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Category Archives: Disability Awareness
Retarded. #disability #sped #spedchat #tck
From Jeremy over on Teaching All Students. Below are links to two MUST WATCH videos from YouTube by a girl named Regan, who has a younger brother who has Down Syndrome. Regan shares a powerful message and is a true inspiration for us … Continue reading
Posted in advocacy, Disability Awareness
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More About Traveling with Children with Special Needs: "Airlines and Autism" #specialneeds #tck #autism
From Jeremy over on Teaching All Students. Source: worldtraveledfamily.com Elaine Hall who is an author, advocate, and mother of a teen with autism posted an article about traveling (more specifically, flying) with children who have autism on the Huffington Post … Continue reading
Posted in Autism, Disability Awareness, for parents, social skills, Travel
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advice for a new teacher
From Sarah over on Confessions. I had a new reader recently email me to ask for advice for “hopeful special education teachers-to-be”. It made me think about my six years in various special education placements.It really boils down to two … Continue reading
Posted in Disability Awareness, Reflections, teaching
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H.A-dar
I have this weird radar. No, I’m not talking about always knowing the way to the nearest available ice cream. I’m talking about Hearing Aid Radar (also Cochlear Implant Radar). I can spot one a mile away.I deal with hearing aids and cochlear implants o… Continue reading
Posted in Disability Awareness, teaching
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Modern day miracles
After nearly five years as a teacher, there aren’t very many “firsts” left for me. But recently I found myself in the midst of quite a “first”: the mother of one of my students claimed he had been miraculously cured of his deafness.
“Sean” is a fourth grader who is profoundly deaf in both ears. He wears a cochlear implant and does quite well with it (without it, he cannot hear ANY speech sounds). He is quite intelligible, bright, and friendly.
Three weeks ago, he took off his cochlear implant and declared loudly (in slightly less intelligible speech) that he could hear and he didn’t need it anymore. Thinking he was just messing around, I pointed for him to put it back on and then explained that the doctor/audiologist said he must wear it to hear. He grinned sheepishly and put it back on.
Later that day, my colleague told me that she had run into his mother at church and she had told her that Sean had been miraculously healed over spring break!
Now. I believe God still does miracles. But I also believe that miracles are not the usual way that He reveals himself. So over the next few days, every time Sean had his cochlear implant off (changing batteries, or what have you), we would loudly shout his name from varying distances.
No response.
Since Sean was obediently wearing his implant at school every day, I forgot all about the issue and went on with life.
Until Friday. Friday, his mother was at school to pick Sean up and we had a conversation in the stairwell. She told me that Sean had something to tell me. He told me that he had misplaced something and then we had the ODDEST conversation with him repeating himself and never directly answering my questions.
Then his mom turned to me after he had walked away and asked me, beaming: “Did you notice anything about Sean? He had that whole conversation with you without his implant on! He’s been healed! We’ve had a miracle!”
I was at such a loss, I think all I managed was “Oh!”. Thankfully, I had to give my attention to my other students so I was off the hook.
About twenty minutes later when the final bell had rung, she came into my classroom to expand further on this miracle. Something about a prophecy and three days and some prayer. I was quiet for a minute and she said: “You look amazed!”, to which I replied: “This is an amazing situation!”
I put on my warmest smile and asked as tactfully as I could if the audiologist had confirmed his new hearing. Her response? “God doesn’t need an audiologist to confirm his miracles!”
True. Since there was nothing appropriate left for me to say I quickly changed the subject, and Mom left as happy as she was when she came in.
I’m not a parent, and I’m obviously not a parent of a child with special needs. But I can understand wanting your child to be healed. I don’t know how long Mom is going to hold on to this miracle, but I do know it’s not my place to contradict her hope.
Posted in Deaf Kids, Disability Awareness
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Forgive my technical rambling, and my civil disobedience
When people ask me what I do for a living and I say that I teach students who are deaf/hearing-impaired, I almost always am asked: “Oh, so you sign?”
But, no, I don’t sign. And there’s no quick way to explain the hundreds of years of history in deaf education and the competing philosophies that are out there. For the purposes of this post, I’ll just say that there are two main camps: the Total Communication method, and the Oral method (there are many more methods out there, I’m just over-simplifying here!).
The Total Communication method advocates the use of sign language as well as some speech/lip-reading to educate students with hearing loss. The Oral method involves teaching students (with hearing aids or cochlear implants) to use spoken language by listening.
So when parents are informed that their beautiful newborn baby has a hearing loss, they should theoretically have a choice (the choice offered really depends on where you live in this country). Do they want their child to learn to sign, or do they want their child to be able to talk and hear as best as they can? There are advantages and disadvantages to each choice.
I mention all of this because I’m at an Oral campus within a Total Communication district. There are three T.C elementary schools in our district, and just one Oral campus. I’m teaching at the Oral campus, and while I believe that sign language is a beautiful language, I personally think that we should be giving children with hearing loss every skill they will need to function in a hearing society.
I have deaf ed colleagues who strongly disagree with the Oral philosophy and I’m still wondering why they’re working at my campus (as much as I like them as friends!). I wince when I see them signing on the sly to the kids. Because, bottom line, we need to respect the choice that the parents have made. In California, I worked with a lady who was all about sign language–but she was able to put her personal feelings aside in the classroom and respect the methodology that the school campus and the parents subscribed to.
So all year I’ve been feeling like a black sheep on my own turf, and sometimes I resent it. But, I thought, at least my deaf-ed administrators have my back! They understand!
Until recently. Our speech/language pathologist (who is refreshingly neutral on the methodology issue!) came into my room after school and handed me a bunch of papers to send home with the kids. Papers for SIGN LANGUAGE CLASSES. After some probing, I discovered that this directive was coming from none other than the Big Cheese herself. Yep, the HEAD of the entire district’s deaf education program is sending fliers for our ORAL kids to learn sign language.
Oh the ridiculousness. Would you buy Chinese textbooks for your Spanish classes? Would you substitute salt for sugar in a cookie recipe? Would you use a football in a basketball game? OF COURSE NOT.
So I distributed the fliers…. in the trash can.
Posted in Disability Awareness, Gripe
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