The Last Stand for the Deaf in California

Bad and awful teachers do exist.
 
faire_jour said:
But 90%? That can't be blamed on parents only. That is clearly a failure at a huge level. It clearly isn't working (and you can't say that ALL of them are oral failures, California has one of the highest rates of enrollment from the start as well as parents moving there specifically for the school.)
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You dont know any of the factors so you cant put all the blame on the school.
 
faire_jour said:
Wirelessly posted

yes, parents are key. That is one of the PROBLEMS in deaf education. If a students language is not the same as the family's how can the family support the students learning? If a parent is still learning the language how do the teach the child academic material in that language?
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Spoken language is not fully accessible to deaf children. That's why the parents must learn ASL too. Stop putting all the responsibility on the children..parents need to do their part as well. That's the problem.
 
shel90 said:
Spoken language is not fully accessible to deaf children. That's why the parents must learn ASL too. Stop putting all the responsibility on the children..parents need to do their part as well. That's the problem.
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Yeah, I agree but I also think that it is just the tip of the iceberg; some of us have alluded to other problems but right now, I am really tired so let me drive home an all-encompasing point via a joke: Son says to the father: "Dad, I am thinking of going into organized crime as my career." Father says, "Oh yeah? Government or private sector"?
 
I want to go over the timeline in a "perfect world"

Baby is born. Baby "refers" on newborn hearing screen at 2 days old.
Before 6 weeks old, baby is tested again. Baby is found to have hearing loss. Baby is fitted with hearing aids and enters Early Intervention by age 3 months. Family begins learning ASL. They begin signing with child. By 6 months old, family knows maybe 100 signs. Baby recognises maybe 5. By 12 months family knows 200 signs. Baby uses 5 signs BUT has only been exposed to 200 in his ENTIRE life. Baby now has language delay. Family uses signs with baby, but they are still learning so baby can not develop appropriate language because family is still learning. Baby does not see a variety of signs used, or see them used in a full and complete way.

Fast forward 3 years. Family sign ok. They know lots of words but they sign in English word order. Baby now has a significant language delay. Baby knows lots of signs, but has never seen ASL grammar or been around fluent language users. Baby enters Deaf school delayed.

That is if the family works their butt off to learn ASL right from the start. The problem is that it taked 5-7 years to become fluent in a language. In the meantime the child struggles and falls behind in ASL. Plus, even if a family gets a good working knowledge of ASL, they will never be native users and will always shave struggles with the language barrier.

Research shows that the number one indicator for language development in deaf children is not parent involvement, money, or even early indentification, it the the Maternal language level. The reason? The better the language the child is exposed to, the better their language becomes. What is the ASL level of the mother of newly identified baby?

The key is fluent language exposure, from the start.
 
faire_jour said:
I want to go over the timeline in a "perfect world"

Baby is born. Baby "refers" on newborn hearing screen at 2 days old.
Before 6 weeks old, baby is tested again. Baby is found to have hearing loss. Baby is fitted with hearing aids and enters Early Intervention by age 3 months. Family begins learning ASL. They begin signing with child. By 6 months old, family knows maybe 100 signs. Baby recognises maybe 5. By 12 months family knows 200 signs. Baby uses 5 signs BUT has only been exposed to 200 in his ENTIRE life. Baby now has language delay. Family uses signs with baby, but they are still learning so baby can not develop appropriate language because family is still learning. Baby does not see a variety of signs used, or see them used in a full and complete way.

Fast forward 3 years. Family sign ok. They know lots of words but they sign in English word order. Baby now has a significant language delay. Baby knows lots of signs, but has never seen ASL grammar or been around fluent language users. Baby enters Deaf school delayed.

That is if the family works their butt off to learn ASL right from the start. The problem is that it taked 5-7 years to become fluent in a language. In the meantime the child struggles and falls behind in ASL. Plus, even if a family gets a good working knowledge of ASL, they will never be native users and will always shave struggles with the language barrier.

Research shows that the number one indicator for language development in deaf children is not parent involvement, money, or even early indentification, it the the Maternal language level. The reason? The better the language the child is exposed to, the better their language becomes. What is the ASL level of the mother of newly identified baby?

The key is fluent language exposure, from the start.
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already wrong. In a perfect world by 6 months the baby will recognize more than 50 at 6 months. I was using more than 100 words by 1 year old with a hippie stoner for a mother that was learning directly from the SEE book. By 1.5 years I was teaching my mother the words she forgot.
 
In a perfect world, it won't take 5-7 yrs. In a perfect world, the parents will always be a step ahead of their child, ad infinitum.

There are a bunch of perfect world scenarios but i'm tired...see my post above you.
 
posts from hell said:
already wrong. In a perfect world by 6 months the baby will recognize more than 50 at 6 months. I was using more than 100 words by 1 year old with a hippie stoner for a mother that was learning directly from the SEE book. By 1.5 years I was teaching my mother the words she forgot.
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A family knowing more than 50 signs by 6 months is going to be INCREDIBLY rare. Let's be real, it takes lots of time and repeation to learn a new language.
 
