sarahkhan

THIS!
Every time my parents plans to send to a teacher for tutoring me and i tried to reject the plans...because it is frustrating to lipread a new teacher lips. For me home tuition is worse than a classroom. ALAS! I was forced to go through it.*sigh*

Deafness

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inmate23

HELL YES

As an adult i have pick up the pieces and build a life that has no links to my childhood

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Please remeber I have audio processing disorder

i use asl rochester method or pop or oral

deafdyke

The question is....where does the mentality that the mainstream is best come from anyway? I really think its a fossil from the old days, when Deaf Schools weren't that great. I also think a lot of it are schools using dhh kids as cash cows. Seriously, kids with disabilties come with money. If they didn't, trust me, dhh kids, blind/low vision kids, mentally disabled kids and other kids would just be told to attend their state deaf/blind/mentally handicapped/phyiscally disabled school.....it's all about money.

DeafBadger

This is more like my own experience. I was mainstreamed and I can't say that it was bad. I just wish that I knew deaf/hoh people when I was growing up. I just wish I had learn ASL and had been involved in the Deaf community growing up. It would have made things a lot less lonely.

I just recently connected with the local Deaf community so I hope that life will become a lot more interesting as well.

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"Ad Astra Per Aspera" - Through hardships, to the stars.

severe-to-profound in both ears, since birth. My Blog

Pale Blue Dot (cc: Select Italian captions, then Translate Captions to English--English)

"Labels are mentally lazy ways by which people assert they know you without knowing you." ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson

deafdyke

I think those of us who are objecting to the mainstream, do so b/c no matter how you paint it, the mainstream is too one size fits all. Some kids can have an awesome experiance in the mainstream, but they're either really smart, and can thus benifit more from a minimal accomondations approach or they may have gone to a school that was diverse or had lots of experiance with educating dhh kids.
I don't think anyone is saying " Oh send today's Deaf little kids to res school."
Mainstream sucks." We're saying that solotairing it in a school that doesn't have a formal sizable dhh program or even much experiance with dhh kids. I do think MANY MANY posters here would have really thrived in one of those dhh programs or a dhh magnet school. Those types of set ups can be really good for hoh style kids.

whatdidyousay!

Going to mainstream school made stronger and I learned not care if people did not like me. It taught me if I wanted anything for myself not to relies other to do it for me. The only person that was going to look out for me was myself! I been very good at standing up for myself and speaking my mind. I hated going to school but I learned really fast people where not going to go out of their way to made thing easy for me because I was HOH.

warpedpink

I got all that from my Deaf school... Not from my mainstreamed schools

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Bottesini

Seriously? I thought you liked the Deaf school and found acceptance there.

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rebeccalj

I think like minded? individuals congregate together. It is possible that the reason there are so many of us 'horrible mainstream experience' here is that we have found fellow deafies who understand our experience and that's what we are all searching for. Someone who *gets* us. Many, many of us *GET* each other here.

I would *NEVER* do mainstream again if I am allowed to choose. I would go for ASL/deaf school a thousand times over I would.

I should qualify that mainstream wasn't horribly awful for me because I was athlete, dancer, student council and head cheerleader. The fact that I went to mainstream gave me sense of knowing I could do anything and I did. It wasn't so much to 'fit' in with hearies, maybe it was, but I don't remember thinking that way. For me, it was survival of the fittest and I was going to survive.

deafdyke

Wow.......To any lurkers out there, this REALLY says something. rebeccalj is a high achiever type and STILL found the mainstream hell. So did bajagirl.
I really think a lot of parents opt for mainstreaming and oral only b/c they think that their kid will be like the kids profiled in Volta Voices. meaning super high achioevers, who go off to Name Brand College.But I do have to say that I think that the experts and teachers who push mainstreaming are really out of touch with what a typical school experiance is actually LIKE. They seem to push this fanasty that all mainstreamed dhh kids will experiance a typical suburban educational experiance, and will have friends and no real issues.
Unfortunatly the reality doesn't match up with that fanasty.

