mbenson5

Hi there to you all! First of all, thank you so much for sharing your information. Your information has been so valuable to learning about this culture and some things I've never even thought of.

My question this week is: how did you manage communication when you went to school? I guess I am assuming public school like I went to, but now that I think of it, I don't remember any people who were deaf where I went to school. I graduated with a class of 120, so that should tell you something about my rural origins... What I am wondering is if you had an interpreter, if you attended a school specifically for the deaf, or if you were able to lip read? Thanks again for your willingness to share!!

Melissa

Deafness

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WhiteWolves64

Well, all my life that i went to mainstream where my school was strict about sign language and i had to lip read on everyone who was talking to me or any one else. I had no interpreter or note taker while at school - it's hard to get by but hey, i survived!!!!! After i graduated from H.S. and then i learned sign language through my ex-boyfriend that time before i become Transman!!!!

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Deafilmedia

I just signed and talked, anyway I can to get people to understand me at school. I went to mainstreamed schools. And was in class with 10 deaf kids
up til I got to 4th grade. At 4th grade, it was a big struggle, I didn't have any interpreter. I convinced my special ed. teacher to let me go to hearing class in 4th grade. So without listening to teacher... I study and got tutor.
So I passed the 4th grade, and then 5th grade, and then to 6th grade.
Then when I went to jr. high, I went to hearing classes, but got interpreters.
Then in High School, I went to classes and got interpreters and notetakers.

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Kaitin

Hi, Melissa: I went to (hearing) private school and am in (hearing) private college. I have an interpreter for classes, discussions, and most meeting with professors. I didn't have interpreters for starting college - I didn't want attention and wanted college to be "perfect". But I had the worst time. Lots of discussion groups with everyone sitting in the circle - no way to readlips most of times and I didn't want to ask for repeats. New vocabularly in science classes. The only class I got a good grade was math. Lab was ok but class with lab was bad too. After bombed mid-terms, I asked for help - painful but needed. I was more embarassed with bad grades than asking for help.

I wear bilateral HAs and do lipread when possible, but it is not enough for classes and so tiring when close attention to discussion is needed. If I just lipread I would fail.

Before college I got notes from some teachers (Social Studies, Biology, and English for example). Others let me work at my pace and I could get ahead of the class on my own (math, physics, chemistry). When I was younger I had an interpreter who also was the teacher's aid. She worked with me for years. For the last few years she wasn't with me. All my teachers knew about my HoH. I sat up front (don't mind). They tried to speak while looking at me and wrote outline of the class on the board. Most taught straight from books and I could get all or almost by reading. It is a small private school (your class was bigger) with small classes and great teachers. My parents met with me each teacher at the start of each year. A few teachers knew some signs. One knew a lot because of a HoH/deaf grandson.

I also had tutors for some classes like English and my mom (English college professor) helped. One of my sisters and brothers also helped learning homework. I was lucky with friends and school was easier with them. Throughout school I took speech therapy, even now. I hated hated hated it when young. Still hate it sometimes, but it helps with new college vocabularly. I get new vocabularly from some professors at the start or before classes and work in ST. It was so helpful when learning taxonomy - domain, family, phyla etc. for Biology. I never would pronouce "Drosophila melanogaster" (= fruit fly) without ST and will never pronounce "peculiar" right even with the ST. . I always meet with professors before/at beginning of classes. I took Summer School when younger - not fun but helpful - and in the first two college summers. I am waived for the foreign language requirement. I also plan on graduating in 5 years not 4.

HTH.

Tousi

Kaitin, what sign system(s) did/do your interpreters use? I'm assuming they used what you wished for, so what was that?

SxyPorkie

Even tho i was born HOH.. i went to VSDB where my father went... it was my second home away from home... lived there 9 months every year... I loved it... during the summer i was home with my parents.. i had no problems with communicating with hearing kids....

