Deaf School vs. Mainstreaming..Pros and Cons?- Poston

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Shel..

You do have a good point. I felt satisfied in terms of how focused I was on education and not socialization.. but I do think the school and I could have worked more on socialization at an early age. Because I was so shy growing up.. I feel there could have been more done to help me in terms of making friends or whatnot.. it wasn't until i was at gallaudet that I started getting over my shyness and being more open about sign language.. but at the same time, I was not comfortable there. Even when I was visiting the deaf school, I still wasn't totally comfortable.
 
jillio said:
That just goes to show that a deaf kid will do what ever they can to make sense of what is going on around them. You were picking up and using visual cues without really being taught to dothat because that was how you made sense of your world. It comes naturally to the deaf child. That's why I am such an advocate for the early use of sign. If a deaf child naturally uses visual cues, then we should be capitalizing on that strength. There are times that a toddler is able to naturally pick up visual cues so well that the parents actually think he/she is hearing them. One of the reasons so many diagnoses are delayed.

I work with deaf students here at my college. Currently, I am working with a young man that was mainstreamed K-12, and he was implanted in the 8th grade. Wonderful oral skills, but still needs a terp in class to keep from missing lecture material, and the same as you, he still has a lot of trouble with -ed and -s and punctuation in his writing. But he was an A/B student in high school. Even received a scholarship for his freshman year at college for his grades. Mainstream tends to make allowances for errors in writing, rather than instituting remedial classes to work on the problems.
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that's funny.. I passed 6th grade English.. but my teacher said... and I quote "If there was a grammer class, You'd fail miserably." When I asked, she said that I really did not understand the grammer rules. When I asked what she meant she told me that I had problems with grammer.. but they wouldn't hurt me in the future.
 
BearBeauty said:
For me, growing up in mainstreamed schools.. I can tell you pros and cons of mainstreamed schools.. and I was never a full student in a deaf school so I can't say the pro and con of deaf schools, just my expierences from visiting and taking a class in the deaf schools...


mainstream schools pro -

* more variety in the classes I could take... * I took drama classes, shakespeare classes, creative writing classes, and i forgot the others*

* more challenges to learn to speak up for myself, advocate for myself.

* Some truly great teachers that I still love to this day who actually understood my deafness.

Cons of Mainstream schools -

* I did more studying and work outside of class due to the fact that I had to make sure I understood everything in classrooms aside from what the teacher would discuss.

* problematic administrators who didn't understand the challenges of deaf students.

* Due to the above, I couldn't keep an interpreter for more than 2 years.

* no speech therapy due to the speech therapist being a moron.. (long story)


From my observations at the deaf school, there seemed to be problems.. I think the school as a whole was having a lot of problems anyway. But I could see a lack of trust amongst some of the students and staff there. Classes were fine as far as I could see. Other than the obvious problem that I thought it was a bit easy.. but that was just me. (these were merely my observations at the deaf school when i was visiting, and do not reflect all deaf schools :))
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LOL about speech path (my one daughter get one 2 times a month - wow that should really benefit her hey? Not!

I totally agree with you.
 
BearBeauty said:
Shel..

You do have a good point. I felt satisfied in terms of how focused I was on education and not socialization.. but I do think the school and I could have worked more on socialization at an early age. Because I was so shy growing up.. I feel there could have been more done to help me in terms of making friends or whatnot.. it wasn't until i was at gallaudet that I started getting over my shyness and being more open about sign language.. but at the same time, I was not comfortable there. Even when I was visiting the deaf school, I still wasn't totally comfortable.
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Well, I know for sure if I had gone to Gallaudet right after graduating high school, I wouldn't be comfortable at all either and ended up dropping out. I went to a hearing college and that was when I started learning ASL and the deaf culture little by little. Tried socializing with deaf people in Phx but was hard cuz I already had a reputation as the snobby deaf girl who thought she was above them due to not needing ASL. I don't blame them cuz I did act superiror cuz I could speak and lipread...I was the stupid one. That's a different story there.

By the time I was ready to go to grad school, I felt that Gallaudet was the best option for me cuz I wanted to be a deaf ed teacher and I still didn't know much about ASL and Deaf Culture. Yea, my first semester at Gally was tough but u know what helped me a lot...half of my classmates in grad school were hearing. So...that helped me with the transition. Now, iamfully involved with the deaf community and now feel fully comfortable in it. It takes time..I guess.
 
This Jake Long And here are my pros and cons:
Mainstream Education:
Pros:
-mainstream schools have better educational programs.
-more people to comunicate with, building social skills.

Cons:
- some people are not very nice.
-some teachers can be really dumb (thats not directed to you poston)
 
LOL at JakeLong!