Smithtr

I ruin my school because bully reason stupid not fair because hearing not respectful I knew many of them crazy stupid on people I am not happy because observed it people negative hates me I ruin my school I was upset, because people tattle on teacher , I am innocent,, I told teacher don't listen! not funny!

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rebeccalj

So true. In my case my social life wasn't too bad because, as I got older, and gained confidence, I participate more in group activities at school. When I say social life I don't mean lots and lots of friends because I only had 1-2 close friends all through school. I just mean social experience.

But, I *wasn't* at school for a social life. I was supposed to be there to learn. My desire to interact and communicate was *SO* strong, and could not be met in the classroom, so I made up for it in other activities offered at school. I compensated. I had a sense of needing to belong somewhere, even back then, yet knowing, all along, that I never did no matter *how* involved I was (at school). In other words, I *knew* I was different. Felt I was different. It was like I say in another thread that I was looking for *my* people.

I hated the classroom (except for grade 3). I spent the entire day trying to understand what teacher is saying. Translating words in my head all the time. Then, re-reading lessons when I am come home so I could try to understand what was being taught. Want to do good in school and make parents proud that I'm not 'stupid' or 'handicapped.' Want them to not give me away again. It was like going to school twice each day. It was very tiring and even worse when I go to high school and have 5-6 different teachers to lip read each day.

I imagine, sometimes, how wonderful my educational experience would have been had I been educated with *my* people instead of someone elses.

deafdyke

Another thing that I absolutly HATED....and I mean HATED was the fact that I was lumped in with the really dumb kids in the Resource Room. NOT the kids who actually had ADD or who had actual learning problems....but the kids who were there simply b/c it was a dumping ground. I was the ONLY kid who did not belong in the Resource Room....Had I had the proper supports. Meaning teachers who had been trained to teach someone like me, rather then just fifteen mintues on dhh ed, I would prolly have ended up at a decent college,(ie maybe even Smith or Harvard)
If the lurkers out there think I was one of those kids who just didn't have the proper early intervention.....I taught myself to read at three/four. (right after I got my hearing aids) AND took not one but TWO languages in high school. Yet I got lumped in with the kids whose only problem was that they had a brain, but refused to use it. (and before I'm attacked, I have a lot of friends who are sped teachers, and they acknowledge that while there are quite a few kids with obvious issues, there's still a lot of kids whose ONLY problem is that they don't use their brain!

deafdyke

I know......I never had to go through the pre and post teaching stuff....but god, I was working SO hard that I didn't have time to concentrate on producing CONTENT. It's exactly like the way I acted out b/c I had to manually write stuff (especially in cursive) . I have mild hypotonia. Although I CAN write and appreciate the skill, it would have made so much more sense for me, to have both manual writing abilty and the abilty to type.
And yes, I wonder a lot what my educational experiance would have been like if I'd been in a dhh program, or sent to Clarke or had gone to American School or TLC.

rebeccalj

Geez, that makes me angry!

I remember going to some kind of learning class for special education students in elementary school. I think I piss teachers off because they dump me back to hearie teacher. I, uh, was pretty opinionated and stubborn back then and, like Shel, knew how to sabotage what I didn't want.

Similar thing happen with piano teacher. My mother want me to learn to play like 'perfect' older hearie sister. I had 3 lessons and watch teacher yell to my mother that I will never learn. Fact was, I already knew a lot of piano from watching sister practise and she was teaching me boring baby lessons. So, I get kicked out of piano. Teacher make me mad so I teach myself to play better than older sister.

Somewhere, along the line, my motto became, "Tell me I can't do something and I will prove to you that I can."

rebeccalj

Content! Yes! Everything done *SO* fast, because learning take so long, that there was no content to my work. It is different now because I can take time, think, re-read, but not when a child. Children have deadlines from the teacher. Hearing teacher deadlines are not good for oral deaf child.

I'm glad when I grow up because I feel like I can finally relax. Breathe. School always seem like one panic deadline to the next. Surprised I didn't have ulcer.

