The Deaf Body in Public Space - NY Times

Deaf News: The Deaf Body in Public Space from New York Times.



NEW YORK CITY -- “It’s rude to point,” my friend told me from across the elementary-school cafeteria table. I grasped her words as I read them off her lips. She stared at my index finger, which I held raised in midair, gesturing toward a mutual classmate. “My mom said so.”



I was 6 or 7 years old, but I remember stopping with a jolt. Something inside me froze, too, went suddenly cold.



“I’m signing,” I said out loud. “That’s not rude.”



As the only Deaf student in my elementary school, I had already stumbled across the challenges of straddling two languages and two modes of communication. My family was hearing, but they still empowered me by using both English and sign language at home.



A sign language interpreter accompanied me throughout the day at school, and my teachers created a welcoming environment for me to learn, but finding a place to belong with kids my own age often felt more difficult. I tried to speak to them, and occasionally they reciprocated the effort by learning some basic signs. But usually I felt separate.



I went home that day and asked my mother about what my friend had said. “Don’t worry,” my mother said, “she doesn’t know the social rules are different with signing. You aren’t being rude.” With that, matter-of-fact as always, she brought the conversation to an end. But I still felt a lingering self-consciousness, entirely novel and difficult to shake.



This was perhaps the first time I realized that other people could see me as obtrusive, as taking up too much space, when I was simply communicating just as I was.



When I reflect on this memory two decades later, I recognize how my childhood friend, whom at the time I had found to be so accusatory, had really gaped at me with a sort of wonder. My signing challenged the rules of social conduct she’d absorbed from adults, and to her I must have seemed ignorant or radically rebellious, or perhaps both. But pointing was a truly fundamental act for me; it was how I expressed what my grown-up scholarly self would call relationality - the idea of being in the world in relation to others. Through sign language, a properly poised finger allowed me to say you and me and he and she and they. If I did not point, how could I make a human connection? ... Read More at New York Times.

Booming Cochlear Implants in Indiana State

Deaf News: As more Deaf students use cochlear implants, Indiana schools work to adapt due to gaining popularity.



INDIANAPOLIS, IN -- Public schools in Indiana serve about 2,400 students who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. Of those students a growing number now use cochlear implants, small medical devices that stimulate nerves in the inner ear and give a sense of hearing.



As technology develops, and cochlear implants become more common, many public schools are still working to catch up.



“I like to think that it’s not malicious, it’s just that most of these smaller districts don’t have the training and the knowledge to really be able to understand what these kids need,” says Ellyn McCall, family liaison at hearing loss advocacy group Hear Indiana.



As the number of students with cochlear implants grow, advocates like McCall say there’s often a disconnect between services schools offer and services these students need.



Brandy Hauser, of Spencer, IN, had never been more excited. She was a brand new mom. Like all Indiana parents since 1999, she watched as doctors took her newborn daughter Grace for a hearing screening.



Then a nurse came back.



“She [gave] me a little card and said that your daughter didn’t pass the infant hearing screening test,” Hasuer says.



Grace has mondini dysplasia, an inner ear malformation that results in profound deafness.



“After that it was like a whirlwind of ‘What do we do?,’” Hauser says.



For communication, the options can come from two schools of thought.



There’s the well-known route: use sign language. Or the newer option gaining popularity: cochlear implants and spoken language.



Hauser chose the second. At 18 months, Grace had an implant surgically attached to her skull.



“She was sitting in her little car seat stroller. We had her sitting up in there, and they turned her on. It was just like the shine of a Christmas light in her face when she, you know, clapped and she looked,” Hauser says. “It was the first time that I knew, ok, she looked. Ok, we’ve got this.”



But when Grace got to school, things became complicated. Hearing with cochlear implants is not traditional hearing. It takes time to ‘learn to hear.’



“When sentence writing started coming around, and the structure of sentences.. [It] was very hard for her to make a sentence that would be correct,” Hauser says.



Hauser says that’s largely because services from the school district weren’t geared for Deaf kids who, through technology, were also learning to hear and speak.



Instead, the focus was American Sign Language, where grammar is different.



Students like Grace are already outliers in the state. She’s one of nine Deaf or Hard of Hearing students in the Spencer-Ownens Community Schools district of 2,600 students. That’s one-third of one percent of the entire student body.



That’s typical for most Indiana school districts. Public districts, outside of the Indiana School for the Deaf, have eight deaf or hard of hearing students, on average.



Melissa Lancaster heads the organization that provides special education for Grace’s school district, Spencer-Owens Community schools.



“We look at what they’re needing and what services can we provide to meet that,” Lancaster says. “The only challenge is making sure that we’re up to speed on the cochlear implant and what’s needed with that.”