Someone actually mocked me on the internet and told me that he have never seen anyone butchered English grammar so much that it made him sick. or something like that.
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Well the thing is..........I wonder if dhh students would have better written expressive English, if they were taught using ESL (English As A Second Language) methods. It's not really a deficency issue.........more the fact that they approach English as a Second language. They make the same mistakes as do speakers of other languages. Look at a forum where there's a lot of people who use English as a second language. Put that side to side with examples of Deaf expressive written stuff, and you probaly wouldn't be able to tell which one was written by deaf or hearing!
Oh and nightcrickets............your written English really isn't that bad......I know people (and ORAL people too) whose English is even worse!
 
can you show us a forum where people used English as their second language?

and thank you for the compliment:hug
 
VamPyroX said:
You said it! :)

I grew up in mainstream school. I started out a few years in the Central Institute for the Deaf. At age 5, I moved to Texas and entered mainstream school. I didn't begin mainstream classes part-time until 3rd grade and full-time in 8th grade. :)
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I'm glad you agree with me. There were some deaf people on a deaf forum (I will not name the website's name here) who took offense to what I pointed out and refused to acknowledge that there are some flaws in the deaf school systems. I saw their argument as weak and immature so I shrugged them off.

But can you describe how deaf schools turn you off? Can you tell me why you prefer mainstreamed schools over deaf schools?
 
BearBeauty said:
that's funny.. I passed 6th grade English.. but my teacher said... and I quote "If there was a grammer class, You'd fail miserably." When I asked, she said that I really did not understand the grammer rules. When I asked what she meant she told me that I had problems with grammer.. but they wouldn't hurt me in the future.
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Yeah, it seems like they just don't want to take the extra time to catch the deaf students up. Its like "We know what you are trying to say, so its okay." But then they get to college, and the professors expect correct grammar. The students say, But this was akay in high school--no one told me it was wrong! As far as I am concerned, its the mainstream program's fault, because they are not preparing students the way they should. They take the easy way out.
 
deafdyke said:
LOL at JakeLong!

Well the thing is..........I wonder if dhh students would have better written expressive English, if they were taught using ESL (English As A Second Language) methods. It's not really a deficency issue.........more the fact that they approach English as a Second language. They make the same mistakes as do speakers of other languages. Look at a forum where there's a lot of people who use English as a second language. Put that side to side with examples of Deaf expressive written stuff, and you probaly wouldn't be able to tell which one was written by deaf or hearing!
Oh and nightcrickets............your written English really isn't that bad......I know people (and ORAL people too) whose English is even worse!
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I definately think deaf students should be taught using ESL.
 
JakeLong said:
This Jake Long And here are my pros and cons:
Mainstream Education:
Pros:
-mainstream schools have better educational programs.
-more people to comunicate with, building social skills.

Cons:
- some people are not very nice.
-some teachers can be really dumb (thats not directed to you poston)
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OOPS! Mainstream may have bette programs, but do not always offer the services that insure equal access to those programs for the deaf student. Also, there may be more people, but they are usually hearing people, and therefore, socialization actually suffers for the deaf student.
 
I think Mr Poston wants to show various people's educational background and whether it was/is the best method for them.

What works for me won't work for everybody. I was lucky to have my educational background to be efficient and productive for me to be able to interact with hearing people and continue my studies while retaining my Deaf identity. No educational method is "one size fits all"...!

I was mainstreamed all my life-- even into the college years. My English is very fluent-- however it remains as my second language.
Was I lonely and rejected in hearing schools since I am profusely Deaf? NO. I always had more than 10 deaf classmates and/or abundance of hearing friends who know signs to communicate with me (and I already have the ability to lipread, however I always refuse to use my voice to reply). I always had an interpreter in all classes and s/he always interpreted what my classmates said so I could interact with them during classtime (even gossips). If outside of classtime where an interpreter is off to next job, many hearing friends usually gestured or wrote down on papers to tell me the gossips or ask me to go out for pizza or whatever.

I never felt I was a social outcast at any time in my life. When I was a senior at my hearing public school, I gradudated with 16 deaf classmates out of 250 hearing classmates.
SO I was never alone, with Deaf or Hearing friends.
And I learned to be fluent in English while maintaining my first language, American Sign Language. So, for me only-- my schools did great for me and I loved my memories at those schools.

If the history is to be rewinded and I was given the choice to go to a Deaf school (my mother opted out on it because she couldn't stand the idea of somebody else raising me five days a week.)... I think I will be more upset attending a Deaf school where I am under supervision 24-7, have many restrictions to what I can do in the dorms, no privacy from friends or teachers...!!
I am big on having my privacy. I don't share my bedroom. I don't like to be around people (deaf or hearing) all the times. I like to be by myself doing my little things.
So for me, to live and attend a Deaf school will destroy me, psychologically, by pushing me over with my privacy and freedom taken away.

