ROUGHLY EDITED COPY
2017 EHDI CONFERENCE
HANOVER B
OUR ROLE MODELS:
PERSPECTIVES FROM DEAF AND HARD OF HEARING STUDENTS
February 28, 2017, 1:45P.M.
REMOTE CART CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY:
ALTERNATIVE COMMUNICATION SERVICES, LLC
P.O. BOX 278
LOMBARD, IL 60148
***
This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Remote CART, Communication Access Realtime Translation, is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
***
BETH BENEDICT: Great. Thank you so much. Hello,everyone. I think I may be a very familiar face to you all. I'm Beth Benedict, with Gallaudet University, and we havebrought with us 19 students here at the conference this year. Luckily, Atlanta was close enough geographically to bring thatmany, so I brought a small segment of that group. We have sevenhere as panelists and we have the questions ready to go, sowe're going to start with introductions, who they are, whattheir major is, and then we'll start with the list of thepanelists and we'll open it up to the audience. Also, I don'tknow of their answers ahead of time. I didn't prep with them,so it's going to be from the heart. Genuine answers here. Let's start with some slides.
This is a common disclaimer. These with panelists. I willask you to say your name and answer the first question. We willinclude that in your introduction. All right. We're going tostart, and start with your -- I'll put it back on the nameslide. Here we go.
Hello, everyone. My name is (indistinguishable).
Hello. (Indistinguishable).
I'll tell you about my family background. My mother isa CODA, I come from a family of three audiologists, so the worldwas mixed. I was mainstreamed, the only Deaf child in theschool, and then I went to a Deaf school for a while, so I gotsigning from all sides, and happy to see you here.
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Briella Ortiz, majoringand childhood education and linguistics. I went to Kansas for abetter Deaf school there. My mother is the first of nine Deafchildren. My father is the only Deaf person in his family, andhis family is all in Puerto Rico. That's me.
Hello, everyone, my name is Kayla. I'm from Louisiana. I'm a first-year graduate student at Gallaudet University. Iwas born with CMV, cytomegalovirus, and I have hearing in myright ear. I do wear hearing aids but when I'm at campus atGallaudet, I don't wear it because I'm signing.
I'm from Detroit, Michigan. My name is all hearing. I'm the only one who is Deaf. My parents found out when I was18 months old. Hi, everybody, I'm Hannah from Georgia, and Iwas diagnosed at age three. Of course, a lot happened sincethen. I was mainstreamed and went to better socialization withmy peers, and now I'm a signer.
Hi, everybody, I'm Eunice Vasquez. I'm a fourth yearstudent at Gallaudet University, majoring in Spanish with aminor in family childhood studies. I'm from a Latino, and Ihave two sisters. Very nice to see you all.
I'm from Detroit, Michigan, (away from mic). Bysigning. > Many of you may have noticed -- let me do a head counthere. Six of seven of these come from hearing families, whileone had a CODA mother and others from Deaf families, and this istruly representative of the community at larger. Hearing,nonsigning parents, and I think we could be the same, parentswho did not sign, except for which of you? Very interesting. Thank you for adding that. That's true. So five out of theseven are representing the nonsigning parents out there, whichis pretty true statistically, pretty representative of whatwe've talked about at the conference.
And also, as Eunice mentioned, coming from a Latino family,those are the most neglected out of everyone, so they're notspeaking and not signing.
So let's go ahead with the next question. Number 2. Right. So I was first educated in preschool with a Deaf class,so from the age of two, early intervention, my parents found outI was Deaf at 11 months old so they started the whole hoopla,hearing aids, speech therapy. I hit a wall with speech therapy. I couldn't understand what everybody was saying. I grew upsigning. Even though my mom was a CODA, wasn't really involvedin Deaf culture. My mom was not interested in getting involvedin that world, so kind of ironically that she had me as a kid.
So when I got to go to the Deaf school, it was the bestfour years of my life. I got to be involved in extracurricularas well as academics. When I was in the public school, I wasthe only Deaf student with an interpreter all day. Very lonelyand isolated. I'm not in touch with anybody from those days atall. Didn't make those connections.
The first time I met a Deaf adult -- I had many, I had manyfemale Deaf role models, not so many Deaf male role models. They weren't around, until I went to the school, of course. MyEnglish teacher signed beautifully, a beautiful writer, so I setmy goal to be bilingual like he was. Beautiful in English. Beautiful in ASL.
Next question?
So my parents are hearing, but he's an audiologist. SoI've had free hearing aids all my life. I know. Pretty sweet. Grew up using English and ASL. My father tried hard with me. He's not such a good signer, but he tried, and my mom is afluent signer and other members of the family use paper and penor what have you. I did something about role models already. I'm jumping to number 6 now. Advice for professionals. I thinkit's so important to have role models in the lives of young Deafand hard of hearing children and seek out Deaf and hard ofhearing adults because sometimes children can't express whatthey're going to, but because the Deaf adult has been throughit, he can express the feelings of those who cannot express ityet. I know, I took over the floor for quite a while, and I'mhappy to share my contact conversation, happy to have ongoingconversations with you. Very, very glad to see you all here.
