I have deaf students in my class, and people always say,
“It must be really quiet where you work!’
Hahahaha…no.
I’m a teacher of the deaf and an educational sign language interpreter. I am certified in both and have college degrees in both fields. Most of my thirty-year career has been at the middle and high school level, and, no, it has not been quiet.
I sort of accidentally found my way into this field. I am hearing, and I have no deaf or hard-of-hearing family members. However, I did not start learning to sign until I was in college, in my teacher-training program.
How did I find my niche in education?
How did I find my way into this rather niche area of education, then? I had a deaf pen pal when I was in high school. He was about the same age as I was, and he told me what school was like for him. He was mainstreamed as the only deaf student in his school, and, as he described in each letter, I became even more interested in issues that came up for him. I went to the library and began looking for books on the subject of educating deaf students. (Remember, kids, this was back in the Eighties when the Internet did not exist.) I was even more intrigued, plus I had thought sign language was cool since I was a very young child watching Linda Bove on “Sesame Street,” so I decided to major in educating the deaf.
The reality for Deaf Children in Schools
I learned a lot during college and my first several years working in public schools in my state. I learned that over 90% of deaf and hard-of-hearing children born in the United States are born to hearing families with no prior history of deafness or knowledge of sign language. In addition, most of these families never meet a deaf adult while raising their children and deciding what kind of education they want their children to have. Deafness is presented as a pathology, something to be fixed.
Hearing aids, cochlear implants, and learning to use speech and lipreading (more accurately and commonly called speechreading now) are the way to go, according to the medical professionals who introduce these families to the world of the deaf. As a result, most of the families of the children I serve never learn more than a handful of signs and, therefore, cannot even ask their deaf children simple questions like, “How was your day?”
Many of these children, therefore, have very little free access to any language before age three, when Early Intervention in the United States kicks in. I am sure I don’t need to explain to any educator what kind of impact losing several of the most important language-learning years will have on a child’s education and mental health. However, I will state what is, perhaps, the worst statistic of all: The average deaf person in the United States graduates high school with around a fourth to fifth-grade reading level. This has nothing to do with their intelligence; it has to do with language deprivation and a lifetime spent trying to catch up to their hearing peers, who have had 24/7 exposure to the language since their ears first developed in the womb.
Teaching in a Suburban High School
In my current job, in a suburban high school where I am finishing my 24th year as of this writing, I see the impact of this language deprivation all the time. English language idioms, like “raining cats and dogs,” make zero sense to many of my students, and I need to explain precisely what they mean. I’m an interpreter, which means I go into a “regular” mainstream classroom with anywhere from one to ten deaf and hard-of-hearing students. I sign everything the teacher and the hearing students say, and I voice whatever the deaf and hard-of-hearing students sign.
These students are very bright kids, and yet, when they are assigned to, say, read a chapter of “1984”, I have to explain what “propaganda” is because they’ve never seen the word before. (Even if their families watch the news at night, many of them don’t bother to turn the closed caption feature on their TVs on.)
My Role as an Educator
When I walk into a classroom on the first day of school with a deaf student, I am frequently the one who has to explain to the classroom teacher who I am and what I do, and yes, you have a deaf student in here this year, and, yes, I need to stand at the front of the room with you and the student needs to sit in the front row so they can see me and the teacher and the board clearly and therefore have access to all information. I have to tell the teacher where to go to read the student’s IEP. (Fortunately, I work in a receiving district with a decent-sized deaf and hard-of-hearing population, and most of the students have similar accommodations in their IEPs, so I can tell the mainstream teacher a few of the accommodations right off the bat the first day of school.)
What’s next for Deaf Education?
This is my first article for The Educator’s Room, and I hope to continue to write for this site in a series:
- Why do I refer to the students as “deaf and hard of hearing” instead of “hearing impaired”?
- What is the difference between an interpreter and a translator?
- Why do interpreters need different training and certifications than teachers of the deaf? What kinds of accommodations do deaf and hard-of-hearing students tend to need?
- What is the difference between deaf and hard of hearing? What sorts of writing errors are common in this population?
I’d love to hear from anyone, mainstream teachers in particular, with comments and questions, so hit me up! I actually do love my job, and could, quite frankly, talk about it all day long, so please contact me with any comments or questions!
Karin Kasper is a certified teacher of the deaf and educational sign language interpreter. She has thirty years of experience working with deaf and hard-of-hearing students kindergarten through twelfth grade. She is married with a teenage son, and is a fifth-generation, lifelong resident of New Jersey.