Changing One’s Views

            Amanda was the most beautiful child I have ever seen, a real-life Goldilocks with beautiful ringlets framing her angelic face. Also incredibly bright, by eighteen months, Amanda spoke full sentences and soon amassed an impressive vocabulary. Unfortunately, on a frigid Super Bowl Sunday, Amanda developed a high fever.

            Gut-wrenching hours later, after a battery of tests, Amanda’s doctor delivered the life-changing diagnosis: Amanda had meningitis. Luckily, Amanda would survive, but she would also slowly lose her hearing, eventually becoming totally deaf.

            Amanda’s parents’ perfect world came crashing down around them. Her mother, a former university cheerleader, and her father, a premed student, had to drastically change their lives. Instead of idyllically playing in the park with their beautiful toddler, they spent every opportunity seeking out audiologists, speech therapists, and schools for hearing-impaired children.

            Amanda’s advanced verbal skills began slipping slowly away, day by day, sinking her deeper into a world of total silence. When Amanda would frantically increase the volume on the television up to full blast and then shout, “TV broken,” her heartbroken parents had no idea how to help. When her grandparents saw Amanda shake her baby doll and fling it on the floor when she could no longer hear it cry, they shuddered helplessly. Amanda grew so frustrated her tantrums were becoming part of everyday life. Their beautiful, bright, and happy child was rapidly becoming withdrawn and increasingly depressed.

            Specialists recommended teaching Amanda speech to allow her the best opportunities for independent functioning and for learning how to read. These experts considered sign language a poor substitute for oral language development and discouraged Amanda’s parents from taking that route. Her parents suddenly felt caught in an ongoing “Signing versus Oral” feud, when they desperately needed a way to communicate with their precious child.

            When I became Amanda’s teacher, the initial goal was to teach her to read lips and develop speech. But when three-year old Amanda sat in the class circle, her bright eyes trained on me, I realized she was desperately searching for any clue to decipher what I was saying.

 At one point, Amanda jumped up, grabbed my face in her little hands, and shook it. In her frustration, she seemed to be saying, “Talk louder, doesn’t your mouth work?”

            Since I had never seen a three –year –old want to communicate as badly as Amanda clearly wanted to, I decided to do what was best for this child – to teach her sign language immediately. Soon thereafter, sitting cross-legged on the floor, I held a baby doll and signed “doll” while saying the word. Amanda quickly signed back, “doll” with a verbal “da.”

            Within minutes, we were patrolling the room together, signing “desk,” “chair,” “blackboard,” “picture,” “chalk,” – literally everything we could identify and communicate. Amanda became a sponge, learning sign language faster than I could teach her. By the end of the day, Amanda could actually sign a few complete sentences.

            In Amanda’s case, Total Communication, a teaching method that included signing, lip reading, and speech, proved the ideal teaching style. The proof was in the pudding – Amanda adjusted quickly, becoming once again the happy child her mother and father missed so much. Amanda quickly picked up new vocabulary as well as speech reading.

            Amanda became so excited about words and communication that she practiced sign language with everyone; she just didn’t realize that not everyone else in the world signs. Her parents were particularly tickled when they found her down the on her knees signing to their pet spaniel, “You want to go outside?”

            Soon, we all got swept up in the process, and I began teaching sign language classes at night for Amanda’s family and friends, meeting at the local pizza parlor, her parents’ apartment clubhouse, or sometimes in the park. Amanda’s parents learned to sign her bedtime stories, her cousins learned how to ask her to play, and her grandparents learned how to tell her,“ I love you.”

            Amanda became a three-year-old rebel with a cause. When a stranger couldn’t sign, she would place her tiny hands on theirs and literally shape their hands into letters and words, and, in doing so, this little girl launched her own private revolution. Each time I taught a class, a new friend of Amanda’s would show up, recounting a story of how “that special little girl” had touched his or her life. Each was inspired by her beauty, giftedness, and tenacity.

            “That Amanda is so beautiful,” one of her friends said one day. I bet she’s going to grow up to be Miss Deaf America.” “That or the first deaf president,” I answered, winking.

            When Amanda’s father was accepted to the Mayo Clinic to finish his studies the following year, I felt a sharp pang knowing I would never see Amanda again. But it was not her leaving that would stay with me; it was her arriving in my life that changed me, and how I would view each of my students forever.

            Amanda taught me to stop asking, “Why am I teaching?” and switch to asking, “How am I teaching?” I began to question whether “tried-and-true” teaching methods, or even radical new theories, should be blindly accepted as the most effective way of teaching.

            One rainy April afternoon, after a hectic day of teaching a bunch of bouncing kindergartners, I opened my mailbox and discovered a high school announcement. Out fell a wallet-sized picture of a beautiful girl – Amanda! Her hair had turned from golden locks to beautiful brunette waves, but I could still see the beautiful three-year-old I taught so many years ago. She added a handwritten letter about her busy life as an honor student and head cheerleader, and noted that she had been accepted to the University of Minnesota. Amanda shared that her hearing boyfriend was learning signs as fast as she had in my classroom, and added that she was running for Miss Deaf Minnesota. Wiping away my tears, I read her final paragraph:

With graduation coming up, I got out all my class pictures from all my school years. My favorite was the memory book you made for me showing my classmates doing all the fun activities you worked so hard to plan for us, I laugh when I look at the curly haired girl wearing the huge hearing aids. Can that really be me? I have to admit, my mom and dad filled me in with most of the memories, but a mood comes over me that takes me back to when my ears closed and my world became a silent one. I can see you reaching out your hand; I can hear your hand. Watching your hands make pictures in the air opened the world back up to me. I just want you to know my world is a beautiful one and thank you for starting it.

Amanda had a hand in helping me become the best person and teacher I could be, and, if all goes well, maybe I will have the opportunity to cast my vote for Amanda as the first deaf president of the United States.  END

Ps: wohaa! YOU HAVE WASTED 10 MINS OF YOUR LIFE READING THIS POST.. muahaha (evil laugh) Make sure u got something to repay 10 mins of your life.

Source:

Deb Hurst. (2009). Changing One’s Views

In Joseph W. Underwood (Ed.).Today I Made a Difference (pp.97-101).  Avon, MA: Adams Media