I was mainstream in both elementary and high school. I hate being in an oral only environment. I had to learn to speak with a speech therapist and also learn how to lipread. I like special education classroom better than regular hearing classroom, but it is still oral anyway in special ed. I don't want to think about my former mainstream schools. My sister, who is hearing, was a straight A student. I always get a D or almost fail because I had a hard time understanding in the hearing regular classroom, no interpreters. That was way back in the 1954 to 1966 in both elementary and high schools. In high school my Deaf friends and I want to learn sign language (English sign language, at the time) before ASL was founded. We begged and protested to our principal of the mainstream high school, but he refuse because he thought that sign language is very bad and not right to have us learn sign language in school. He even hired a special education teacher who taught us about history and literature from the Deaf School in Faribault, Minnesota. We were so excited about having him teach us the sign language, but he said no. He told us that he can not teach us to sign as he was forbidden or he could lost his job. We were upset about forbidden this special education teacher. That is why I blame my mom and dad for putting me in that schools, just because they thought I can talk and lipread, which is true but not perfect. All through the mainsream schools I had a very frustrating and hard time and I don't like them at all.
