Miss-Delectable
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- Joined
- Apr 18, 2004
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Disservice to deaf -- dailypress.com
Shame on Hampton for cutting the only deaf education teacher fluent in American Sign Language.
Our daughter is about to graduate in May with a degree in special education/education of deaf children from UNC-Greensboro.
In North Carolina the school systems rely on an auditory-oral approach, which teaches deaf children to use their residual hearing in combination with speech reading and contextual cues to better comprehend and use spoken language. Sign language is not used in this approach, which relies on early intervention and assumes amplification through implants and hearing aids.
Our daughter does not want to teach in North Carolina because she sees the deficiencies in this one-size-fits-all approach that discounts the utility of ASL.
Virginia does not mandate, let alone rely on, the auditory-oral approach, yet that is effectively what Hampton is doing to its deaf students, in midstream of their education and with no preparation or analysis to determine the impact on current students.
The Hampton schools are so short-sighted that they cannot see what a disservice they are doing to deaf students. These students need ASL to enable them to concentrate on subject matter, e.g. history, science and math, rather than having to concentrate on just lip-reading and translating what a teacher is saying.
Hampton is not just abandoning this teacher — it is abandoning all the deaf children who are and will be in their school division. This is heartbreaking.
Josephine Krantz
Williamsburg
Shame on Hampton for cutting the only deaf education teacher fluent in American Sign Language.
Our daughter is about to graduate in May with a degree in special education/education of deaf children from UNC-Greensboro.
In North Carolina the school systems rely on an auditory-oral approach, which teaches deaf children to use their residual hearing in combination with speech reading and contextual cues to better comprehend and use spoken language. Sign language is not used in this approach, which relies on early intervention and assumes amplification through implants and hearing aids.
Our daughter does not want to teach in North Carolina because she sees the deficiencies in this one-size-fits-all approach that discounts the utility of ASL.
Virginia does not mandate, let alone rely on, the auditory-oral approach, yet that is effectively what Hampton is doing to its deaf students, in midstream of their education and with no preparation or analysis to determine the impact on current students.
The Hampton schools are so short-sighted that they cannot see what a disservice they are doing to deaf students. These students need ASL to enable them to concentrate on subject matter, e.g. history, science and math, rather than having to concentrate on just lip-reading and translating what a teacher is saying.
Hampton is not just abandoning this teacher — it is abandoning all the deaf children who are and will be in their school division. This is heartbreaking.
Josephine Krantz
Williamsburg
