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http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051120/NEWS/511200315/1021
It's a scenario many families have confronted.
A teenager entrenched in high school faces the possibility of moving and starting anew at a different school. Debates between the parents and the student ensue, with the youth making his or her case in emotional terms.
And the teenager wins in the end.
That's what happened with Rachel Reeves and her parents. But here's the twist: Reeves was the one pressing for upheaval midway through her high school career.
Reeves, 17, and her long-time friend, Julie Spigner, 16, both left Lakeland High School to enroll this fall at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, 160 miles away. Each has limited hearing, and each attended public schools in Polk County before this year.
"I really didn't want to leave home," Reeves said recently by e-mail, adding, "I knew in my heart FSDB was the right choice. It would be perfect if my family could move to St. Augustine."
Reeves and Spigner, now thriving in their first year at the 107-year-old residential school, each faced a choice that can cause anguish for deaf students and their families: whether to be educated in a mainstream school or a specialty school.
Scotty Lee, program manager for Central Florida Deaf Services, understands the urge that drew Reeves and Spigner to their new school. Deaf from early childhood, Lee attended the Tennessee School for the Deaf and Gallaudet University, the nation's only school of higher education devoted to the hearingimpaired.
"Sometimes you do miss a lot of information" in a standard school, Lee said through an interpreter. "And when you go to a residential school, that is where you feel like you fit in. I've heard that from many a person. Oftentimes I'm getting more information from my deaf friends than from the hearing world because communication is so much easier."
Reeves and Spigner fit different slices in the spectrum of people described as deaf. Reeves was born without hearing and at age 6 received a cochlear implant, a device that gave her partial hearing in her left ear.
Spigner, also diagnosed as deaf in infancy, has some perception of sound and wears a hearing aid in her left ear.
Cochlear implants work differently from hearing aids. Rather than amplifying sound heard through the ear, an implant electronically transmits sonic information to the brain, which interprets it as sound.
Implants emerged as an experimental procedure in the 1960s and earned federal approval for adults in the 1980s. The procedure remained rare and controversial for children in 1994, when Reeves' mother, Rani Dickey, considered whether to seek an implant for her.
Reeves received her implant in Michigan, where her family lived at the time. Though successful, the procedure was not a miracle cure.
"I think a lot of people don't realize when they go to get implants for their kids how much work it really is," Dickey said. "You're not just going to put ears on your kid and, voila, they hear. It's like she was 6 years old and had the ears of a newborn baby. She heard herself cry, and it scared her."
Reeves learned sign language at an early age and also took speech therapy for 13 years. She stopped signing around age 10 and tried to communicate entirely by voice, but within a couple of years she resumed signing even as her speaking ability improved.
Spigner attended public schools with special programs for deaf students -- Oscar Pope Elementary, Southwest Middle School and Lakeland High School -- and benefited from interpreters provided by the school system who rendered teachers' speech into sign language. She and Reeves became best friends after the latter moved here eight years ago.
While in middle school, Reeves began telling her mother she wanted to attend the Florida School for the Deaf, but Dickey resisted the idea. Spigner occasionally raised the notion as well, but her parents doubted she really wanted to leave home.
By outward appearances, the two friends fared well at Lakeland High. Both played volleyball last year, Spigner on the varsity and Reeves on the junior varsity. Reeves' teachers offered glowing assessments of her academic progress.
But when Dickey pushed for an evaluation, she learned her daughter's reading comprehension was well below her grade level.
"I wasn't comfortable in a hearing classroom," Reeves said. "It's hard trying to listen to the teacher and watch the interpreter at the same time. I would miss a lot of information."
Communication barriers hampered the girls outside the classroom as well. Reeves wanted to play soccer, for example, but could not be assured of having an interpreter at practices and games.
Socially, the girls felt alienated in a school where only 20 out of nearly 2,000 students were hearing-impaired.
"I felt very left out and felt I did not really fit in because no one understood how it felt to be different," Spigner said through an interpreter.
Both girls already knew many FSDB students from camps and festivals for the deaf and felt confident they would be happier at the state-funded school, which admits students at no charge to their parents.
"She told me one day, `Mom, I'm deaf,' " Dickey said of her daughter. "I felt like we were at a crossroads, and I didn't know what to do. She said, `Mom, I feel like in my heart this is what I want to do.' "
Dr. Barry Hirsch, director of otology at the University of Pittsburgh, said children with partial hearing and their parents face difficult decisions about their educational paths.
"There are parents of deaf kids with (cochlear) implants who still put them into the deaf-culture school, feeling the child will receive two forms of language and education and be better off," Hirsch said. "But there's the other philosophy -- if you're going to put an implant in you want to totally immerse the child into oral education because if they succeed they're going to be part of the hearing world."
Reeves and Spigner seem to be flourishing academically and socially at FSDB, where most teachers use sign language as well as speech. Both play on the varsity volleyball team and have been offered spots on Team Florida, an otherwise all-hearing squad scheduled to compete next summer in Hawaii.
"Here it's so much easier because of communication," Reeves said. "The soccer coach is deaf and the volleyball coach is a signer, so you don't have to go through interpreters. It's through the person in charge, just like in the classroom."
Sherri Spigner said her daughter, a 16-year-old yearning for independence, is thrilled to be free from reliance on an interpreter throughout the school day. Julie's 12-year-old sister, Robin, is also deaf, and her parents will let her decide whether to attend FSDB when she reaches high school.
Though the two students miss their families, the school provides buses that bring them home each weekend.
So what happens after high school? Reeves doesn't worry she'll be less equipped to navigate the sound-dominated world just because she is now immersed in an enclave of deafness.
"Functioning in the hearing world later will not be a problem," she said. "My family is all hearing, and I have hearing world experiences all the time."