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Moon-child

I was just pushed through the grades in public mainstream until I finally quit school. Not one teacher ever figured out I was hard of hearing. My report cards comments were often something like..."it is as if she is not really here"!!! Well duh! I believe many thought I was mentally handicapped and just kept pushing me up in grades to keep me socially with my peers. I had teachers yell at me and tell me I was stupid, kick me and do crap to me all my years of school, it sucked!!

jazzy

Well, been there all. Been to oral school (tried to learn how to talk and lipreading instead of learn how to read and writing) , been to TC program (sign and talk at the same time, I liked it ) been to deaf residental school , only ASL allow (no speech therapy)and fingerspelling was allowed only in my last year of the school before I quit there ( I hate that school) and I finally went to public school with d&dh program and in regular classrooms with interpters. I was much happier and healthy. Graduated top 18th out of 500 hearing kids at high school. Then I went to community colleges ,of course with skilled interpters.

Now u understand why my english suck because wasted 6 years of oral program and damaged during most critical time to develop at certain age.

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Mizzou

All of my life went to MAINSTEAMED schools. I been learned oral and signs. I am very stubborn about lip reading but I went well. There is deaf program for the deaf in school. I went both of classes (deaf/hearing). :0

shel90

Mainstreamed and oral all the way and it sucked as hell! I wish to never repeat my school years agian. If so, I would want to be in a BiBi program with both deaf and hearing instead of with ALL hearing 24/7.

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~Shel~

Freaky Cat

I went to deaf school all of my life from kindergarten to Senior and graduated from there. Yet i still attended teh speech class and still have to use my voice to communicate with teachers. I never used ASL believe it or not.. LOL.. I dont know why my class did not use ASL? we were talking about it not long ago and thought it was strange? It was easy growing up at deaf school and Loved it due to activities and everything.. I didnt have any problems.. If my kids are deaf- I would send them to deaf school!

Oceanblue7

I really tip my hat for those of you who gone to school without interpreters in a private school. I went to catholic school all my life and learned a deaf lady graduated from my high school in the late 60's. Tonight, I went to my class 87' reunion party and one classmate told me her mom is deaf and she went to catholic school as well after she lost her hearing at age 16. I am so amazed to find out this out bec my classmate mom and the deaf lady both had no interpreters only notetakers.

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Roadrunner

Thread moved here from 'General Chat'--







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jag

Your school didn't do vision and hearing screenings regularly? Just asking because they had those screenings way back when I was in school and all my kids went through them, while not as good as actually going to an audiologist they did catch my hearing loss eventually and they did catch my 3rd daughters loss when she was in 3rd grade. Hmmm, maybe not all states require hearing/vision screenings ? In MN they do them once a year in elementry and then a couple times over the last 6 yrs of school.

sounds like you had a crappy school. I'll stick with small rural schools I think.

Moon-child

Not that I can remember, wish they had. My grade two teacher realized I was nearly blind, I am very near sighted and can't see past about 4 inches. I think that as a result of this I am extremely intuitive, perceptive and some might say psychic...do you think these are common traits amongst our kind? I do.

Miss-Delectable

It seems I've been in school shortly from birth, LOL.

Was in Oral program when I was a baby and then went to mainstream kindergarten with no terps... Then went to a Deaf preschool where I learned signs, tho it was Signed English and speech. I think I loved it there, being with deaf peers and such.

Started my education at P-12 deaf school. Enjoyed some of it but have had many miserable years due to bullying. The bullying tapered off when I was in grade 11 and 12. I still attended this school but went to private school, with teachers as terps from school, next door to access their subjects in grade 11 and 12. Communication method was: Auslan and some speech. Basically BiBi, I guess.

I reckon the 11th and 12th grades were probably the best years of my life in high scool. As for elementary, I dunno.

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Lavender

Half cup of milk education from Disney Cartoon Characters to Silent Night No Music School for 102 Dalmatians.

Learned sign language from koko peerz.

