Deaf/HOH Classroom?

February 25, 2004

Hi everyone,

Thanks to all of your suggestions, I think the school is finally taking my

son's issues more seriously. The school audi concluded testing today and

based on the results (moderate, likely progressive hearing loss and a lot of

difficulty with auditory processing) he is recommending that we send Hayden

to another school within our district that has a special classroom for

hearing impaired/deaf children. He would spend 1/2 day in this classroom

and the other 1/2 in a regular classroom. He would learn sign and lip

reading and he would receive more specific instruction with 2-3 students per

teacher. Right now, Hayden (and his brothers) are completely mainstreamed

in 3rd grade. The thought of splitting them up into different schools

breaks my heart, however Hayden is so excited at the opportunity to learn

with other children who are hearing impaired and to have teachers who

understand what he is going through (he started losing hearing just over a

year ago and is having some adjustment issues). He is actually doing well,

academically, in the mainstream situation. How do I know if this is the

right placement for him? I will do whatever is best for him, even if I have

to send him to a different school than his siblings, but I have no idea if

this is even appropriate. The district does not have iteneret (sp?)

teachers that travel to the elementary schools, this classroom seems to take

the place of that. If Hayden wasn't pushing me so hard about sending him to

the new school, I probably wouldn't give it a lot of thought. However,

he'll be 10 soon and I feel that he needs some say in this decision. Any

advice would be appeciated, I really don't know who else to ask!

Mom to Conner (9, Asperger's, mild CP and Partial Seizures),

Hayden (9, PDD-NOS and moderate hearing loss/aided),

Evan (9, mild hearing loss/unaided),

and Kelsey - surviving triplet (8, hearing - but not listening!)

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February 25, 2004

From what you have said, I think the new placement sounds really great. Not

only that, but the fact your son is excited about it also adds to the

potential benifits of such a placement. My daughter Marissa attends a

similar sounding program out of district with other kids with hearing loss -

gradually they are sent out to " regular " classrooms with interpreters and

the program has been highly successful. It sounds like you are doing a great

job!

Colin

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February 25, 2004

From what you have said, I think the new placement sounds really great. Not

only that, but the fact your son is excited about it also adds to the

potential benifits of such a placement. My daughter Marissa attends a

similar sounding program out of district with other kids with hearing loss -

gradually they are sent out to " regular " classrooms with interpreters and

the program has been highly successful. It sounds like you are doing a great

job!

Colin

_________________________________________________________________

Watch high-quality video with fast playback at MSN Video. Free!

http://click.atdmt.com/AVE/go/onm00200365ave/direct/01/

February 25, 2004

Actually, I learned signed English when I was 18. I was able to hold simple

conversations after two semesters at college. I also worked for a company

run by Yeh, in which approx 1/2 of the people were deaf and signed ASL

or signed English. From experience, I know that to become fluent in either

of the signed modalities is the same as learning a foreign language. Each

word in the English language must have a sign or a synonym which has a sign.

Further, signs are different in different parts of the country/world.

Therefore, to be proficient, you need to learn every sign. That can take a

LONG time, considering that research shows there are 16,000 to 30,000 words

in the English language . Further, as I indicated, the sign says nothing

about how a word is pronounced. Now, before my son learned cued speech, we

used a modified version of sign language fingerspelling to accomplish the

stringing of the sounds together. We'd sign an S for the ssss sound, an sh

for the SHHHH sound, etc. It kind of worked, until we got to the

vowels...if you sign an a, is it a short a or a long a. Yes, you can

develop your own system for showing which it is. The point is, that someone

already developed a system that already has a method for rapidly stringing

the sounds together. It enhances lipreading and is sooo easy to learn

relative to sign. It is also understood as well as sign, especially by

those kids with residual hearing or with progressive loss who already know

what the sounds are. Because we are discussing a child with a recent loss

who is definitely oral and has alot of language, it makes sense that he

should get as immediate access as he can to a visual system to support his

auditory system. As I indicated, cueing takes about 1 week to learn and one

year to be proficient. I know of very few people learning sign language who

in one year can sign 16,000 to 30,000 signs. That's the beauty of the cued

speech system. You only have to learn how to make gestures representing the

30-40 sounds of speech and then string them together to represent anything

you hear in any language in any accent.

Personally, I think it's important for a parent to research all modalities

for their child and then let the child guide them in their decision of what

works best. Our son is an auditory learner. He used to hear alot in one

ear. He hears almost nothing any more. He is still an auditory learner and

struggles with all visual modalities that have movement. He doesn't

struggle with reading because it stays still on the page. As I've mentioned

before, he taught himself an entire CD of static signs on a CD in a

weekend. He couldn't get past the picture as when they moved, he was lost.

He will use cued speech, but only functions one hundred percent with it when

it supports his residual hearing. When his hearing aid is off or he's

having a really bad hearing day, even cueing gets him confused because he

needs the auditory input. That is why he has CART in school. It only moves

across the screen as reading does.

I hope that will take the opportunity to let her son visit. He may

very well find that he has less in common with the kids with hearing loss

than he does with those who hear. It all depends on their level of

functioning. In my son's case, we immersed him in deaf culture...sign

language immersion classes with other deaf kids and deaf instructors at

Western land College when he was a toddler. We offered him sign from

birth as I'm a firm believer in using any modality that you can to get a

message across. What we found was that if put in a situation where he had

to chose between kids who signed, kids who were hard of hearing and/or kids

who could hear, he would always select the group that was hearing kids. He

couldn't process sign, so he couldn't communicate with the signing kids.

