Sosie

Deaf Teachers Losing Jobs Because of English

I don't know where to put this but here. MOD(s), you are welcome to move it to a proper section. Thanks.

So, what do you think of this?

Deafness

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shel90

That's another reason why I believe in giving EVERY deaf child all the tools so this wont be a problem later on. Too many deaf children are cheated out of full access to language during their younger years and as a result end up with these problems. I dont understand why people find it ok to put deaf children at risks for language delays and deficits while they are young for the sake of one approach over another. Give them FULL access to language.

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Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

KarissaMann05

Yeah... this is just come to my mind: what about hearing teachers who have a similar problem to deaf teachers' ?

How come it is okay to fire deaf teachers but not hearing teachers??

Well, I think they need to know what behind the problem truely is...

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"Just think of it as I'm rebelling against your rebellion."

shel90

I know some hearing teachers who had trouble passing the Praxis certification exams and were let go so yes, it applies to them too. I think this is more of an issue with Deaf educators since Deaf ed itself is not consistent and too many deaf children end up being shortchanged which affects them later on in life.

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Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

KarissaMann05

Yep. It did happen to me before. I had my own trouble with grammar and all lessons of English, now I got a lot of improvement since I was in fifth grade. I still keep trying to work on my weakness. I have a several good friends and Elva had the similar problems, too.

So I don't see how it should keep that way if it is majority of deaf children have the same thing. Time is still running on... But I don't think there will be too late. We gotta fight for getting a full accuess language and all needs for them.

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"Just think of it as I'm rebelling against your rebellion."

shel90

That's why I welcome all the bashing here on AD whenever I speak about this subject cuz I am doing this for the deaf children.

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Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

KarissaMann05

Yep, yep.

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"Just think of it as I'm rebelling against your rebellion."

flip

Bilingual research shows that teachers who themselves are native users of a given language, will success better in second language instructions, even if knowledge of the second language not is that great, than a native user of the second language. It means a hearing english teacher will get worse results than a deaf teacher who is less fluent in english, but are fluent in ASL.

So it's all about paranoia and fear to me. Firing deaf teachers, means that english skills will lower among students, again producing less qualified deaf teachers in the future, that agains lower the english skills even more. If all teachers were deaf, I am sure all deaf people would get fluent in english in one generation and no shortage of deaf teachers that are fluent in english.

souggy

Am I the only one that noticed that they were uncertified? They didn't lose their jobs because they lack sufficient English. They lost their jobs because they were not certified to teach to begin with.

Granted, they would need to pass an English exam to become certified, but wouldn't they would know that ahead of time or at least be aware what is necessary to become a teacher? I am all for education in ASL, but it just seem to me it is more of negligent to keep their bases covered. I am pretty sure it's not a new qualification to become a teacher. Or is it?

The article even fail to mention how the exam was taken, and if alternative format was given if there is an oral or aural component to the test. I am sure the state would make accommodation for this? I just don't feel like there is enough information given in the article to warrant all the comments made about the whole issue.

Buffalo

Deaf kids are getting short-changed in all directions. If deaf teachers lose their job because of their English skills, the deaf kids won't have a deaf role model that would motivate them to became teachers.

If those deaf teachers were replaced by hearing teachers who aren't good at ASL, the deaf kids might not understand the teachers in all subjects including English. (Do the deaf schools require that the teachers are certified in ASL???)

Mainstreaming deaf kids who have self-contained class might have a teacher that is not great at ASL (again, are they certified in ASL??)

If the mainstreaming kids go into regular classes with interpreter, how good (certified?) are the interpreters?? Too many district schools taking in deaf kids could cause the interpreter pool to be spread thin. If the interpreter called in sick, the deaf kid is stuck without an interpreter for a day or so if there are no back up interpreter.

We should not leave things up to the hearing lawmakers as they could screw things up for us big time.

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shel90

I agree, Buffalo and no, there is no ASL proficiency exam required by any of the schools both Deaf and public. The proficiency exams are given at the Deaf Ed prgrams at the universitites...HOWEVER there are deaf ed programs that focus too much on the clinical aspects of deafness rather (see my thread "what kind of teaqching program is that?") that will create teachers with no idea of how to teach deaf children. The system is just not consistent.

