Deaf Education Classroom: A Case Study

The rich history of American Deaf culture in conjunction withlanguage displays the determination along with the brilliance of these people. Though the hearing world had called them sin, denounced them as dumb, these people rose up against their oppressors, making a new world for themselves.

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

There are various ways to educate deaf students and one method is called mainstreaming. Mainstreaming is when a student with a disability, in this case being hearing impaired, is taught in a class with hearing students. Mainstreaming is supposed to be beneficial for the deaf student in both a social level, as well as on an educational level. Focusing on the social aspect of mainstreaming, it is important to look at deaf interactions with peers in the mainstream setting as well as the acceptance of deaf peers from the hearing students. Deaf students are more likely to succeed academically in the mainstream environment, but when it comes to peer relations and development of a healthy self concept, mainstreaming is not as successful.

Lane’s perspective was to argue about the deaf segregation education in a hearing school and bilingual language minorities.

A big question that is brought up in deaf culture is “should a deaf child be in a mainstream environment or not”. Mainstreaming is where you put a deaf child in a hearIng environment. Most Deaf individuals are against mainstreaming because, they are afraid if they put there child in a hearing school that the child will feel isolated and alone. There was a law passed called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The law requires the state to provide a free appropriate public education to students with disabilities. This ensures students with disabilities are provided with Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) that is fit for their individual needs. The Individuals with disabilities Education Act requires the state to provide children with disabilities to have a “Least Restrictive Environment (LRE)”. Many hearing people consider a (LRE) a mainstream public school. Although most Deaf people think (LRE) is a residential school

The book “A Journey into the Deaf-World”, by Harlan Lane, Robert Hoffmeister, and Ben Bahan, is about the different people who are considered deaf: hard-of-hearing, deaf, and CODA. People who are hard-of-hearing are people who don 't hear well; people who are deaf lack the power of hearing since birth; you can be born hearing and throughout time lose some or all of your hearing sense. People who are CODA (children of deaf adults) are often signing because their parents are deaf and CODA’s often are helpful by being interpreters. CODAs become a great link between their parents and the hearing world. This book explains about deaf culture and how sign is a visual and manual way of conversing. The benefits of sign language are many and the ASL “foreign language” is growing among hearing as well. About more than 500,000 people sign in America alone. ASL is dated from 1779, but probably even earlier. Sign language promotes cultural awareness; deaf culture uses sign language as their main form of communicating.

Everyone belongs to a culture some people belong to multiple cultures but everyone belongs to at least one. A culture is “ the sum of the social categories and concepts we embrace in addition to our beliefs, behaviors and  practices; everything but the environment around us.” (ConleyA-3). Culture provides many things for individuals including; self-realization, moral values, discipline, and compassion. Most cultures are contained to a specific part of the world, however there are some cultures that are universal, one of those being the Deaf culture. The Deaf culture is also a unique culture because within this large culture are  multiple sub-cultures, that each person brings with them. But because there is an underlying disability that brings all of those in the Deaf culture together there is oftentimes a social barrier between the Deaf culture and the Hearing culture. During social gatherings where members of the Deaf and Hearing cultures are both represented, actions are guided by social norms in order to make social interactions accepted by both cultures.

From antiquity, being deaf was looked upon as an undesirable and a culture which was disconnected with the rest of mainstream society. Often members of the community found themselves ostracized by members of other cultures, who viewed them with suspicion, and were thought to be possessed, or in communion, with undesirable “spirits”, particularly during the advent of the Christianity that was in practice during the Middle Ages. During this period, before the advent of Gutenberg’s metal, movable type printing press, the populace was mostly illiterate and religious texts and spiritual obligations/instructions were verbally transmitted to the people by the literate clerics of the day. Thus, the deaf were believed to have no access to “Fides

Deaf is defined as partially or completely lacking the sense of hearing as to where Deaf culture refers to members of the Deaf community who share common values, traditions, norms, language and behaviors. According to the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders, three out of every 1,000 American children are born deaf or with hearing loss and 9 out of 10 of those children are born to fully-hearing parents. Most of these children who are deaf will attend public schools. By all, means teaching children who are deaf is not easy an easy task and can seem challenging for both the students and the teacher alike but it is certainly accomplishable. Therefore, in order for children who are deaf to succeed in a mainstream classroom, the teacher must first understand the Deaf culture and counteract stereotypes so that he or she may better serve students who are deaf. The article Deaf Culture Tip Sheet by Professor Linda Siple (2003) and Deaf Myths by the Minnesota Department of Human Services (2013) elaborates on these exact issues and provides a better insight on the culture of the Deaf community.

Dr. Tommy Tyler, director of the Gospel Choir, is very interested in talking to you about how the District of Columbia Black Deaf Advocates (DCBDA) and the Silent Mission could be more involved in the worship service at Shiloh. Please contact him so that the two of you could explore this possibility.

Customs and traditions define the different things each culture do to maintain their special bond. Values are the morals that the community lives by. Religion is a strong belief in the power of a greater God that controls human destiny. Food can be a big part of culture and can provide nutrition that powers the people in the culture. Each culture has certain traditions or values that hold them close together. The Deaf culture uses sign language to express their pride and culture by coming together. Other cultures may use bibles or religion that tie them close together and make them proud to be a part of that culture. Culture can also be defined by the way they spend spare time and uses creativity. The Deaf culture can spend their spare time by communicating with each other through ASL. The Deaf culture loves to

The thing that surprised me the most is learning that most Deaf people would not want to be able to hear again if they were given the chance. Most people would think that a person with some kind of disability would do anything to get rid of it, but that is not the case with many Deaf people. This idea is slightly confusing to me because I am very certain that I would be willing to try to be able to get some kind of hearing back; it would not have to be fully back, but having some kind of hearing after being deaf would be something that would excite me. I guess that I am confused and do not understand because I am not deaf, nor do I have anything wrong with my hearing. Many deaf people enjoy the silence. When they get a hearing aid of some kind, they will use it for a select few things, but most enjoy when they can turn off the hearing aid and have complete silence surround

Noted Deaf educator Tom Holcomb, in his 2010 paper, Deaf Epistemology: the deaf way of knowing, posits that the flow of knowledge is fundamentally different in hearing and Deaf cultures. That is, Deaf learners tend to collect information from direct experience or from the secondhand experiences reported to them by other Deaf persons. Hearing learners accumulate information through oral transmission, mostly in formal educational settings but also via casual social contacts. (Holcomb, 2010). Indeed one study has suggested that because formal educational settings are biased toward oral instruction. Deaf learners acquire only about 12% of the information that is available to the hearing. (DHHS, 2015)

After reading over this quote and the first chapter of the textbook a few times, I believe that that this quote as a whole is saying how evidence based practices are extremely important while teaching, but can be harmful to students if they aren't up to date and current. Particular with deaf students it is important also know about the medical aspect of being deaf since that will effect the way they are able to learn. So stay up to date with all of the different medicine or technology that is used for deaf students in prominent when teaching them. For example, as a teacher of a deaf student you should know what a cochlear implant is and know some effective ways to communicate with students. Since deaf students are becoming more main streamed

I may not be considered part of the hearing culture due to my severe to profound hearing loss, but some people might be surprised to hear that I am not considered a part of the Deaf culture. A majority of the Deaf culture is very critical of those who assimilate with hearing people and accept hearing culture as their majority culture. I believe that every hearing impaired and deaf person is an individual and needs to do what is best for them instead of being worried about following the rules of the Deaf culture.