Miss-Delectable
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2004
- Messages
- 17,160
- Reaction score
- 7
HS class of deaf & hearing students graduate together
They were ninth-graders when they first confronted integration, when kids who could hear came to what had been a school for the deaf.
They sat separately at first, eying each other warily, each group fearing the other was talking about them.
But yesterday, with those differences far behind them, they all celebrated together as close friends and graduates of the American Sign Language & English Dual Language High School in Manhattan.
The 14 deaf grads and six hearing grads who either yelled their congratulations to each other or signed it with rapidly moving hands are only the second class to graduate from the one-of-a-kind school since it brought the two worlds together.
"There were a lot of nerves involved" at first, said Eldelmiro Matias Jr., a deaf grad from the Bronx who started in the school's prekindergarten program. "I had to realize that I had to find confidence in myself to get along with others."
Signing through an interpreter, he said his friends are now a mix of hearing and deaf.
The school, which opened as JHS 47 School for the Deaf in 1908, started admitting hearing children in 2003 after Principal Martin Florsheim noticed a drop in his enrollment.
Medical advances and other factors have dramatically lowered the number of deaf students seeking a public school education in New York, he said through a sign-language interpreter. He made the school bilingual to keep it afloat.
The change was controversial, he said.
"I had two different cultures basically clashing with each other. ... Deaf people are deeply rooted in deaf culture."
Many of the deaf alumni were upset and, at school, hearing children were uncomfortable with things such as touching, which is common among the deaf.
"We basically had to set up new rules so that both worlds would be able to coexist simultaneously," Florsheim said.
Since then, the school has been a hit. While Florsheim originally assumed that the only hearing children to enroll would be the children or siblings of the deaf, he has discovered that many come just to learn another language.
Now, of the 210 kids in the schools' middle and high school sections, 140 are hearing.
Among them is Class of 2007 valedictorian Heather Maher, who said she chose the school when her family moved to New York in her sophomore year because she thought it would be interesting.
"I wanted to learn sign because I thought it was a beautiful language, but I really ended up loving it here," she said. "I'm so happy I came here. My life has changed so much."
They were ninth-graders when they first confronted integration, when kids who could hear came to what had been a school for the deaf.
They sat separately at first, eying each other warily, each group fearing the other was talking about them.
But yesterday, with those differences far behind them, they all celebrated together as close friends and graduates of the American Sign Language & English Dual Language High School in Manhattan.
The 14 deaf grads and six hearing grads who either yelled their congratulations to each other or signed it with rapidly moving hands are only the second class to graduate from the one-of-a-kind school since it brought the two worlds together.
"There were a lot of nerves involved" at first, said Eldelmiro Matias Jr., a deaf grad from the Bronx who started in the school's prekindergarten program. "I had to realize that I had to find confidence in myself to get along with others."
Signing through an interpreter, he said his friends are now a mix of hearing and deaf.
The school, which opened as JHS 47 School for the Deaf in 1908, started admitting hearing children in 2003 after Principal Martin Florsheim noticed a drop in his enrollment.
Medical advances and other factors have dramatically lowered the number of deaf students seeking a public school education in New York, he said through a sign-language interpreter. He made the school bilingual to keep it afloat.
The change was controversial, he said.
"I had two different cultures basically clashing with each other. ... Deaf people are deeply rooted in deaf culture."
Many of the deaf alumni were upset and, at school, hearing children were uncomfortable with things such as touching, which is common among the deaf.
"We basically had to set up new rules so that both worlds would be able to coexist simultaneously," Florsheim said.
Since then, the school has been a hit. While Florsheim originally assumed that the only hearing children to enroll would be the children or siblings of the deaf, he has discovered that many come just to learn another language.
Now, of the 210 kids in the schools' middle and high school sections, 140 are hearing.
Among them is Class of 2007 valedictorian Heather Maher, who said she chose the school when her family moved to New York in her sophomore year because she thought it would be interesting.
"I wanted to learn sign because I thought it was a beautiful language, but I really ended up loving it here," she said. "I'm so happy I came here. My life has changed so much."