Grummer

i know.....me too...and right now in UNI...im developing one...urgh ack ack ... just tooo much but NOPE im not giving up, i got a lot to fight for

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"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them."
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DeafRaptor

I was, very unfortunately, mainstreamed my whole life (from Kindergarten through college). I say this even though, at the time, I had only mild to moderate hearing loss. Some people would say I was an oral success, but I would strongly disagree. Yes, academically I did very well (salutatorian of my high school graduating class, but only because my twin sister beat me and was valedictorian, and was honored with membership with Psi Chi, the international honor society in Psychology - my major in college). I had my twin to study with, which helped, and all I did was read and read and read and read. I did all of the work.

I still have many flashbacks from each grade: Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. I NEVER paid attention to the teachers or other students participating in class (even with only having mild to moderate hearing loss that was aided by BTE hearing aids); there was no point as I could not hear/understand them even with the hearing aids supposedly fitted to my hearing loss (I had CART in college so I was able to at least follow along and not just have to rely solely on reading and studying). In fact, we had a ceremony during my 8th grade graduation. During that ceremony, the prinicipal would joking make comments about our time there. He would pretend that he was passing along the graduating class's traits to the 7th grade class. For me, he said he was passing on my abililty to "get good grades while never being on the same page as everyone else in class"! It was a joke to them!

I had NO friends in elementary or high school as no one would socialize with me other than my sister. Communication was just too important to socializing that I was, therefore, automatically excluded. I was severly depressed (I even went to the principal and cried and asked why I felt that the school wasn't for me ) and even suicidal as I reached my teenage and then college years. I was so socially withdrawn that when I went to college, I still couldn't make friends with the other deaf/hh students. My first real friend I made finally in 2010 when I was 27 years old.

Everyone tells me that my speech is perfect (thanks to years of speech therapy) and that depresses me even more, because they expect me to follow along and get frustrated when I can't and dare to ask for them to repeat. BTW, I hate the word "nevermind" !!! As a coping mechanism and trying to get some semblance of socializing with other people, I learned to just nod my head and smile.

I was very ignorant about deafness and what was out there. I thought all the rest of the world was hearing and I was the only deaf/hh person. I did not know that there was anything other than hearing aids and speech therapist to accomodate me. I did not know about deaf schools. I did not know about ASL (and interpreters) and Deaf Culture. All I knew is that I felt held back both intellectually (I did well, but I feel I could have gone so much further) and socially. Finally, in college, my eyes started to open, but by then I felt that I couldn't join that other world, as if it was too late for me. It wasn't until three months ago, when I met a deaf co-worker, that I felt that I could join that world. Now I am not going to allow anyone to stop me from being a part of that world or stop me from seeking happiness and peace with myself and my past.

deafdyke

OMG, I wish you were around here. I also had a really tough time socially .....I didn't make my first real friend until I was fourteen.....and that was only b/c I went to an AMAZING hearing camp. God, I wish so badly the inclusionists would get a ****ing CLUE!

DeafRaptor

Thanks deafdyke. It is very comforting knowing that, while I may have had bad experiences (that I wouldn't wish on anyone) because of how people reacted to my deafness, (even though I thought so at one time) I am not alone.

One other thing I wanted to mention. Even letting go of the frustration that mainstreaming brought me, what really frustrates me was that I was mainstreamed at a small religious elementary and high school (my graduating class in high school had 12 people and 2 of those were my sister and me). It was a small school that had never had a deaf or hoh student in its entire history and as far as I know hasn't had one since and did not have any teachers who had been trained/educated in educating children with deafness or even special ed in general, but the school was somehow going to provide me what I needed to learn. All I got was hearing aids and an occasional interruption during class for speech therapy. Even though I was at a small school with a larger teacher to student ratio than most schools, I never had any individual help/instruction from the teachers. What were they seriously thinking? Were they praying that I would learn the same as the other students and relying solely on a miracle from God rather than on the knowledge and skills God gave them and the rest of mankind so we can better ourselves (ie knowledge and skills that formed the language of ASL, deaf Ed, anything else, etc)?