Thank you so much, Tyler.
Okay. We will go ahead with the next panelist and move ondown and please address all of the questions in your turn, andwe'll give you about five minutes each to address these as wego. Five or six minutes each. And then later on, if you have athought that you had to add, we'll come back around for anotheropportunity. I know it's hard, Tyler, to put you first. Taylor, excuse me.
Hello. Again, my name is Briella. I had experience --I lived -- education, I've been there, pretty much. I grew upin Utah, in a Deaf school there. It wasn't what my parentswanted for me, so my mom decided to make her own Deaf charterschool. I liked that. I grew up in that environment for abunch of different types of students there. We had hearingstudents who were CODAs, Deaf, hard of hearing. I myself, I amhard of hearing. I speak pretty well, I think. They tell me. But I have no speech therapy. I really grew up in the hearingworld. So I just want to speak for this part to show you thatASL and speaking, they go hand in hand. You can have both. It's not one or the other.
Now I'll go back in signing. I'm a little more fluentwith. That I grew up attending that charter school and by middleschool, I had seen my peers going off to other opportunitiesthat I would mainstream and go to public school and try to keepone that. I had an interpreter, but I heard too well and spoketoo well, so the school decided I didn't need an interpreter,and they pulled my interpreter, and I got by, barely got by. Ikind of hit the end of the road there, wasn't sure where I wouldgo from Utah, so I went to Kansas. There was a Deaf school inKansas that had a very strong bilingual school, and it was thefirst time seeing a School for the Deaf. I was 15 at the time. There was one in Utah, but they were more listening spokenlanguage. ASL wasn't widely accepted there, so Kansas was adifferent experience for me altogether. So I have botheducational environments.
I was home-schooled for a while. I did online for aportion of that too. So I've had all types. I think what fitsme best -- they're all good, but the one that fits me best iswhere I have access to direct communication. So online schoolfor me is great because I'm communicating directly. School forthe Deaf, I was communicating directly. That's the best fit forme.
As far as adults go, I wasn't exposed to -- I was allaround Deaf adults growing up. That was my world. Hearingadults were kind of new to me by the time I got to middleschool, so I had the opposite of many people's experience uphere.
Let me skip over, looking at the screen, to number four orfive. I'll address number 6. So, again, speaking about mypersonal experience in middle school, this was a time I wasmainstreamed and the district didn't have a lot of knowledgeabout how to handle Deaf and hard of hearing students. Therewas no IEP in place. There was no 504 Plan. So they thought Iwas doing fine, that I could negotiate the environment using myhearing and I speech and I was labeled as Deaf, but it wasthought of, no big deal. I could talk and I could hear,according to their lens. So I think your job as teachers is tomake sure you know their background and how best to addresstheir needs, because so many Deaf people, I guess I could saythere's a perspective out there that if a Deaf person appears tohear and speak well, that they're a success story and they don'tneed additional services or supports or focus, that they arealready on the other side of their journey, and that's not true.
They need emotional support. They may need socialsupports, educational supports, you name it. Please don't limita Deaf child based on the assessment of how well they speak orhear. Thank you.
Hi. So my -- I went to mainstream school. I was theonly Deaf student there. They knew from birth that I couldn'thear, so I went to school to the third grade when I got my firsthearing and I went back and their solution was to stick me inthe front of the classroom (indistinguishable), and my mom triedto request an FM system, and the school board said no. My momdidn't fight for me, and my suggestion to you all, please fightfor your kids. I mean, I -- I don't know like bad things, Iguess, to my mom for that, but fight for your kid.
Then we talked about placement, classes at the localcommunity college that were -- learned ASL, so I went toGallaudet in 2012. I was labeled a new signer, meaning I didn'tgrow up in their culture, a new signer, and learned -- before Iknew other Deaf students, together my first time meeting anotherDeaf person, and then I learned the term hard of hearing and Irealized I'm not Deaf, I'm hard of hearing, so that changed myworld.
Like I said, my parents are hearing. All my family ishearing. Now that I know ASL, looking back at my family, likeChristmas stories, I missed so much, and then like today, I'mlike, I asked my mom if she wants to learn ASL and speak withyour daughter -- my old sister lives in Austin. She's going toASL classes at the Texas School for the Deaf. She told me that,and I started crying. So they embrace who I am. They encourageme to learn ASL and come to Gallaudet.
So I didn't have any Deaf role models, and when I was inschool, I wish I had someone that I could relate to. When Iarrived at Gallaudet, I met a lot of hard of hearing students. That was the moment when I realized, I'm not alone. There areall these people that I wish I had. So my advice is to findsomeone for your children so they can have role models.
That's it.
