#deafed

On this day in 1887, Anne Sullivan began teaching six-year-old Helen Keller -- making this the perfect day to share the fellowship of Kim Pogorelsky Lewis, teacher at Los Angeles County Office of Education’s Southwest Intensive Specialized Programs...

As a DHH (Deaf and hard of hearing) itinerant teacher, I travel between numerous schools in adjacent districts, working individually with students with hearing loss who attend mainstream, public schools. The 28 students I work with range in age from preschool through high school, and I design lessons specific to each addressing deficit areas related to the student’s hearing loss. I designed my Fund for Teachers fellowship to learn about policy development in Deaf education as it specifically relates to American Sign Language’s (ASL) recognition as a valid language. I attended two noteworthy and complementary conferences:

The Second International Conference on Sign Language Acquisition (ICSLA) for three days (July 1-3) in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and

The 22nd International Congress on Education of the Deaf (ICED) for five days (July 5-9) in Athens, Greece, which is only held once every five years.

My goal at ICSLA was to acquire skills for understanding the mechanics and history of my students’ first language, ASL. Because 90% of Deaf and hard of hearing children have parents who are hearing, delay issues frequently occur. Parents often try to learn to sign, but stall for several reasons, including late diagnosis of the hearing loss, economic or time pressure at home, and influence from the medical community. As a result, DHH students often arrive to school with monumental language deficits, presenting an arduous educational challenge.

My purpose at the ICED conference was to help my students understand the history of their native language (ASL), analyze the politics surrounding sign language in education, and ultimately, teaching students how they can influence their educational policy.

When I left Los Angeles to attend the two conferences, I had an expectation of what I would experience based on posted agendas and abstracts. While the conference presenters often met and exceeded expectations, I had no way to predict the impact of interactions with attendees. At ICSLA, I mingled with university professors and top researchers in sign language. I found myself pushed to the brink of my limited background in linguistics as I discussed and questioned research during poster sessions and coffee breaks. At ICED, I met more educators and, through these contacts, participated in two organic, grass-roots movements:

First, I attended a lunchtime consortium that called themselves New Researchers in Deaf Education, consisting of those new to the field, sharing information and resources. The group created a related Facebook and Twitter page called The Radical Middle, with a forum called Moving Deaf Education Forward. The name references the polarization in Deaf education and the desire to represent all groups in the discussion, eliminating politics as much as possible. In the months since my fellowship, I’ve found that contact with these educators through email and social media brings me into contact with new trends and research I might otherwise miss.

Second, the ICED conference had one glaring problem: there were not enough sign language interpreters hired for the multi-day conference. Rumblings began in various breakout sessions on day one, and by day two people began to meet to discuss the problem. By day three a petition was circulated among the attendees, officially protesting the lack of sufficient interpretation in American Sign Language, Greek Sign Language and International Sign Language. On the final day, a petition was submitted to the International Committee.

Discussion of this issue has continued on social media and has become groundwork for my new curricular unit tying together native language, Deaf educational history and policy making. From this unit titled “Deaf Education Policy in Action,” students will learn about democratic processes directly influencing their lives and explore how DHH policies are created. Supplemented by videos, photos,and conference materials from ICED, the unit will educate students on how policies and language decisions are made, empower DHH students to become productive members of the DHH community, and inform students about networking opportunities within their community. I’ll share this curriculum with other DHH itinerant teachers from my agency, district staff who have DHH students, and DHH special day class teachers in my district. Following this interaction, I will share it with the broader DHH educational community.

My Fund for Teachers fellowship ended up giving me so much more than my grant proposal outlined. In addition to personal experiences, such as those detailed above, it was a unique cultural experience. Flight delays led to an unexpected detour of two nights in Stockholm in the middle of Scandavia’s Midsummer celebration. In Amsterdam I rented an apartment during the ICSLA conference and had the opportunity to do walking tours of the historic districts and found the grocery stores and public transportation very manageable. Finally, the ICED conference in Athens coincided with the historic Greek referendum.

I approach my profession with a philosophy that teachers are always learning. This fellowship offered the unique opportunity to collaborate with DHH policy makers, educators and researchers from around the globe to support the continuation of that dogma. My self-designed professional development enabled me to journey to two unique educational conferences and, consequently,  I am armed with the most recent research and techniques for teaching Deaf and hard of hearing students.