I am a high school teacher for the deaf in south Texas. I am deaf myself and I graduated from Gallaudet University (Class of 08'). I am profound deaf with captain "D" and using Bilingual (English and ASL) education as my method of teaching to my deaf students.
I was raised from Florida. I and my parents moved to south TX because of job opportunities. My race background are Cuban, Nicaraguan and Spain. My family background status are highly educated and wealthy. When we moved to south TX. We struggled to adapt the Mexican culture. Their way of living in southeast valley of Texas are so different from our family culture background. Eventually, we adapted their culture and the way of living.
Where I live and work is about 10 miles away from Mexico border. The narco violence had been regularly occurring everyday just right next to my neighbor. I've been witnessing many gruesome crimes on scenes and reading daily headlines of newspaper related to drugs crimes occurring EVERYDAY in my area. I am living in the most dangerous region of U.S. There are numerous of deaf students fled to U.S. from Mexico due to Drugs War and they were so traumatized by their memories from recent drugs wars. One of my male student I encountered with. He is 16 years old deaf student just became U.S. citizen from Mexico and enrolled into my school deaf program. He has a natural stung built body because he was raised in hard labor environment and worked in farm food crops.
He has no language and only communicate in gesture manners and I was able to understand his gesture phrases fully because of my linguistic education in sign language background. I taught him ASL and English and he showed fast paced of acquiring quickly the languages in ASL and English.
A 16 years old profoundly deaf Mexican boy had told me many horrific stories about his experiences growing up in drugs war. He had witnessed many murderous activities such as beheading, stabbing and shooting many victims related to narcotic violence during his childhood. Yet he is a soft-heartened, highly motivated, creative and willing to work hard even though he lacked basic language knowledge. We had made a good team because he acquired language skills (ASL and basic English) in no time. The more language he acquired and the more graphic descriptions he expressed to me about his experiences as he witnessed many drug-related violence incidents. From what he had witnessed as he described were beyond childhood experiences compared to American deaf students' childhood experiences because they never been witnessed and exposed to such intensifying murderous activities in public eyes as my student had witnessed. He grew up in hard ways and he never had opportunities like us, deaf Americans, and yet he still wanted to make a difference.
Mostly interesting about this student was that he has no communication skills but has a extraordinary skills of crafting any dangerous weapons in classroom. This student had no understanding about how schools takes serious about weapons offenses. This student had made a unique effective weapons out of school materials such as paper, clips, and stapler. I caught him producing the forribean weapons in classroom but I can not write a referral on him because the student lacked in language and he do not understand how serious conquesnce of producing any weapons in classroom.
Instead punishing him and I decided to provide a hazing workshop for all students including the mexican student.
The workshop I planned for my classes had brought enormous of educational benefits to my students and for the Mexican student. I strongly believe in collaborative learning technique that had been successfully impacted on my Mexican student about the weaponry issues.
After the workshop, the student had stopped producing dangerous weapons and began to respect for others. I noticed that the mexican student began to look up at me as a sucessful deaf educator and he literally told me that he wanted to do the same thing as I did at the school.
The story of my experiences as a 2nd year professional deaf educator and I felt this is a urgent issues to be debated in deaf education world.
In fact, there are significant increase of number of fatal violence in Mexico since the Mexican president declared war against drugs cartels. In reality of drugs violence cost many lives and it had impacted many innocent deaf bystanders. There are many deaf victims had became victims of drugs wars because of lack of communication. Therefore there are increase number of underage deaf students crossing to U.S. border to pursuit the better quality of life and education. They are enrolling in any school without proper reading and writing grade level in accord with their ages.
This issues need to be resolved by further researches. In many actual cases, Mexican deaf students enrolled into school system without social security number because of their citizen status which will bring many educational barriers to get them to able to go any further with their education.
My question as a deaf educator, I am very curious, for any deaf educators whom read my story and I want to know what are their thoughts, their reactions, and their suggestions to help my victimized students to be successful in any learning of educational curriculum even though they learned English and ASL at late stage of teen-hood.
