreters to communicate.
After the class the interpreters came up to me. "That girl, short, Deaf-" "She's not Deaf!" "What! She signs so well!" The fact that the interpreters could not identify who was hearing and who was deaf is such a fascinating little fact to me. The fact that students had become more willing to navigate these pathways of identity and actually act as though they were Deaf was fascinating to me. Even more interesting is that they were surprised afterwards. Their decision to use ASL was just that - a decision. It is a dual language school and they were using both languages. They were completely comfortable with the concept of ASL as a language and felt comfortable - for the activities we enjoyed that day anyway - using ASL to communicate.
The implications of these results, in this type of academic environment, will be interesting. At this stage in my work I feel frustrated by the fact that I am still not totally adept at all the skills I need for assessment and analysis. Some of them I can learn; some must be invented; the need for others, I am sure, exists but has yet to be recognized. Still, it is a powerful phenomenon to witness, and one I'm enjoying.
And the skills will come with time, after all. I just need patience, I think.
...and what's amazing is that out of 17 kids the two who refuse to sign are the deaf ones!
It seems contrary at first. The concept of Deafhood helped me understand the implications. They still leave me bemused, but pleased. I'm proud to say that in some aspects I think I've achieved a fully multicultural classroom. I type these notes unobtrusively on my Blackberry in the back of the classroom while watching my students act in an anger management and conflict resolution program run by ENACT. Their goal is to act out common school behavior problems - What To Do About The Annoying Kid, for example - and help students realize better ways to resolve those concerns than the usual (death and dismemberment.)
For today's activities we have two interpreters present in the room, both for my students and myself as well as the actors. I've got two Deaf students, fifteen who hear, in this bilingual English classroom which utilizes both English and ASL as languages of instruction, in keeping with our school philosophy. The Deaf students in my classroom are new to ASL. They've had a mostly oral background, with the support of hearing aids and special staff. I'm probably the first adult they've seen signing regularly, though one came to school knowing some sign language. Their background has been one of being picked on for being different. Here in our school, with Deaf teachers and administrators visible, these students have begun to have pride in themselves, but there are still barriers, and the obvious use of interpreters is one of them. (In a discussion with my Principal we realized these students probably had never been trained or instructed in how best to use interpreters, information all students probably could use.) Instead of paying close attention, they glance at the terps out of the corners of their eyes and (which action showing me they are at least paying attention) sometimes absentmindedly imitate signs; the hearing students try to sign with them but get frustrated at their embarrassment and instead REFUSE TO SPEAK for the visiting team leaders! Instead, several of my hearing students have become true members of the signing community. They feel comfortable, apparently, using ASL interpreters to communicate.
After the class the interpreters came up to me. "That girl, short, Deaf-" "She's not Deaf!" "What! She signs so well!" The fact that the interpreters could not identify who was hearing and who was deaf is such a fascinating little fact to me. The fact that students had become more willing to navigate these pathways of identity and actually act as though they were Deaf was fascinating to me. Even more interesting is that they were surprised afterwards. Their decision to use ASL was just that - a decision. It is a dual language school and they were using both languages. They were completely comfortable with the concept of ASL as a language and felt comfortable - for the activities we enjoyed that day anyway - using ASL to communicate.
The implications of these results, in this type of academic environment, will be interesting. At this stage in my work I feel frustrated by the fact that I am still not totally adept at all the skills I need for assessment and analysis. Some of them I can learn; some must be invented; the need for others, I am sure, exists but has yet to be recognized. Still, it is a powerful phenomenon to witness, and one I'm enjoying.
And the skills will come with time, after all. I just need patience, I think.
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