Miss-Delectable
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Deaf teacher makes a special connection with his students || OnlineAthens.com
Greg Reese sends a message to his students that can be read only by the expression on his face and a gesture of his hands: You can be successful, like me.
Reese is deaf, and so are his students.
Reese is one of the few deaf and hard of hearing teachers in Northeast Georgia's 13-county public school region. He works with about 30 elementary school students every year.
This summer, he's helping Omar Cerritos to pass the fifth-grade Criterion-Referenced Competency Test in reading.
During a session last week, both Reese and Omar read "Isabel's House of Butterflies," a story about a poor Mexican family who lives in a region of the country known for hosting swarms of migrating monarch butterflies each year.
As the two read the book, Reese would stop to ask Omar questions. Using sign language, he'd ask Omar to explain why the family needed to till its garden. A few minutes later, Omar and Reese discussed the use of a pronoun and its meaning.
"It's not 'over' - it's 'our,' " Reese said. "Is this school ours? Well, yeah. We share it; we work here."
Omar can't hear a teacher read a word to help him sound out its letters. Instead, he's had to pick up sign language, and then learn another language - English - to read. Like many children who are deaf, he wasn't able to read and communicate until he turned 6, Reese said.
By contrast, hearing children are exposed to language from birth and around age 2 begin to master the skills from listening to their parents speak each day.
Greg Reese sends a message to his students that can be read only by the expression on his face and a gesture of his hands: You can be successful, like me.
Reese is deaf, and so are his students.
Reese is one of the few deaf and hard of hearing teachers in Northeast Georgia's 13-county public school region. He works with about 30 elementary school students every year.
This summer, he's helping Omar Cerritos to pass the fifth-grade Criterion-Referenced Competency Test in reading.
During a session last week, both Reese and Omar read "Isabel's House of Butterflies," a story about a poor Mexican family who lives in a region of the country known for hosting swarms of migrating monarch butterflies each year.
As the two read the book, Reese would stop to ask Omar questions. Using sign language, he'd ask Omar to explain why the family needed to till its garden. A few minutes later, Omar and Reese discussed the use of a pronoun and its meaning.
"It's not 'over' - it's 'our,' " Reese said. "Is this school ours? Well, yeah. We share it; we work here."
Omar can't hear a teacher read a word to help him sound out its letters. Instead, he's had to pick up sign language, and then learn another language - English - to read. Like many children who are deaf, he wasn't able to read and communicate until he turned 6, Reese said.
By contrast, hearing children are exposed to language from birth and around age 2 begin to master the skills from listening to their parents speak each day.