I was raised from Florida. I and my parents moved to south TX because of job opportunities. My race background are Cuban, Nicaraguan and Spain. My family background status are highly educated and wealthy. When we moved to south TX. We struggled to adapt the Mexican culture. Their way of living in southeast valley of Texas are so different from our family culture background. Eventually, we adapted their culture and the way of living.
Where I live and work is about 10 miles away from Mexico border. The narco violence had been regularly occurring everyday just right next to my neighbor. I've been witnessing many gruesome crimes on scenes and reading daily headlines of newspaper related to drugs crimes occurring EVERYDAY in my area. I am living in the most dangerous region of U.S. There are numerous of deaf students fled to U.S. from Mexico due to Drugs War and they were so traumatized by their memories from recent drugs wars. One of my male student I encountered with. He is 16 years old deaf student just became U.S. citizen from Mexico and enrolled into my school deaf program. He has a natural stung built body because he was raised in hard labor environment and worked in farm food crops.
He has no language and only communicate in gesture manners and I was able to understand his gesture phrases fully because of my linguistic education in sign language background. I taught him ASL and English and he showed fast paced of acquiring quickly the languages in ASL and English.
A 16 years old profoundly deaf Mexican boy had told me many horrific stories about his experiences growing up in drugs war. He had witnessed many murderous activities such as beheading, stabbing and shooting many victims related to narcotic violence during his childhood. Yet he is a soft-heartened, highly motivated, creative and willing to work hard even though he lacked basic language knowledge. We had made a good team because he acquired language skills (ASL and basic English) in no time. The more language he acquired and the more graphic descriptions he expressed to me about his experiences as he witnessed many drug-related violence incidents. From what he had witnessed as he described were beyond childhood experiences compared to American deaf students' childhood experiences because they never been witnessed and exposed to such intensifying murderous activities in public eyes as my student had witnessed. He grew up in hard ways and he never had opportunities like us, deaf Americans, and yet he still wanted to make a difference.
Mostly interesting about this student was that he has no communication skills but has a extraordinary skills of crafting any dangerous weapons in classroom. This student had no understanding about how schools takes serious about weapons offenses. This student had made a unique effective weapons out of school materials such as paper, clips, and stapler. I caught him producing the forribean weapons in classroom but I can not write a referral on him because the student lacked in language and he do not understand how serious conquesnce of producing any weapons in classroom.
Instead punishing him and I decided to provide a hazing workshop for all students including the mexican student.
The workshop I planned for my classes had brought enormous of educational benefits to my students and for the Mexican student. I strongly believe in collaborative learning technique that had been successfully impacted on my Mexican student about the weaponry issues.
After the workshop, the student had stopped producing dangerous weapons and began to respect for others. I noticed that the mexican student began to look up at me as a sucessful deaf educator and he literally told me that he wanted to do the same thing as I did at the school.
The story of my experiences as a 2nd year professional deaf educator and I felt this is a urgent issues to be debated in deaf education world.
In fact, there are significant increase of number of fatal violence in Mexico since the Mexican president declared war against drugs cartels. In reality of drugs violence cost many lives and it had impacted many innocent deaf bystanders. There are many deaf victims had became victims of drugs wars because of lack of communication. Therefore there are increase number of underage deaf students crossing to U.S. border to pursuit the better quality of life and education. They are enrolling in any school without proper reading and writing grade level in accord with their ages.
This issues need to be resolved by further researches. In many actual cases, Mexican deaf students enrolled into school system without social security number because of their citizen status which will bring many educational barriers to get them to able to go any further with their education.
My question as a deaf educator, I am very curious, for any deaf educators whom read my story and I want to know what are their thoughts, their reactions, and their suggestions to help my victimized students to be successful in any learning of educational curriculum even though they learned English and ASL at late stage of teen-hood.
You are doing the right thing. 