Betty G. Miller's Effect On Deaf Children

The schools built began to shun sign language, focusing on oral education. A conference brought the decision that oral based education was more effective than manual education. Despite the diminishment we see in education during the 1900’s, we see huge strides for Deaf advocacy from both Deaf people side by side with hearing people. The first home run was performed by Deaf ballplayer William Hoy. The first hearing aid is developed. William Taft protects Deaf people’s rights to federal jobs in 1909. WWI along with WW2 provided jobs for Deaf people. The first African American graduate from Gallaudet College, Ida Wynette Gray Hampton. Captions are established 1958. In 1960, ASL was beginning to be recognized as a language. The first cochlear implant device constructed. Ending a time of Educational decline, Congress claims that oral education a “dismal

The book, Deaf Again, written by Mark Drolsbaugh, is an autobiography telling his life story which starts with a young boy growing up who goes through the process of losing his hearing and then, as he gets older, he struggles with trying to fit in as a normal child. When Mark was very young, he could hear fairly well then gradually he went hard of hearing until he eventually went completely deaf. Even though he had two deaf parents, the doctors advised speech therapy and hearing aids because they did not understand Deaf Culture and they thought that Mark would be a lot happier if he could hang on to his hearing persona. Throughout the rest of the book, Mark goes through a lot of stages of trying to fit in with everyone and eventually

Bob Hiltermann is a famous deaf storyteller, actor, comic, and musician. He was born in Wiesbaden, Germany and became deaf at the age of four due to spinal meningitis. His family assumed that he was slow and it wasn’t until he was ten years old that they finally realized he was deaf. When Bob turned eighteen, he attended Gallaudet University. While attending Gallaudet he learned American Sign Language, which would eventually lead him to become a confident and successful signer. Bob grew up in a family of classical musicians and this shaped his love for music. Despite being deaf he has become an accomplished musician himself and is the drummer for a famous all deaf band named Beethoven’s Nightmare. He has also experienced a very successful career as an actor and has starred in many award winning documentary films, TV, stage productions, soaps, and feature films. Bob has also helped create and star in an educational sign language series called “Shut up and Sign” (Hiltermann, 2016).

Nathie Marbury was born January 20, 1944 in Grenada, MS but grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Lezera and Rosetta Marbury. Nathie had many siblings; she was the 16th of 17th children. Her parents for some reason did not believe in education, but Nathie as a child who was born deaf enabled her to better her education.

In Alice-Ann Darrow’s article “Teaching Students with Hearing Losses” she states that it can be difficult to involve students with hearing losses in the music classroom and in the regular classroom as well. There are a numerous amount of students with hearing losses ranging from the ages of six to twenty-one. About 71,000 of special education students struggle with a hearing loss. A majority of students go without knowing that they have a hearing problem. Although most people believe that a person must be good at hearing in order to be musical, it is stated to be not true. The music classroom is actually a great place for students to practice good listening skills. Since listening is a mental process and hearing is a physical. Objectives for hard at hearing students should include listening to music, singing, playing instruments, moving to music, creating music and reading music. Music should be presented to the student’s strength and preferences. It is also helpful to have students feel stereo speakers or instruments as well as the use of kinesthetic movements. Alice-Ann Darrow believes that involving students with hearing losses into the music class room can be difficult but in the long run beneficial to the student.

In this school they wanted for all the children to be oral by the time that they got to kindergarten and be ready for regular academics. (148) this was there second time with professionals that had their ideas of what a deaf child should be able to do. Lynn started school with a teacher named Ms. Taylor that began to teach the children so that they could recognize what they needed to be successful later on in their schooling. Dr. Barrington, a psychologist, taught a class to the parents of deaf children on how to read to them so that they understand. (175) this is where the Spradleys’ learned that the more they read to Lynn the better she would understand them and be able to lip read what they were saying. Lynn also went to the Starr school that they wanted to keep as an Oral school, so she had to learn to speak. (207) When going to a PTA Meeting for the school, this is when Louise and Tom saw a deaf couple signing to each other. This is when they met with Bill and Kim that taught them that Lynn could learn to sign and that it would be a good thing for them to learn also. In the first week Lynn could sign thirteen words that she had already knew and just did not have anything to go along with the word.