Recently I spoke with my mother and she mentioned about Cochlear Implant... she never tried to impose that onto me, but she always wanted me to have my hearing aids on (which I just tossed over because people's voices, to me, are horrible and untolerant.). She said that when I was 8, she did ask me if I want an CI like one of my friends had and I replied: "No, because then I will have to hear all bad stuff the hearing people said. I will rather to be Deaf and stay happy." I was only 8 years old-- and a very smart 8 years old kid.


Again, there is no "one size fits all" educational approach for any Deaf / HoH child and only they can decide what works for them.





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It also helped to know that my mother's from Finland and her first language is NOT English so for me, it made it OK for me to learn English as a second language. There is no shame to have your first language to be something else than English-- so I entered the schools with the right mindset with me thinking that I should learn English just for the sake to communicate with people internationally since it is the lingua franca... while I grew up, I always thought I was a foreigner living in America just because I know American Sign Language as my first language. I was such an odd child... but it made me who I am today-- I am still odd but I am definitely unique!!!!!
 
gnarlydorkette said:
I think Mr Poston wants to show various people's educational background and whether it was/is the best method for them.

What works for me won't work for everybody. I was lucky to have my educational background to be efficient and productive for me to be able to interact with hearing people and continue my studies while retaining my Deaf identity. No educational method is "one size fits all"...!

I was mainstreamed all my life-- even into the college years. My English is very fluent-- however it remains as my second language.
Was I lonely and rejected in hearing schools since I am profusely Deaf? NO. I always had more than 10 deaf classmates and/or abundance of hearing friends who know signs to communicate with me (and I already have the ability to lipread, however I always refuse to use my voice to reply). I always had an interpreter in all classes and s/he always interpreted what my classmates said so I could interact with them during classtime (even gossips). If outside of classtime where an interpreter is off to next job, many hearing friends usually gestured or wrote down on papers to tell me the gossips or ask me to go out for pizza or whatever.

I never felt I was a social outcast at any time in my life. When I was a senior at my hearing public school, I gradudated with 16 deaf classmates out of 250 hearing classmates.
SO I was never alone, with Deaf or Hearing friends.
And I learned to be fluent in English while maintaining my first language, American Sign Language. So, for me only-- my schools did great for me and I loved my memories at those schools.

If the history is to be rewinded and I was given the choice to go to a Deaf school (my mother opted out on it because she couldn't stand the idea of somebody else raising me five days a week.)... I think I will be more upset attending a Deaf school where I am under supervision 24-7, have many restrictions to what I can do in the dorms, no privacy from friends or teachers...!!
I am big on having my privacy. I don't share my bedroom. I don't like to be around people (deaf or hearing) all the times. I like to be by myself doing my little things.
So for me, to live and attend a Deaf school will destroy me, psychologically, by pushing me over with my privacy and freedom taken away.

Recently I spoke with my mother and she mentioned about Cochlear Implant... she never tried to impose that onto me, but she always wanted me to have my hearing aids on (which I just tossed over because people's voices, to me, are horrible and untolerant.). She said that when I was 8, she did ask me if I want an CI like one of my friends had and I replied: "No, because then I will have to hear all bad stuff the hearing people said. I will rather to be Deaf and stay happy." I was only 8 years old-- and a very smart 8 years old kid.


Again, there is no "one size fits all" educational approach for any Deaf / HoH child and only they can decide what works for them.





******EDITED:::::::
It also helped to know that my mother's from Finland and her first language is NOT English so for me, it made it OK for me to learn English as a second language. There is no shame to have your first language to be something else than English-- so I entered the schools with the right mindset with me thinking that I should learn English just for the sake to communicate with people internationally since it is the lingua franca... while I grew up, I always thought I was a foreigner living in America just because I know American Sign Language as my first language. I was such an odd child... but it made me who I am today-- I am still odd but I am definitely unique!!!!!
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Wow!!! U r sooooooo lucky to have grown up mainstreamed with a positive attitude on deafness and ASL. From the get go, my teachers and peers viewed deafness as a negative thing and their comments to me reflected it like for example from my teachers "oh u poor thing..u can't hear." And viewing ASL as for those deaf people who r low functioning. They told me that I didn't need asl cuz I was too smart. If they had been more positive about it and showed me that it was ok not to understand what everyone was saying half of the time instead of yelling at me for not trying too hard, I probably wouldn't feel so ashamed about my deafness.
*sighs*..I am so sure if I was mainstreamed like u were with exposure to ASL in the classrooms and have other deaf kids instead of being the only one out of 2,000 hearing kids, i would have better memories of my school-age years.