Challenges - and debates - around educating students who are Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing are nothing new to Indiana. Indiana is home to the Indiana School for the Deaf - an institution that specializes in giving students who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing an American Sign Language and English bilingual education.



As technology developed, lawmakers said the ISD was not giving students enough experience in a newly available hearing culture. School officials pushed back, but the state diverted funding from the school to create the Indiana Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Education.



It’s goal? Provide information regarding all communication opportunities to families, from American Sign Language to spoken language.



Deaf or Hard of Hearing students bring their districts about $8,000 each in extra state funding, but advocates say that amount doesn’t necessary cover expensive services that help students with cochlear implants, like therapy, closed-captioning and teacher microphone systems.



“That has to cover lot’s of things,” says Naomi Horton, executive director of hearing loss advocacy group Hear Indiana. “It’s not enough money in most cases to cover the special education costs.”



But there’s a catch. Under federal law, school districts are obligated to provide all students with a free and adequate education. In other words, they can’t say a necessary special education accommodation is beyond their budget. And she says, that can put cash-strapped schools in a tricky position.



Ellyn McCall, the family liason at Hear Indiana, says it makes a big difference when services are tailored for children with cochlear implants. She says it has made a big difference for her son Seth.



Today, Seth is 8 years old. He’s in a traditional classroom, and says he learns things like the definition of “busybody.”



“‘Busybody’ is when you’re being nosy and you’re listening to someone else’s conversation,” Seth says.



Because there is evidence that early services can mean big results for students like Seth in the long run, some parents don’t want to wait for their districts to provide them.



Kendra Bowden’s son Wyatt has cochlear implants. On his third birthday, Bowden says he still had the language skills of a child half his age.



Bowden lives in Terre Haute, but she decided to send Wyatt to St. Joseph Institute for the Deaf, a private school that specializes in educating children with cochlear implants. It’s in Indianapolis. An hour and a half away.



“We didn’t want to actually send him because it’s far for us, it’s far for him it’s hard on him it’s hard on us, he’s our baby he’s never even been to daycare,” Bowden said. “But that school is only there for preschool.”



It’s almost seven hours total of driving there and back, to and from school each day. But Bowden hopes it will be worth it after preschool.



“I think it’s gonna be worth it in the long run,” Bowden said. “It’s not forever, it’s maybe a couple of years.”



Studies show getting children with cochlear implants specialized services early can be worth if for the state financially, too. The state can save over $200,000 per student that would otherwise go to state services, like special education and auditory rehabilitation.



SOURCE

Bullies Dump Deaf Student's Backpack In Toilet

VIDEO [CC] - Deaf News: High school bullies dump Deaf students backpack in toilet has gained national attention in the United States.



OMAHA, NE -- High school bullies in Omaha, Nebraska chose a Deaf student as their victim in a sickening incident that has gained national attention, KMTV reported.



The mean-spirited students dumped the contents of Alex Hernandez's backpack into a toilet at mainstreaming school.



Alex, a senior, had left his backpack on a chair while getting some food Wednesday in the cafeteria of Burke High School. When he returned, it was gone.

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Alex told school administrators, but a search proved fruitless. However, when school security video was examined, two male students were seen walking off with his bag.



"Those students think it's okay to bully a Deaf student, but it's not. It's not okay to bully someone who is Disabled, Deaf or Hard of Hearing," Hernandez told KMTV. "Or anyone for that matter."



The backpack contained his tablet, a debit card, school supplies, a battery for his cochlear implant and his homework. It was the homework that really bothered him. The toilet dousing ruined his English project.



"I was very upset because I know I work really hard on my project and homework because I just want to make my mom to be happy and know that I did a good job on the homework," he told KMTV.



According to the station, school administrators told Alex's mother that the students who took the backpack were eventually identified and that one has been suspended. The pair claim they didn't know Alex was Deaf.



The incident remains under investigation. Meanwhile Alex's mother has pulled the boy out of Burke High so he can transfer to another high school.



Alex's sister and some of his friends set up a GoFundMe page to raise money to replace the ruined items. The goal was reached, and the account has since been closed. Source.



UPDATE:



Students Involved in Burke High Incident Have Been Disciplined, District Says.



KETV: The Omaha Public School District released a statement Tuesday, saying the students involved in the incident have been disciplined. The district said, because of privacy laws, they would not identify the students, or provide specific details about the discipline. Here is the full text of the statement.

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"We are aware of the situation involving theft of a student’s property that occurred last week at Burke High School.



This situation was an isolated incident. It involved theft of property that was later discarded, captured on photo by students and shared on social media. Interviews with the students involved revealed they did not know each other... Read More.