It's a scenario many families have confronted.
A teenager entrenched in high school faces the possibility of moving and starting anew at a different school. Debates between the parents and the student ensue, with the youth making his or her case in emotional terms.
And the teenager wins in the end.
That's what happened with Rachel Reeves and her parents. But here's the twist: Reeves was the one pressing for upheaval midway through her high school career.
Reeves, 17, and her long-time friend, Julie Spigner, 16, both left Lakeland High School to enroll this fall at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, 160 miles away. Each has limited hearing, and each attended public schools in Polk County before this year.
"I really didn't want to leave home," Reeves said recently by e-mail, adding, "I knew in my heart FSDB was the right choice. It would be perfect if my family could move to St. Augustine."
Reeves and Spigner, now thriving in their first year at the 107-year-old residential school, each faced a choice that can cause anguish for deaf students and their families: whether to be educated in a mainstream school or a specialty school.
Scotty Lee, program manager for Central Florida Deaf Services, understands the urge that drew Reeves and Spigner to their new school. Deaf from early childhood, Lee attended the Tennessee School for the Deaf and Gallaudet University, the nation's only school of higher education devoted to the hearingimpaired.
"Sometimes you do miss a lot of information" in a standard school, Lee said through an interpreter. "And when you go to a residential school, that is where you feel like you fit in. I've heard that from many a person. Oftentimes I'm getting more information from my deaf friends than from the hearing world because communication is so much easier."
Reeves and Spigner fit different slices in the spectrum of people described as deaf. Reeves was born without hearing and at age 6 received a cochlear implant, a device that gave her partial hearing in her left ear.
Spigner, also diagnosed as deaf in infancy, has some perception of sound and wears a hearing aid in her left ear.
Cochlear implants work differently from hearing aids. Rather than amplifying sound heard through the ear, an implant electronically transmits sonic information to the brain, which interprets it as sound.
Implants emerged as an experimental procedure in the 1960s and earned federal approval for adults in the 1980s. The procedure remained rare and controversial for children in 1994, when Reeves' mother, Rani Dickey, considered whether to seek an implant for her.
Reeves received her implant in Michigan, where her family lived at the time. Though successful, the procedure was not a miracle cure.
"I think a lot of people don't realize when they go to get implants for their kids how much work it really is," Dickey said. "You're not just going to put ears on your kid and, voila, they hear. It's like she was 6 years old and had the ears of a newborn baby. She heard herself cry, and it scared her."
Reeves learned sign language at an early age and also took speech therapy for 13 years. She stopped signing around age 10 and tried to communicate entirely by voice, but within a couple of years she resumed signing even as her speaking ability improved.
Spigner attended public schools with special programs for deaf students -- Oscar Pope Elementary, Southwest Middle School and Lakeland High School -- and benefited from interpreters provided by the school system who rendered teachers' speech into sign language. She and Reeves became best friends after the latter moved here eight years ago.
While in middle school, Reeves began telling her mother she wanted to attend the Florida School for the Deaf, but Dickey resisted the idea. Spigner occasionally raised the notion as well, but her parents doubted she really wanted to leave home.
By outward appearances, the two friends fared well at Lakeland High. Both played volleyball last year, Spigner on the varsity and Reeves on the junior varsity. Reeves' teachers offered glowing assessments of her academic progress.
But when Dickey pushed for an evaluation, she learned her daughter's reading comprehension was well below her grade level.
"I wasn't comfortable in a hearing classroom," Reeves said. "It's hard trying to listen to the teacher and watch the interpreter at the same time. I would miss a lot of information."
Communication barriers hampered the girls outside the classroom as well. Reeves wanted to play soccer, for example, but could not be assured of having an interpreter at practices and games.
Socially, the girls felt alienated in a school where only 20 out of nearly 2,000 students were hearing-impaired.
"I felt very left out and felt I did not really fit in because no one understood how it felt to be different," Spigner said through an interpreter.
Both girls already knew many FSDB students from camps and festivals for the deaf and felt confident they would be happier at the state-funded school, which admits students at no charge to their parents.
"She told me one day, `Mom, I'm deaf,' " Dickey said of her daughter. "I felt like we were at a crossroads, and I didn't know what to do. She said, `Mom, I feel like in my heart this is what I want to do.' "
Dr. Barry Hirsch, director of otology at the University of Pittsburgh, said children with partial hearing and their parents face difficult decisions about their educational paths.
"There are parents of deaf kids with (cochlear) implants who still put them into the deaf-culture school, feeling the child will receive two forms of language and education and be better off," Hirsch said. "But there's the other philosophy -- if you're going to put an implant in you want to totally immerse the child into oral education because if they succeed they're going to be part of the hearing world."
Reeves and Spigner seem to be flourishing academically and socially at FSDB, where most teachers use sign language as well as speech. Both play on the varsity volleyball team and have been offered spots on Team Florida, an otherwise all-hearing squad scheduled to compete next summer in Hawaii.
"Here it's so much easier because of communication," Reeves said. "The soccer coach is deaf and the volleyball coach is a signer, so you don't have to go through interpreters. It's through the person in charge, just like in the classroom."
Sherri Spigner said her daughter, a 16-year-old yearning for independence, is thrilled to be free from reliance on an interpreter throughout the school day. Julie's 12-year-old sister, Robin, is also deaf, and her parents will let her decide whether to attend FSDB when she reaches high school.
Though the two students miss their families, the school provides buses that bring them home each weekend.
So what happens after high school? Reeves doesn't worry she'll be less equipped to navigate the sound-dominated world just because she is now immersed in an enclave of deafness.
"Functioning in the hearing world later will not be a problem," she said. "My family is all hearing, and I have hearing world experiences all the time."
