Miss-Delectable
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http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8860~3251057,00.html
BRATTLEBORO -- A 13-year-old deaf girl found her voice in poetry.
Maggie Schiller, an eighth-grade student at The Austine School for the Deaf, has always liked to sit down at the computer and bang out stories.
Earlier this school year, her English teacher recommended she try to write a poem for a national contest.
Maggie's poem, "Unfamiliar Silence," was chosen for publication and it is a finalist for national selection as one of the top 10 poems for Creative Communications, a national publisher of poems and stories by students.
"I feel like whatever people are reading, they may understand me in my poems," she said Friday, in her family's home in Brattleboro.
Maggie has bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. She has trouble with consonants and beginnings and ending of words, her mother explained. Maggie reads lips and her speaking is mostly understandable.
At school, she uses American Sign Language with her friends.
Young deaf students sometimes confuse the past and present in language, her mother said, as ASL has its own grammar system and time is sometimes confused in interpretations.
Her perception of sound and silence and time collide in her poem.
"One day, the sounds become unclear in my ears," she wrote.
Maggie said she did not think her poem would stack up against the others in the contest.
"I didn't think they would pick someone who is deaf," she said. "I'm kind of different."
When she signs her poetry her actions are animated.
She scrunches her face at the line: "The sounds I used to hear, are no longer there."
And on the lines: "I am deaf and I do not hear. Everything is silent," she waves her hand across the open air and shakes her head.
Her next poem might be about her team's basketball season. She said it has been a tough year. The team only has two wins and she said some of her teammates are getting depressed and frustrated with the losses.
"I want to tell people it's just a game," said Maggie. "It's just fun. If we improve we'll be able to win a few games."
Whether she is reading lips, sounding out her words, doing sign language or writing poems, Maggie said it is her attempt to have her voice heard and her ideas understood.
"It all helps us communicate with each other," Maggie said. "If we don't communicate with each other we won't learn a thing."
BRATTLEBORO -- A 13-year-old deaf girl found her voice in poetry.
Maggie Schiller, an eighth-grade student at The Austine School for the Deaf, has always liked to sit down at the computer and bang out stories.
Earlier this school year, her English teacher recommended she try to write a poem for a national contest.
Maggie's poem, "Unfamiliar Silence," was chosen for publication and it is a finalist for national selection as one of the top 10 poems for Creative Communications, a national publisher of poems and stories by students.
"I feel like whatever people are reading, they may understand me in my poems," she said Friday, in her family's home in Brattleboro.
Maggie has bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. She has trouble with consonants and beginnings and ending of words, her mother explained. Maggie reads lips and her speaking is mostly understandable.
At school, she uses American Sign Language with her friends.
Young deaf students sometimes confuse the past and present in language, her mother said, as ASL has its own grammar system and time is sometimes confused in interpretations.
Her perception of sound and silence and time collide in her poem.
"One day, the sounds become unclear in my ears," she wrote.
Maggie said she did not think her poem would stack up against the others in the contest.
"I didn't think they would pick someone who is deaf," she said. "I'm kind of different."
When she signs her poetry her actions are animated.
She scrunches her face at the line: "The sounds I used to hear, are no longer there."
And on the lines: "I am deaf and I do not hear. Everything is silent," she waves her hand across the open air and shakes her head.
Her next poem might be about her team's basketball season. She said it has been a tough year. The team only has two wins and she said some of her teammates are getting depressed and frustrated with the losses.
"I want to tell people it's just a game," said Maggie. "It's just fun. If we improve we'll be able to win a few games."
Whether she is reading lips, sounding out her words, doing sign language or writing poems, Maggie said it is her attempt to have her voice heard and her ideas understood.
"It all helps us communicate with each other," Maggie said. "If we don't communicate with each other we won't learn a thing."