How To Explain Importance of Deaf Peers For Deaf Child?

Sign with that kid. no batteries required.
 
Mountain Man said:
Find yourself a good a parent mentor. When my wife and I recently went through the IEP process for our deaf son, we contacted our local Deaf school who put us in contact with their former principal. Her input in the meetings was invaluable because she knew exactly how to word things -- this wasn't exactly her first IEP meeting -- and the school district officials recognized her as an authority which is important because, as I'm sure you're aware, parental input is so easily dismissed in the IEP process, but with her speaking on our behalf, our voices were heard.

That's the best advice I can give you.
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This is very good advice!!! I remember the IEP's for my brother and it took having his Devl Psych come in to explain to them what he needed as a child w/a mild hl and capd with adhd... b/c mom couldn't get it thru to the schools that he wasn't 'goofing off' or 'not putting forth his best effort'...

Get someone w/creditibility and extensive knowledge of the situation in on your 'team'!
 
I'll tell you what going to happen. They will put them in a Special Education class (probably mainly English if she can do well on other subjects without help) They always do when they don't have a special program for the deaf. That's what they did with me. They had ZERO program for the deaf at my school.

Another solution? Move to another house within the currect school zone district.
 
Mom2DeafChild,
You could argue that your daughter needs the educational support of a formal dhh program.
You said yourself that you REALLY like the Dhh program, as opposed to the mainstream with minimal support. Is your daughter doing a lot better in that program? Use that aspect for keeping her current placement.
Say that she'll learn more from instructors who actually KNOW how to teach dhh kids. Say that you're afraid if she's " regular class with minimal accomondations" mainstreamed she'll fall through the cracks.
Fair_jour.......I think if jackie solaranzio can get C-Print for her honor roll kids then Mom2DeafChild's request is perfectly legit.
 
deafdyke said:
Mom2DeafChild,
You could argue that your daughter needs the educational support of a formal dhh program.
You said yourself that you REALLY like the Dhh program, as opposed to the mainstream with minimal support. Is your daughter doing a lot better in that program? Use that aspect for keeping her current placement.
Say that she'll learn more from instructors who actually KNOW how to teach dhh kids. Say that you're afraid if she's " regular class with minimal accomondations" mainstreamed she'll fall through the cracks.
Fair_jour.......I think if jackie solaranzio can get C-Print for her honor roll kids then Mom2DeafChild's request is perfectly legit.
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I merely said that you can not argue both sides of the coin. Either you can argue that she needs hearing peers for language models OR she needs deaf peers, can't do both.
 
faire_jour said:
I merely said that you can not argue both sides of the coin. Either you can argue that she needs hearing peers for language models OR she needs deaf peers, can't do both.
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It is a damn shame if the schools won't allow for both.
 
Do what it takes to stay with the deaf school. Better oral skills is a poor excuse for a school to try and pull a student out an environment where she's thriving so they can scam some money out of the government and toss her into the same system as everybody else with a little note to teacher.
 
I merely said that you can not argue both sides of the coin. Either you can argue that she needs hearing peers for language models OR she needs deaf peers, can't do both.
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On the other hand, maybe she can. It sounds like her daughter is at one of those "regional" programs.....In which case, she would get exposure to BOTH hearing and Deaf models.
Besides, it sounds like her spoken language is pretty decent......right?
 
She's got excellent speech when she speaks (she's very shy, so a lot of times people don't think she CAN speak, lol, until she finally opens her mouth).

She's not in a deaf program per se; she's in a mainstream program that just happens to be in a school with excellent support services for the deaf. The home school has NO support for deaf children and they are used to shuffling all the deaf kids into one school/one type of class. In order for her to go into the home school they would need to build a whole new program around her, and while they COULD do that for the technical aspects of it (slot A: TOD, slot B: interpreter, slot C: etc), they could not accommodate her the same way, to the same level.

We have experience in this school already, from when she first started K, and it wasn't good. Nothing has changed there since she has been in the other program, so I can't imagine our experience would be any better this time around.

The lack of deaf peers is just ONE of the issues I have. There are many more, but I think I CAN argue both sides of the coin on this issue. Why does she either have to be completely with hearing peers or completely with deaf peers? She is a deaf child that can hear. Therefore she needs both hearing AND deaf peers. I plan on asking them that, and we'll see if they can tell me why she isn't entitled to both...
 
MomToDeafChild said:
She's got excellent speech when she speaks (she's very shy, so a lot of times people don't think she CAN speak, lol, until she finally opens her mouth).

She's not in a deaf program per se; she's in a mainstream program that just happens to be in a school with excellent support services for the deaf. The home school has NO support for deaf children and they are used to shuffling all the deaf kids into one school/one type of class. In order for her to go into the home school they would need to build a whole new program around her, and while they COULD do that for the technical aspects of it (slot A: TOD, slot B: interpreter, slot C: etc), they could not accommodate her the same way, to the same level.

We have experience in this school already, from when she first started K, and it wasn't good. Nothing has changed there since she has been in the other program, so I can't imagine our experience would be any better this time around.

The lack of deaf peers is just ONE of the issues I have. There are many more, but I think I CAN argue both sides of the coin on this issue. Why does she either have to be completely with hearing peers or completely with deaf peers? She is a deaf child that can hear. Therefore she needs both hearing AND deaf peers. I plan on asking them that, and we'll see if they can tell me why she isn't entitled to both...
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Honestly, I was told that the only arguement I could make is that of language access to peers. And it your child is speaking, she will be able to communicate with hearing peers. So, you would need another "arguement".