After reading Deaf Again I learned a lot of new things about Deaf culture and was drawn in by the story of Mark Drolsbaugh. "The hardest fight a man has to fight is to live in a world where every single day someone is trying to make you someone you do not want to be" e.e cummings. I was brought into the book immediately from this quote and realized how difficult it must have been for Mark to find his identity. He was trying to hang on to his hearing in fear of going deaf as if there was something wrong or not proper with being deaf. It took him a long time, twenty-three years to realize that the Deaf culture is receiving and it was there for him to embrace the entire time. It would be difficult to be able to hear and then slowly

In Mark Drolsbaugh’s educational and witty autobiography “Deaf Again”, he describes his journey as a child born to deaf parents, losing his own hearing in his childhood, and navigating both hearing and deaf worlds while trying to discover his identity.

According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, about two to three children out of every 1,000 are born with a detectable level of hearing impairment in the United States. Without hearing, children miss out on the acoustic correlates of the physical world, such as car horns and footsteps. Children are also limited in their exposure to patterned complexities in music and spoken word. These hard of hearing and deaf students grow and develop in unique ways compared to their hearing peers because of the stimulus they do not have. Researchers have focused on how communication methods for hard of hearing and deaf children affect their development in the physical, social-emotional, cognitive and communicative

The book A Loss for Words by Lou Ann Walker is a biography about Lou Ann. Her parents are deaf and she and her sister are hearing. The book describes the troubles and embarrassment she felt and had while growing up. She loved her parents dearly but often felt embarrassed, or infuriated about comments people would make to her about her parents. Lou Ann exclaims that “their world is deaf, their deaf culture, their deaf friends, and their own sign language it is something separate, something I can never really know, but I am intimate with.”(2) Lou Ann was both speaking and she could also sign. She felt it hard to fit into one culture. She had a love for her parents and the

“To the hearing world, the deaf community must seem like a secret society. Indeed, deafness is a culture every bit as distinctive as any an anthropologist might study.” (Walker 1986) Lou Ann Walker’s autobiographical book, “A Loss for Words” details the story of her childhood with two deaf parents. She is the oldest of three children, with two sisters who are named Kay Sue and Jan Lee. All of their names were chosen for ease of lipreading for her parents. As she is the eldest of the three, she begins to act as an interpreter, and does so; often dealing with store keepers, mechanics, and others who would not know American Sign Language, but who would still need to understand what her parents are saying. Lou Ann, as she grows up, realizes

The Deaf President Now movement at Gallaudet University is essentially a call for action or change from the barbaric ways of how the school was run. The school is credited with being the first and only university for the deaf in if not just the country, then the world. Gallaudet offers those who cannot hear or for better terms, hard of hearing, a chance to gain an education in an environment which caters to their specific needs. The students in the university attend classes with other deaf students which also helps strengthen their sense of community. One of the biggest reasons why the Deaf President Now movement stands out is because the movement eventually leads to the creation of the “Americans with Disabilities Act”. The creation of the

Mark Drolsbaugh’s Deaf Again book gives a detailed account of his experience with becoming deaf in both a hearing and deaf world. It includes the awkwardness and un-comfortability he felt in hearing environments, within is personal family dynamic and in deaf safe havens where he learned to adjust, and grow for the betterment of him learning ASL and in general, becoming emerged within Deaf culture. Drolsbaugh starts the book off by introducing how life for deaf people, even when giving birth, can be a struggle (due to society not being well informed on how to effectively communicate and treat Deaf individuals). Drolsbaugh’s mother, Sherry, wasn’t properly given epidural while giving birth to him, and as she made noises to best express that something was wrong, the nurse brushed it off. Once Mark was born, and Sherry got up the needle wasn’t in her back but on the bed. Looking at how communication issues can lead to negative results, throughout the rest of the book Drolsbaugh sheds light on this phenomenon, specifically focusing on the educational environment and the interactions between and among hearing and deaf communities.

Learning music as a student with hearing loss can be difficult just as teaching a student with hearing losses can be also. There are many children who are being diagnosed with hearing losses almost every day. In the article, “Teaching Students with Hearing Losses,” by Alice-Ann Darrow, an Irvin Cooper Professor of Music Education and Music Therapy at Florida State University, Tallahassee conveyed a message that students with hearing losses are capable of learning music. When hearing the words “hearing losses” you automatically jumped to conclusion that they can’t hear anything at all however that is wrong. Darrow stated in her article that, “Very few individuals have no hearing at all however most students who are described deaf do have some

While these men and women all had comparable cultural experiences, there were many differences between the individual people, as well as their family upbringings. “Economic and educational factors affected each of their childhood’s experiences, family composition, their gender, and birth order” (Preston, 34). Throughout the hundreds of conversations, Preston studied the lives of a specific group of men and women who “shared a common childhood feature… and to understand how they made sense of that experience” (8). In doing so, he ultimately explains how the Deaf and