Hearly elementary and high school were probably the better years.

Apparently, it seemed like the adults in my life saw me as a hearing person and expected me to function like a hearing person all the time. That was a lot for me to live up to as a child who was severely profoundly deaf.
 
refused to acknowledge that there are some flaws in the deaf school systems
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Well then again...it's hard to say why they are the way they are. One way they are an excellent resource is that they tend to be GREAT for early intervention. They do tend to produce not too educated high schoolers, but that's b/c many of them never got the proper EI in the first place. For a lot of people, a specialized school was a last resort placement.
 
deafdyke said:
Well then again...it's hard to say why they are the way they are. One way they are an excellent resource is that they tend to be GREAT for early intervention. They do tend to produce not too educated high schoolers, but that's b/c many of them never got the proper EI in the first place. For a lot of people, a specialized school was a last resort placement.
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Not really. Sometimes hearing parents would just dump their deaf children at a deaf school and wave bye bye to them just because they think raising deaf kids is too much work. I just think parents who fall into this category needs to devote a little more attention to their children.
 
deafdyke said:
Well then again...it's hard to say why they are the way they are. One way they are an excellent resource is that they tend to be GREAT for early intervention. They do tend to produce not too educated high schoolers, but that's b/c many of them never got the proper EI in the first place. For a lot of people, a specialized school was a last resort placement.
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I know..oh well. One thing I know for sure, we do do our best to meet each child's learning needs. It is a challenge when we have parents who r so uninvolved with their child's educational progress. I noticed that the students whose parents give them the support at home such as homework help, learning signs, taking their children to places and teaching them about them, and many more do well academically. Unfortunately, since the number of students at the deaf schools r smaller than at the public schools so if we have 10 students out of 100 doing poorly, it can really make the schools look like their educational standards are low as opposed to 10 students doing poorly in a hearing school of 1,000 students.
 
it's true that there are a lot of deaf children that are dumped into residental schools because their parents don't know how to take care of them, but a overwhelming majority of deaf children nowadays are being placed in mainstream programs.. which, like shel said in other threads, decreases the number of students in classrooms at deaf schools. But If more schools would do Early intervention, or at least have the deaf exposed to total communication, then things would work out a lot different. that's Just my opinion.
 
BearBeauty said:
it's true that there are a lot of deaf children that are dumped into residental schools because their parents don't know how to take care of them, but a overwhelming majority of deaf children nowadays are being placed in mainstream programs.. which, like shel said in other threads, decreases the number of students in classrooms at deaf schools. But If more schools would do Early intervention, or at least have the deaf exposed to total communication, then things would work out a lot different. that's Just my opinion.
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You're right if the schools got more involved with the children's education more throughly, then there would be less problems among the deaf.
 
RITCount said:
You're right if the schools got more involved with the children's education more throughly, then there would be less problems among the deaf.
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R u referring to deaf schools?

If so....

How much more do deaf schools have to get involved in children's education?

How can we help the students if their parents don't help them with their homework, don't bring their children to school-related events, don't participate in summer reading camps that we set up or their children r absent so often?


We have adopted the public school curriculm, hired 2 reading specialists to work with those who r struggling, have counselors on hand for those who have emotional issues, just hired a drama teacher for all grades, just adopted using spoken language during some instruction time to meet the children with CI or r hard of hearing, ordered thousands of dollars worth of reading programs in the past year, and some other stuff so what do u mean that schools needs to be more involved with the children's education more throughly?

There was an article in the newspaper a few years ago about how people who work at the schools becoming like parents for today's generation of kids. Something in reference to teaching kids how to to a lot of other things in addition to teaching them reading, writing, math, science, and social studies.

Can u be more specific pls? Thanks
 
it's more in terms of public schools that need to get involved. From what I've seen, Unless the parent fights for the child, Most Public Schools will treat the child same as hearing peers, which can cause developmental delays. Therefore, the child gets further behind and the school and parents give up and place the child in a deaf school. So the schools need to learn how to work with deaf children.. because from what I've seen.. They haven't done a good job of it.

Deaf schools are good for the child.. but I think that parents need to fight for their children. Instead of expect teachers to be an advocate, Parents need to step up to the plate themselves. Advocate for their children, not just sit by and watch their children fail. Also, parents need to help their children at home too. Some parents are too busy working or focused on other things to really help their children.

I'm not bashing parents in general.. I know most parents help their children. I've just seen some truly horrible parents in my lifetime.. Ick.
 
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