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Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

Grummer

I know some hearing teachers who CANT sign, and actually looked at me like a freak, she been 'publically qualified' as a teacher of the deaf it made me REAL FUCKING ANGRY !!!! i am willing to go there (that school) barge in and risk being arrested to say what a fraud that bitch is, and thsat she has NO fucking rights to be a teacher for deaf students. In my mind, there SHOULD be a council of collective deaf/Deaf/Hoh and late deafened combined to have a clout/power to approve./deny this sort of qualification because after all these are Real d/Deaf people with first hard experience and with this, they are better judges of who ought able to teach - not some standard hearing institutions. geeez

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Some people will tell you that slow is good - and it may be, on some days - but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I've always believed this, in spite of the trouble it's caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles.
Hunter S Thompson

Grummer

well, people, GET organised

just like how Harvey Milk got it organised to bang on for gay rights, we need to do this for Deaf rights, at another level, not 'civil' for needing interpreters because this doesnt remove the tight grip of the hearing teachers have over what constitutes as d/Deaf education.

__________________
Some people will tell you that slow is good - and it may be, on some days - but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I've always believed this, in spite of the trouble it's caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles.
Hunter S Thompson

Cheri

I agree with souggy.

Teachers are required to pass the state's competency test, hearing or deaf, if they don't pass, then they can't be teachers. It's the way it goes. I would not want a teacher who did not passed a state's test to teach my children in an educational setting.

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Grummer

I must say though, I kind of agree, but i disagree, i know this is weird me saying this, put this way i agree deaf teachers shouldnt dissappear, while i agree they need to know Engllish before considering to teach !, and by same token as it should be treated EQUALLY in priority and in politics that hearing teachers should not/can not teach Deaf students if they dont possess sign language at the d/Deaf deemed appropriate level

__________________
Some people will tell you that slow is good - and it may be, on some days - but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I've always believed this, in spite of the trouble it's caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles.
Hunter S Thompson

Daredevel7

Why did you assume that this deaf teacher didn't have full access to language? Is it generally assumed that if a deaf person does not know English well, s/he did not have full access to language?

shel90

It is generally known that without full access to language especially in the school setting, the risks of these problems increase. I would rather minimize the risks as much as I can.

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Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

souggy

The whole deaf education thing is an entirely different beast. These teachers failed to meet the guideline. I assume that every person in Massachusetts can check to see what qualifications they need to become a teacher in that state. That's it.

Regarding ASL proficiency among hearing teachers or how deaf students should be educated is another can of worms altogether. That would be the failure of the system to put in tighter regulations of what is required to teach the deaf. Failure to meet the students' needs is across the board, not just with deaf people.

More or less. The people I have met that go to Deaf school in Alberta are (or were) allowed to have scribes that translate from ASL to English for their exams. As a result, the people I knew that went to that school have poor English literacy and they were unable to meet written English standards of graduating post-secondary.

I never had access to that, and I am grateful for that. Unless there is something that is impairing the ability to write, no one really should have someone transcript their English assignments or exams. However it is overgeneralizing to assume because someone failed the English competency exams because they lack English literacy since we don't know if the exams have an oral or aural component.

Example? When I went to university, I was expected to be able to do my own presentations, although I could have access to a ASL-English interpreter to voice for me, and I didn't have to do any aural parts of the exams, in which I only recall two exams with that component, without a transcript for me to read beforehand.

Grummer

in defence of Shel and the bilingualism, access to language needs to not be confirned to a narrow range of communicative means, that is, in spoken words? sign? PEE? ASL? all d/Deaf student dont share the same audiological characteristics, as does this again impact on THEIR (students) ability to 'survive' classroom lessons for English as these channels NEED to be flexible, to accomodate the students role in learning. If this is not meet, then there are going to be serious ramifications which will be extremely difficult to untangle the linguistic mess that has snowballed the knowledge/English competence downhill. If anyone is honest about all this, there would be sense in seeing that English alone as a mode of instruction does not suffice. Now with bingualism, indeed good teachers would be able to teach English in whatever best suits the students. While this may seem 'slower' (but has been proven there and here) theorically to teach English, it is quite on the contrary, because the student would picked up more, grasped more, retained more, process the new thinking more, all while not getting bombarded in the narrow scope of 'English" per see.
I would like to see, some sort of recognised council, (now this will get to be difficult to resist zealots from the "Deaf only" approach while at same time resisting the "big ego'ed overcomers insisting on making themselves a well known". My point is that for the last 15 years during the upshot of deaf culture and deaf awareness, coupled with the very few prized teaching positions - its small wonder why so many d/Deaf lliterally FIGHT over those 'chairs' just like the musical chair game. its nasty, and i sometimes wonder if this was set up so overtime, it can be "proven" the bilingualism failing.
its not good, but thats all im saying for now. i'd left this thread continue to be filled up by some 'self-interested' parties to squabble over whats best, the thing is, they (article) never mentioned competency of sign as an important part, this tells the majority (hearing people) this one sided aspect of the story. I cringe when this happens. The key point of the article seems to be uncertified, well again, this is what i meant by the 'set up to fail'. d/Deaf needs to realise this, and not allow this deception to occur. i think id stop now before someone says 'no body is deceiving anybody' -sorry i do happen to think otherwise.
my 2 cents