Tousi said:
In a perfect world, it won't take 5-7 yrs. In a perfect world, the parents will always be a step ahead of their child, ad infinitum.

There are a bunch of perfect world scenarios but i'm tired...see my post above you.
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It is impossible for someone to become fluent in a language in less time than that.
 
faire_jour said:
I want to go over the timeline in a "perfect world"

Baby is born. Baby "refers" on newborn hearing screen at 2 days old.
Before 6 weeks old, baby is tested again. Baby is found to have hearing loss. Baby is fitted with hearing aids and enters Early Intervention by age 3 months. Family begins learning ASL. They begin signing with child. By 6 months old, family knows maybe 100 signs. Baby recognises maybe 5. By 12 months family knows 200 signs. Baby uses 5 signs BUT has only been exposed to 200 in his ENTIRE life. Baby now has language delay. Family uses signs with baby, but they are still learning so baby can not develop appropriate language because family is still learning. Baby does not see a variety of signs used, or see them used in a full and complete way.

Fast forward 3 years. Family sign ok. They know lots of words but they sign in English word order. Baby now has a significant language delay. Baby knows lots of signs, but has never seen ASL grammar or been around fluent language users. Baby enters Deaf school delayed.

That is if the family works their butt off to learn ASL right from the start. The problem is that it taked 5-7 years to become fluent in a language. In the meantime the child struggles and falls behind in ASL. Plus, even if a family gets a good working knowledge of ASL, they will never be native users and will always shave struggles with the language barrier.

Research shows that the number one indicator for language development in deaf children is not parent involvement, money, or even early indentification, it the the Maternal language level. The reason? The better the language the child is exposed to, the better their language becomes. What is the ASL level of the mother of newly identified baby?

The key is fluent language exposure, from the start.
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Many of my deaf friends, including my brother, came from families who dont sign but still were able to achieve fluency in English.

My son's deaf friend is from a hearing family and they learned ASL as soon as they found out that she was deaf at a year old. Her language fluency is 2 years above normal despite having parents who just learned ASL.

Both the parents and the schools played an important role. If the parents arent actively involved or the child is missing out in the classroom due to not having a visual language, the risks for language delays increase.
 
FJ, you still havent answered my question from post #179
 
faire_jour said:
It is impossible for someone to become fluent in a language in less time than that.
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It "Seems" impossible TO YOU and to those who didn't EVEN want to try. My mom got this fierce desire to get connected with me enough to learn sign language in SHORT time. She was the one that taught me sign language, ENCOURAGED me to read books EVERY NIGHT for an hour then I was AHEAD of others when I was in HEARING ELEMENTARY school (with interpreters)! When I moved to deaf institute for a short while, I was IMMEDIATELY send to mainstream into hearing school and I even went to gifted group at HEARING school. I won top 10 debating in 4 different states (all hearing), won Gold Medal in Basic Electronics AND Bronze Medal in Advanced Electronics against hearing schools in state of Delaware during my high school years! I even attended college during my senior year.

I went and majored in Electronics Engineering at RIT and I am now a IT professional working with servers, active directory, exchange 2007, and various technologies.

Instead of researching for best ways, finding most perfect ways or criticizing others on what things should be, DO spend your time with THAT child, develop communication with THAT child, find effective way to get THAT child to communicate with you and USE THAT communication AS A TOOL to bring THAT child up and INTRODUCE THAT child to your OWN language (English).

ASL, to me, is a SPOKEN language and ENGLISH is both written and spoken language. I just read a lot of good books (Encyclopedia is a GREAT book for your child), studying its language and I ALWAYS strive to excel in writing.

Think about it.
 
faire_jour said:
It is impossible for someone to become fluent in a language in less time than that.
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You have no credentials to say that. Besides, we were talking about a perfect world, weren't we? Really, motivated parents, motivated because their child's life is at stake can learn ASL in a couple of years...less, even. Native like isn't the goal; the child gets a tremendous kick-start.

A visual child sitting at home, wasting (I'd guess a majority) time learning to speak...:roll:
 
LinuxGold said:
It "Seems" impossible TO YOU and to those who didn't EVEN want to try. My mom got this fierce desire to get connected with me enough to learn sign language in SHORT time. She was the one that taught me sign language, ENCOURAGED me to read books EVERY NIGHT for an hour then I was AHEAD of others when I was in HEARING ELEMENTARY school (with interpreters)! When I moved to deaf institute for a short while, I was IMMEDIATELY send to mainstream into hearing school and I even went to gifted group at HEARING school. I won top 10 debating in 4 different states (all hearing), won Gold Medal in Basic Electronics AND Bronze Medal in Advanced Electronics against hearing schools in state of Delaware during my high school years! I even attended college during my senior year.