Okay. So my parents found out that I had nerve damagewhen I was eight months old and they did not know how toproceed. They didn't know how to relate to me. They didn'tknow if I would be able to learn, what my cognitive abilitieswere. They were just in the dark, and I saved all the papersfrom that time and everything. She had all of the brochuresfrom Alexander Graham Bell forbidding her to sign with me. Iwas not allowed to be exposed to Deaf people or take classeswith Deaf people. So I was mainstreamed in the oral speechtherapy method. I can speak clearly, but I prefer not to. Iwould love to, but I actually have a sprained wrist, so -- sothe first school I attended, I was expelled from because thebullying was so severe, and the principal met with my parents,and instead of kicking them out, they kicked me out. And I grewup below the poverty level, and my parents were extremely poorand my parents had to beg for me to attend the Catholic schoolbecause we couldn't afford the rate and were not Catholic, sothey let us in the education, but they wouldn't give me anotetaker or anything. I got very good at pretending. If I gotany bit at all, I would catch bits and pieces. If I look at mymom, I can lipread her. Other than that, I can't lipreadpeople. But I want people to be able to talk with me, so Iwould bluff quite a bit. That was my coping skill. And now I'mfinally a Gallaudet student and that makes me very happy becauseI have friends, everyone signs, and I feel very fortified there. I was growing up feeling like a broken person. So when I got toan environment where everyone signed, it set me on fire. I wishI had had that. I feel like I was robbed of that. I read a lotgrowing up. My English vocabulary is very strong. Ironically,I feel like I have more vocabulary because I feel I have mynative language now. I was robbed of that. Even though I havegood English skills. I'm not hard of hearing. I'm Deaf. And Imissed that cognitive development. And people think because Ihave hearing aids, I hear. I'm catching bone connectivity tocatch everything through vibration. When I hear or see avibration, people think I'm identifying the sound, but that'snot always the case. It's just a sound. It may be a dogbarking. I can't discriminate the sound.
My first experience of meeting a Deaf person was aftereighth grade, and I lived in a quote/unquote bad area of town,so I was bused over to a more affluent program but I was notallowed to take classes with any Deaf peers. I had to take thespecial bus. So quietly on the bus I would ask the kids toteach me sign and not tell my parents that I had. So we made upour own system. It wasn't American sign, but we tried our ownsystem and I felt bad about this, but I internalized quite a bitof oppression, negative, what it means to be Deaf because I wasincredibly embarrassed, and, of course, I was severely bullied. People looked at me funny when they found out I was Deaf and Ifelt I had to hide it. I didn't want anyone to know that I wascoming out at a Deaf person. It's ironic, because I've turnedthe corner and now I'm a proud signing person and I love it. Ijust love it.
Now, when my parents met another Deaf person, you couldkind of tell that they had discrimination against Deaf peoplethemselves. They didn't treat Deaf people any differently thanthey treated me. It's different now, though. My mom and I havebecome very close recently. We didn't speak for many yearsbecause of the experiences I mentioned. My family doesn't sign. My mom has severe arthritis and can't sign. She has regrets,and I wish I could tell you -- the number one regret she has islistening to the advice from A.G. Bell, basically, but likeHelen Keller, I was made to feel like I was a feral child, Ididn't want any association with Deaf people, and now, AnnieJump Kianu (phonetic) is brilliant, and I love NancyKelly-Jones, she's a mentor for me as well. She works at myschool at Gallaudet. And in the Deaf mentor program. And Iwish I had that growing up. I wish I had had a Deaf mentor.
I feel that's just crucial, because growing up, Deaf kidsdon't see people like them. All the hearing people, all thehearing experts that intervene in their lives are hearing, andit's a demoralizing experience. You never need another personwho is Deaf, and if you do, it's someone who is discriminatedagainst or doesn't have their role taken seriously or representsmarginalized people. It's so frustrating to experience that. It makes you feel like you're really worth nothing.
So I really wish that Deaf people could have been a part ofmy life to tell me I was okay, not just for parents to say, yourkid is going to be when they're an adult. They'll have jobopportunities. But me, as a young girl, I needed to see that.
To be honest, my experience with the conference has beenboth good and bad, because I saw this as a chance for Deafpeople to be around the professionals that make these decisions,but I've also seen a lot of exclusion. Hearing people who arecoming to this conference are purposely avoiding Deaf people. I've seen them in the elevator, and I've seen them in theelevator and start to engage in conversation, and I've seen thempush away. And I think, where's the chance? You've lost thechance to learn from us. So it depends where the power is. It's a power stance to be here. Hearing people are sayingthey're being neutral, that the parents aren't ready for thisinformation, and I'm thinking, the Deaf kids are ready. They'reready for you. They're ready to hear from hearing people, butthey're not ready to hear from us as Deaf people? That doesn'tmake sense. So thank you for that.
All of our journeys are different and unique and we comefrom the individual standing. Again, I'm the only Deaf personin my family. They found out I was Deaf about three years old. I went to day care every day. My parents worked crazy longhours. I was in daycare and after-school care and everythingelse. When they picked me up, they would call my name. Hannah,Hannah, Hannah, and I would not orient to my name, and I wasn'torienting to my name, and my mom wondered about that. First,she talked to the daycare provider. Why is Hannah not payingattention? She had many questions, the kind of questions thatparents have is overwhelming. Then she met with an audiologistand that's when in fact they found out I was Deaf.