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deafdyke

Hey, people should clarify if mainstream means deaf program at regular school, or regular classes hearing school.
sxyporkie, I'm so envious! I would have LOVED to attend a School for the Deaf, even thou I'm just hoh. I have been encouraging parents to send their hoh kids to schools and programs for the Deaf, especially early on.
I really think that the special school option is one that is somewhat ignored, in favor of dum da dum..........neighborhood school. I really think that it should be easier for parents to arrange a split placement set up for their kids.
Most mainstream teachers, even special ed teachers really have no clue how to educate us. Most of their training is how to teach LD kids.
That is not good. Sure its great if a kid does well mainstream with minimal accomondations, but too often kids who don't do well with minimal accomondations, (even thou they are smart) get lumped in with the "Ummm who's President Bush?" dumbasses who seem to infest sped programs. (oh and just a note, I am NOT attacking MR kids. I'm simply talking about the kids who are basicly apathetic slackers and who are in sped b/c there's no where else for them)
I attended a Chapter 766 self contained preschool program, til I was five. This was a program for ALL types of kids with special needs. Sort of like a Headstart program. Then I was mainstreamed to the max. UGH. I was one of only a handful of kids with disabilites in my school district. I think I was one of only about two or three dhh kids in my entire district! My district was just so fucking resistant to providing me with more then preferential seating, auditory trainer (and one of those old skool ones with the harness UGH), and speech therapy. I didn't even get a NOTETAKER til I was in HIGH SCHOOL?!?! God, I didn't even get a teacher of the Deaf.

kimpossible

same here

Mainstream all the way for me (hearing classes). elementary school (K-7) was pretty lame. bullied since the 4th grade (year after I started losing my hearing, when I first obtained an FM... how coincidental) but kind of stopped the year that we "graduated" (grade 7). no accommodation but I was a pretty smart kid, at least.

secondary school (8-12) was okay, a bit of back-stabbing, gossiping, rumour-spreading, and in grade 8 a girl mimicked my voice and made fun of me behind my back. grade 12 was quite awesome though. I think I went deaf in grade 11 but nothing really changed. I had note-takers (very good ones) for most of my classes and took up ASL in grades 8 and 9, and TA'd in grade 12 for the intro ASL class.

I'm now in year 1 of 4 at an art school and the accommodation is probably worse than high school... they're kind of doing a half-assed job. but they're "trying," at least.

Grummer

it wasnt that much fun, some good friends, some very dodgy 'freinds', grrr at them, others i dunno, two of my 'were then best mates right up till the mid-20's were good, but they changed since they have yuppie jobs, earn big money, it changed them......so in a way retrospect if i went to deaf school (providing they taught properly -which that is not likely- bloody oralism) i owuld probably have had freinds with better loyality, hard to say, its like that stupid horror film 'the butterfly effect' you just dont know what 'balances' the when fate took the alternate path.......

CrazehJess

I went to a public school. There was a couple other deaf kids that I never met, but there's about 7000 kids in the school, so it didn't make much difference and apparantly, I was the deafest person in the school. The school was quite good for dealing with that kind of thing, I was offered help, but I refused it and was just like any other kid in school. I used to have radio-aids, but I ditched them in late primary school. Basically, the school before highschool, for you Americans. As for school itself, I found the work easy, lessons easy, but I had problems with friends and bullying. That's why I dropped out of school at 13 years old and now I have a couple days a week of education in a non-school building. My deafness only really made things hard for me, when my friends talked in big groups. I found it hard to keep up with the conversation and they had that irritating habit of saying 'it doesn't matter' whenever I asked for something I didn't hear to be repeated. And it was a nightmare in the canteen, it was noisy and I never went much. But when I did, it was pretty hard to have a conversation with more than one person. I could lipread easily, but when your friends are 13 year olds, they always forgot I was deaf and they never kept their head in the same place for long enough, so I didn't get much, heh.

So I'd say my school experience, was kinda bad concerning friends and the social side of it. Not to mention, things like mixing with the wrong crowds, rumors going round and friends falling out all the time, expecting me to patch it up. Then there's my hotheaded side which got me into physical fights and some secret let loose accidently on my part, resulted in a group of people who were 4 or 5 years older than me extremely annoyed with me. That ended in fights, too. There was also a bad experience with one of my teachers, who for some reason disliked me, and kept trying to put me down classes and giving me lower grades than I deserved. Hmmm... what else? Bitchy girls, idiot boys and a girl who I really crushed on for years messing me up with her mind games, that's it really.