Is your daughter on an IEP? How delayed is she? In what areas? Maybe that is a way you can approach it?
 
she's in a mainstream program that just happens to be in a school with excellent support services for the deaf
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Oh you mean one of those schools that serve as a regional base for dhh kids? In that case, isn't she getting exposure to both deaf and hearing kids?
 
deafdyke said:
Oh you mean one of those schools that serve as a regional base for dhh kids? In that case, isn't she getting exposure to both deaf and hearing kids?
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Yes! In the current placement she gets access to both. I am arguing for her to stay in this placement. This school district gets kids from lots of other school districts that don't have proper services, not just ours, because they've put the effort into making a really good program.

The problem is that our home school district wants to move her back to the home school, and she would be the ONLY deaf child there, so no more exposure to other deaf children, only hearing children. And since the home school doesn't get many deaf students through it's doors (the deaf kids all get shuffled off to other programs so aren't in the mainstream), the staff and student body has no experience with deaf children in their midst.

I DO think a deaf child can succeed in the mainstream, but the services have GOT to be there. I do NOT think you can take a deaf child and just drop them into ANY mainstream program and expect it to work. Too many times, the mainstream educators have limited/no experience with deaf children, so they treat them the same way as any hearing child in the class. But no matter how well a deaf child can communicate/hear, they are STILL a deaf child. You cannot treat them as a hearing child and expect them to succeed as well as the rest of the kids.

This is what the home school district did for my daughter for Kindergarten (and it failed), and what they would be doing for next year...
 
MomToDeafChild said:
Yes! In the current placement she gets access to both. I am arguing for her to stay in this placement. This school district gets kids from lots of other school districts that don't have proper services, not just ours, because they've put the effort into making a really good program.

The problem is that our home school district wants to move her back to the home school, and she would be the ONLY deaf child there, so no more exposure to other deaf children, only hearing children. And since the home school doesn't get many deaf students through it's doors (the deaf kids all get shuffled off to other programs so aren't in the mainstream), the staff and student body has no experience with deaf children in their midst.

I DO think a deaf child can succeed in the mainstream, but the services have GOT to be there. I do NOT think you can take a deaf child and just drop them into ANY mainstream program and expect it to work. Too many times, the mainstream educators have limited/no experience with deaf children, so they treat them the same way as any hearing child in the class. But no matter how well a deaf child can communicate/hear, they are STILL a deaf child. You cannot treat them as a hearing child and expect them to succeed as well as the rest of the kids.

This is what the home school district did for my daughter for Kindergarten (and it failed), and what they would be doing for next year...
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I totally agree with u that u can't drop a deaf child in any mainstreamed program and expect it to work. That's another reason why our program gets so many children who have fell so far behind. Their parents weren't like u..they didn't know any better. They believed their school distrcits' experts who didn't have any understanding of deaf education.
 
I think you are wonderful! I assume you are hearing, but please correct me if i am wrong. children should be left with both options open, as long as oral and ci work for her. but you are right, she should have friends and contact with both worlds. i have many deaf friends who had completely oral education and actually now have no sign skills which they regret. it is weird that i can go to deaf parties but have to interpret for him. social groups teach skills that cannot be learned in a classroom or even from home, adn it is important for a child to be able to use this information to form a self and later be able to make the decision on how to define themselves and how they want to communicate.
 
DO think a deaf child can succeed in the mainstream, but the services have GOT to be there. I do NOT think you can take a deaf child and just drop them into ANY mainstream program and expect it to work. Too many times, the mainstream educators have limited/no experience with deaf children, so they treat them the same way as any hearing child in the class. But no matter how well a deaf child can communicate/hear, they are STILL a deaf child. You cannot treat them as a hearing child and expect them to succeed as well as the rest of the kids.
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Mom2DeafChild, Excellent, excellent post!! SO DEAD ON! People say/think that kids do better academicly in a regular class regualr school setting. Yet the fact of the matter is, that most mainstream eductors (including special ed) don't generally get a lot of training on how to teach kids with more classic (ie hearing,sight, mobilty etc) Most of their training is on teaching kids with LD or ADD style educational issues. They get the minimum on how to teach kids like us. So if we don't suceed with minimal accomondations, we get lumped in with the " Ummmm who's President Obama?" types who seem to be (sadly) legion in sped. You know..........one way you could try to keep her in the program, is argue that the teachers at her orgional school don't have the training to teach dhh kids, and just fortyfive mintues a week with the itinerant TOD isn't really going to cut it.
Is she really thriving at the program? You could argue that this could head off things like social-emotional issues (which are very very common among dhh students) behavorial issues (many mainstreamed-oral kids have "add" like behavorial issues) and so on.
 
How to explain the importance? Tell them it is critical to your child's psycho-social development. Hearing children have that advantage by exposure to their peers (other hearing children). To deny a deaf child that same experience is to deny them the full advantage of the educational environment.
 
Well, I must have done a good job explaining the importance of deaf peers (in addition to the good speech models I've always pushed for), because after a meeting with the school superintendent, it's been decided that she can stay in her current placement next year because they don't have a comparable program for her in our own area! Yippee! They actually mentioned that the deaf community was not something they could recreate for her here, and that is more important than cost. I don't know if the deaf peer issue was the deciding factor or they finally realized I would go to court over it, but whatever the reason, she stays where she needs to be!
 
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