The hard of hearing kids were so much harder to communicate with because

each side had trouble understanding the other side. With hearing kids, they

could understand him, so only his side had trouble with communication. We

wished we could have found a deaf/hoh program with other kids like him. He

wishes so too. But, with him reading before he was two, and the reading

problems that auditory problems present to so many kids, he has no kids in

his age group in this area who could learn with him. Right now, we're even

battling him to do work in his regular ed gifted and talented classes

because he says he's too bored. The goal of all of these self contained

programs is to get the children proficient enough with language to allow

them to be mainstreamed. If a child has been functioning in a mainstream

environment, it may very well be a step backwards. It may not, but I hope

will research carefully. Don't rely on what they say, but what you

see. We were made all sorts of promises when our son was struggling due to

inadequate supports in elementary school. They tried to misrepresent what

he would learn in the deaf/hoh special class because they wanted to place

him there to save themselves over $100,000 a year in supports he required to

be mainstreamed. We checked it out and found that it was a multiage class

in which he would be the youngest...age 6, working with peers through age 13

and that his language skills were the highest in the group. Talk about

feeling resented and ostracized! Just because a group of children is deaf,

doesn't make them any less resentful or negative towards someone who shows

them up constantly. We therefore decided to continue to mainstream him as

the problems that that presented in terms of no peers and lack of

understanding of his hearing loss was actually the best scenario out of all

of them. There's no right answer for every child. All a parent can do is

make the most informed decision they can make and rely on their child to

guide the way. It's amazing that if you really look at your childs

reactions, you'll come to see what's right for them. Be careful to

evaluate all options available...touch them, feel them, see them and let

your child do the same.

Just to make sure you all understand...I'm not trying to start a " one

modality is better battle. " I'm trying to offer some advice based on

helping alot of kids get supports that they needs. I think that the most

important thing that every parent must do is to research EVERY option

available...

1- Amplification options...none, hearing aids, Cochlear Implants, etc

2- Communication options...auditory oral, auditory verbal, sign, cued

speech, etc

3- Class placement/support options...self contained classroom,

mainstreamed, what kind of supports

4...etc..

Important to success is to understand that children change, hearing changes,

situations change and that decisions you made two years ago may not be right

any more. Be willing to change options as your child grows and their needs

change or become better defined. Then, fight like heck to see that your

child gets all of the support that they need to succeed. The parents with

the most successful deaf/hoh children are those that will fight tooth and

nail for their child's rights. They have to give up caring whether the

school system " likes " them or not. They learn as much as they can about

their child's hearing loss, their child's needs and their legal rights and

never give up trying to get all that they can to support their child's

efforts in achieving their potential. I've seen all modalities turn out

incredibly successful and inspiring adults. The commonality that all of

these individuals have is that their parents supported them wholeheartedly.

And, they didn't let their children give up.

>

> said: <<If Hayden wasn't pushing me so hard about sending him to

the new school, I probably wouldn't give it a lot of thought.>>

>

> said: <<Signing is like learning a completely foreign language.>>

>

> Somewhat true, if it's ASL. But if it's signed english or signed exact

english, it can be picked up very quickly--and the majority of the signs

learned will be ASL signs as well. (ASL syntax can come later.) ,

did you mention the type of sign system used at the school you're

considering?

>

> I will add my voice to 's and say that you will DEFINITELY want to

visit the program, with your son, to see if it is as it's described and how

important the ability to use sign would be right away. There are some good

programs out there. My son just left a school where TC was the philosophy,

using signed exact english and daily speech and auditory training. Since

' loss was pre-lingual (and progressive like Hayden's), his speech and

language skills were several years delayed but the program worked so well

that we mainstreamed him this year in a small private school with no

supports other than an erratically-utilized FM system. (Yes, we're still

" training " them on that...sigh.) His spoken, written, and reading skills

are all at least one grade ahead and his spelling (because of the

fingerspelling?) is off the charts; he's in 2nd grade but works out of the

4th grade book for spelling and grammar. doesn't choose to sign much

now but will occasionally ask me to clarify something in sign, either by

showing him the letter he didn't hear correctly or signing an actual word to

fill in one he missed.

>

> Still, as hard as it is to be " different " at your son's age (and beyond),

it may surprise him to see where the other HOH/Deaf kids are in terms of

language development as he may be thinking that everyone will be exactly

where he is. You and he will want to be sure that he will be able to move

into the new class easily and communicate enough to make new friends.

You'll also want to make sure that the new class (and school) will still ask

Hayden to work to his full potential.

>

> One more thought, though, about the " split " day. When we mainstreamed

this year, we tried half-days a few days a week at each school. He

wound up feeling very torn between classes and felt he was missing out on a

lot, particularly in his mainstream class; After 5 weeks, he was so

frustrated we just withdrew from the old program. Since the program you

describe is at the same school, this may not be as much of a problem but I

wanted to mention it as something else to think about. Would the kids in

the Deaf/HOH program all go to the regular classroom or would it only be

your son? If he's the only one, you may not be gaining much in helping him

feel part of the group.

>

> Carol - mom to , 7.9, mod to profound, LVAS

>

February 25, 2004