Wow. Sounds depressing, huh? Despite all that, the school was very good concerning my deafness and I got on well with most of the teachers, therefore my deafness didn't affect my schoolwork. It probably affected some ways of being able to talk to my friends, but not enough to cause big problems. My deafness pretty much takes the back pedastal when it comes to life. It's not an affecting factor in my opinion. At least, most times.

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Live free or die.

Deaf Person: I'm deaf.
Other Person: (speaks louder and opens mouth wide) Oh really? THAT'S A SHAME.
Deaf Person: ....
Other Person: CAN YOU NOT HEAR ME?
Deaf Person: My deaf Aunt in Russia can hear you.

jillio

I firmly believe that those who have sensory difficulties as in vision and hearing become very adept at intuiting information that would normally be recieved through those channels. There is also a type of personality called "untuitive" that can be identified through personality tests such as the MMPI. It involves an innate trait for a preference in the way one learns new information. It would be interesting to find out, via the MMPI, how many people with visual and hearing impairments would rate as "intuitive" in personality assessment.

Pepsi

When I was growing up and went to school it was bad. that is all i have to say about that.

seki900

We had just moved, my family and I to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range from the bay area. This was around 1972 as I was about to start 3rd grade. I had been just diagnosed as hard of hearing a short while ago and the hearing aides where on order but had not arrived yet. It was still however the first day of school.

Big changes new routines. It was very different from what I was used to. Before I could just walk to school just before the class started, now I had to take a bus that arrived at school about an hour before classes started. I played some of the schoolyard games before classes started and met some of my new classmates as well as some of the people that I had meet during the summer before school started.

The teacher assigned the seating alphabetically this put me near the back of the room. I quickly lost interest in the class I was waiting for recess. This came and went and I knew that the next break would be lunchtime. In the school that I came from we where just dismissed and made our way to the cafeteria I was expecting the same here.

It was different here it was a small school it didn’t really have a cafeteria or rather the cafeteria doubled as the kindergarten classroom. When the time came the teacher said “Alright it is lunchtime everyone line up by the door…” That was all I needed to hear, I made my way to the door.

Then it got strange there was a girl behind me that was seemed to be upset about something as far a I could tell it didn’t concern me. Until the teacher came up to me and said, “What are you doing here?” I told her, “Waiting to go to lunch.”

“Well we can’t go just yet, there is something out of place. Didn’t you hear me when I said girls in the front of the line and boys in the back?” I told her “No I didn’t.”
That got the teacher exasperated. “What’s the matter with you are you deaf or something?” she demanded. “Yes I am.”

“What! You know that’s not true. You’re just asking for a trip to the principal’s office.”
“No.” I told her, “It is true, it should be in my records, you did read them didn’t you?”
“Alright I have had enough of you, I am going to check those records and when I find that you are lying you are going straight to the principal.” Then she said “Class your going to be late for lunch and you can all thank this trouble maker here.”

The office for the school was in the next room there was a door that connected the two and that door had a window in it. I watched the teacher talk to the secretary asking for my records. I couldn’t make out what was being said but it didn’t look good. All the students were upset and they were pretty much sure that I was in for it. All I could do was just stand there and wait.

Both the secretary and the teacher where reading my records, finally the secretary pointed to something in the file and they both looked up and at me through the window. Then the teacher came back in, “I am sorry I didn’t know”, she told me. Then we went to lunch and after lunch I discovered that I wasn’t going to be included in the games anymore.

Pepsi

Seki900 your story sounds just like mine .when I went to school I had to sit in the back and I did not know what was going on in class.And boy I had to put up with alot of bullshit.

J'explique

It was ok. It'd be wonderful if it was not the half-assed principal who I, along with many, had to suffer through 4 years of hell. He was one who ruined pretty much of my high school years.