__________________
Some people will tell you that slow is good - and it may be, on some days - but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I've always believed this, in spite of the trouble it's caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles.
Hunter S Thompson

dreama

I agree with Shel, Buffalo and Flip.

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Daredevel7

I am confused. I honestly don't see how a full access to language automatically means good English skills. I'm guessing being proficient in ASL and communicating/learning via mainly ASL still does not mean full access to language? Unless you meant full access to BOTH the communication and written aspect (which would mean learning English).

I find it interesting that when viewing a deaf person with poor English skills, some Deaf people automatically assume that he didn't learn sign, while some hearing people assume he learned sign.

rjcon88

And I wouldn't want an oralist teaching my deaf/hoh children. This argument goes both ways, there is no certification requirement for ASL to be a teacher for the deaf... I don't want my children taught by a teacher who cannot communicate with them in a proficient manner.

shel90

I didnt assume anything...I am not saying that by full access to language will guarantee good English skills but u agree that not having full access increases the risks greatly. That's my whole point.

That's why I want all students to have both to give them better chances at life later on.

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Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

deafbajagal

I have mixed feelings about this issue. I personally have a friend who's a teacher (deaf) who possess excellent English and ASL skills. She taught for about five years...and is without a doubt one of the best teachers I ever encountered. ALL of her first graders left her classroom reading on (or above) grade-level, etc. The data spoke for itself. However she was unable to pass the Praxis Tests by only 2 or 3 points...she ended up moving to another state in which the required Praxis scores were lower (that reinforces what Shel was saying about the inconsistency of deaf education across the nation)...and as a result, it was a great loss for the school. On the other hand, I can see why the standards exist. Teachers, deaf or hearing, need to meet standards. The problem now is that the standards vary state by state. And there's too much politics involved.

Approaching the problem from bottom to top isn't going to work because the problem itself comes from the top to bottom principle. In other words, we need to get the state departments and legistatures to get their act together and to be educated on the education of deaf and hard of hearing children. And they need to be united on a national front so we can have national standards.

This is tricky as the Constitution assures that states can make their own determinations about educational-related decisions (to a point).

How do we deal with the crisis of deaf education falling through the cracks? What must we do?

souggy

Like I said in my previous post, the flaws in deaf education is an entirely different matter than what was in the article. Don't want an oralist teaching your kids? Well, tell the government that you want educators of the deaf to have certification in ASL as well.

a deaf person failing a required English exam is not the same thing as a hearing educator not being required to learn ASL. The prior is just self-neglect to understand the guideline, the latter is due to having no guideline in place. Completely different in my eyes.

Right now, I am just telling the parents I know of to let their kids interact with other deaf. Our mainstream education here is severely flawed, and I can only hope that getting the proper social interaction outside of the school in their own language will keep them motivated enough to struggle through school to make it to university while I try to get myself back on track to become a teacher myself.

I would had never made it through a mainstream school if I didn't have two or three other deaf people to interact with during high school. We all knew it was wrong, and the only way we could fix the education system was to do our best and go to post-secondary and take up positions to change the system from the inside. However despite that we hated mainstream education, we understood the need for English standardization.

Reba

Someone at the original site posed an interesting question.

How did the deaf teachers graduate teaching college without English reading and writing skills? If they passed college level English courses, then they should be able to pass the certification test, right?

shel90

The certification tests are very very very hard.

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Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

faire_jour

And they should be hard! These people are teaching our children! If they can't use English, how can they possibly teach it? What happened to the BI in bilingual? For many of the students the main way they will be receiving information from the vast majority of the world will be through written English, they need a teacher who uses it exceptionally well.

shel90

If u should think those tests should be hard, how about us getting paid a damn lot more than we r getting now? How about that? I feel teachers especially those who work in BiBi programs don't get a lot of respect.

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Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

KarissaMann05

That would be sucks! =/

__________________
"Just think of it as I'm rebelling against your rebellion."