One other thing that I am curious about. I was able to read and study enough to do well in school, but I feel like I only retained some of the most basic of knowledge and not all of that (I still don't know left from right). It felt like I couldn't hold onto any of that knowledge past that semester (I had reached the capacity of my memory or something). Whatever was needed for the next course was basically taught again, so it was hard to know for sure. Has anyone else experienced this, do hearing people that are paying attention in school and in a proper setting retain more of this knowledge, or am I only thinking that I should know/remember more than I do?

deafbajagal

All I have to do is copy and paste DeafRaptor's story, tweak it just a little, and there' s my life. I used to think I was alone, too, but Alldeaf has helped me see there are others out there.

We should have a club, lol

Lily7

I was just about to say the same thing! Applies to me too. If I could change one thing about my childhood but only one thing, it would without question be to go to a deaf school.

rebeccalj

^^^^^^ This! Same!

Lily7

No, I experienced this too, it wasn't just you. I eventually figured out that it was because having to basically teach myself and study on my own all the time was not the type of learning method I needed to be using, so it never "stuck" - I always forgot everything not too long after I learned it, as if my brain was making room for new stuff. But really it was just that I did not learn it the way I needed to be learning it so I couldn't retain it.

Reading and teaching myself doesn't work. I retain information best when I "experience" it. Like if someone tells me about it (so having a study buddy would have really helped), being able to watch other kids discussing it via sign would have helped me remember, or I watch a video on it, or use it in real life in practice (like measuring cups while cooking for fractions), that kind of thing. That is what helps me remember. The stuff I learned that way I never forgot, but not much was learned that way.

When I was growing up it was kind of a well known thing that the deaf schools, at least in Oklahoma, were way behind the hearing schools academically, and this is why my mom wouldn't let me go. But to be honest I really think that despite that I still would have LEARNED more than I ever did in a hearing school just because I would have RETAINED more. Frustrating.

rebeccalj

If my son say to me 'Nevermind' ONE MORE TIME I'M GOING TO GROUND HIM FOR LIFE!!! I cannot *stand* that!! Uggh! Make you feel like you are just child and not significant to need to know what is just said!!

Speaking perfectly does not equal understanding perfectly. That is the main problem with being raised oral deaf. People think Deaf cannot speak so, if you can, you *must* hear enough to understand as well. NOT TRUE!!!

rebeccalj

I always have to remind self what equal left or right just before school start back but I'm ambidextrous so that might play part.

I *do* know that the only things I remember from education were areas that I can visualize and this probably play a part? Analyzing numbers or statistics or facts come very easy to me but it is because I look at everything as puzzle that need to be put together. Not 'how' you analyze (ie: step one do this), if that make sense?

moggy

Thanks for writing this stuff it shows that we are not alone. I am new here. Looking for some answers.

Yes it was for me.

My story re school. My mother was in denial and still is today. I cannot ask her anything re me being deaf. I am severley hard of hearing and have survived somehow as we do. I was born in the 1960's. I never met anyone with deaf/hoh during my entire school years and or afterwards until i was an adult. I survived somehow but i wish to find answers to this as i have no memory about my childhood due to mental health issues. Another hurdle was that i did not get a hearing aid until i was 12. Not something i wanted then.

I do not recommend main school schooling for any deaf/hoh child without teacher aide assistance. Yes i know of people that sailed through that were deaf and some that are bitter, damaged etc about main school schooling.

I am a damaged one. I loved learning but was taught that i was not wanted. Hence that i suffer from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from it. It has messed up my life so much, the past.

I also liked the 'not being able to retain school learning'. Thats me too. Pet hate is "Try Harder". I liked this thread too as it help me with something. That due to having to put all our energies into just being able to hear, our capacity to retain is drained to such an extent that we can only hold a little amount. Hence failure at school.

Everyone is different.

rebeccalj

True, but in Deaf community we same.

We all same here.

deafbajagal

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

Not subtitled, but to be fair, not all of our written English posts are translated into ASL either. I wonder if he is a member on AD.

deafdyke

Again, there's the biggest flaw in mainstreaming. Most teachers, including sped teachers really don't have the training on how to teach deaf or blind kids.....and the kids who need more intense services tend to really miss out and fall through the cracks!