I went and majored in Electronics Engineering at RIT and I am now a IT professional working with servers, active directory, exchange 2007, and various technologies.

Instead of researching for best ways, finding most perfect ways or criticizing others on what things should be, DO spend your time with THAT child, develop communication with THAT child, find effective way to get THAT child to communicate with you and USE THAT communication AS A TOOL to bring THAT child up and INTRODUCE THAT child to your OWN language (English).

ASL, to me, is a SPOKEN language and ENGLISH is both written and spoken language. I just read a lot of good books (Encyclopedia is a GREAT book for your child), studying its language and I ALWAYS strive to excel in writing.

Think about it.
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It seems to me that she wants to spend a lot of time finding faults with Deaf schools and the staff who work there.
 
faire_jour said:
A family knowing more than 50 signs by 6 months is going to be INCREDIBLY rare. Let's be real, it takes lots of time and repeation to learn a new language.
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I know a family who when their twins were born they whole family learn ASL. Not for the twins, but for the grandfather who was losing his hearing. By the time those twins were 6 moths old, they had a whole range of vocabulary of over 50 words. They could ask for things and tell someone they loved them. The family is all hearing, but the grandfather was losing his. In this family, there were the parents, and 4 older children, then the twin girls. Now they have added 1 more child to the family. All 7 children are fluent in ASL and speech.
 
faire_jour said:
A family knowing more than 50 signs by 6 months is going to be INCREDIBLY rare. Let's be real, it takes lots of time and repeation to learn a new language.
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Why so negative about ASL? Just curious. I am starting to wonder if you resent it.
 
KristinaB said:
I know a family who when their twins were born they whole family learn ASL. Not for the twins, but for the grandfather who was losing his hearing. By the time those twins were 6 moths old, they had a whole range of vocabulary of over 50 words. They could ask for things and tell someone they loved them. The family is all hearing, but the grandfather was losing his. In this family, there were the parents, and 4 older children, then the twin girls. Now they have added 1 more child to the family. All 7 children are fluent in ASL and speech.
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I know many families like that just like I know many families who dont know more than 5 signs despite their deaf child being adults.
 
Well. I obviously went to the Deaf school before. Only 8 years. I remember when I was a senior student... I saw some students had their language delay cos of the same thing. Even those few talking deaf students had their poor English writing but their speech was great. Of course, there were some talking students still can speak and well with high level English writing, yes. But I saw some students, who can speak, were complained about their poor grades. Apparently, their former teachers, from their old schools, just were easy on them and something like that. Like just gave them B+ and A+ grades. Yes, I did ask students about it. For sure, my former teachers at the Deaf school did take their homework and worksheets more serious than their pervious teachers. Because They gave them a real score where their pervious teachers didn't.

While I saw another students, who used ASL and have their very great English writing, they did graduated with their regular degree. About 10 students had high 3.5 to 40 GPA and passed 9th grade level of reading, math, and English. Can you imagine there were only about 10 students out of a bit more than 200 students (I think?). Why? Their parents, hearing and culturally Deaf, did take care of their first language as ASL and English, for the second language. It was the first thing to do. Please be noted, I didn't say all 200 students (except 10) were from mainstream schools only. Just most of them.

I just speak of my experience as I witnessed...... Additionally, I was originally a student of public school before I transfered to the Deaf school.
 
Wirelessly posted

KarissaMann05 said:
Well. I obviously went to the Deaf school before. Only 8 years. I remember when I was a senior student... I saw some students had their language delay cos of the same thing. Even those few talking deaf students had their poor English writing but their speech was great. Of course, there were some talking students still can speak and well with high level English writing, yes. But I saw some students, who can speak, were complained about their poor grades. Apparently, their former teachers, from their old schools, just were easy on them and something like that. Like just gave them B+ and A+ grades. Yes, I did ask students about it. For sure, my former teachers at the Deaf school did take their homework and worksheets more serious than their pervious teachers. Because They gave them a real score where their pervious teachers didn't.

While I saw another students, who used ASL and have their very great English writing, they did graduated with their regular degree. About 10 students had high 3.5 to 40 GPA and passed 9th grade level of reading, math, and English. Can you imagine there were only about 10 students out of a bit more than 200 students (I think?). Why? Their parents, hearing and culturally Deaf, did take care of their first language as ASL and English, for the second language. It was the first thing to do. Please be noted, I didn't say all 200 students (except 10) were from mainstream schools only. Just most of them.

I just speak of my experience as I witnessed...... Additionally, I was originally a student of public school before I transfered to the Deaf school.
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I realize I made a small mistake. Total 10 students; two were seniors and about 8 kids were freshmen that they already graduated. I just claritied it now, there.

My bad, my apologize. ^^; I am just tired to think of everything I want to say something.
 
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