"language-less" kids

I went to an elementary school a couple weeks ago to tell a story as an assignment for one of my classes at college. I’m currently studying towards becoming an elementary teacher for the deaf and when I found a deaf classroom at a nearby elementary school, I was thrilled at my discovery! I had a high expectation that this experience would greatly benefit me as a potential future teacher for the deaf. This classroom, although small with only six deaf students in it, has a deaf teacher and is for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students.

The teacher in this classroom had already warned me that the kids didn’t know much sign language. With this in my mind, I picked a picture book that I’d tell a story with few simple signs. The story was about the three little kittens that had lost their gloves. The purpose of this activity was to “break the ice” with this classroom for more upcoming assignments that would allow the students to be more comfortable with me. When I started off the activity, I asked the students what their names were and to my surprise, most of them struggled with that task. The students are around the ages of 5 and 6 and only one was capable of spelling his whole name. The first student spelled the first two letters of her name and was stumped. The teacher finished it for her. The second student started out with the first letter of her name, but needed to finish her name by imitating the teacher. The third one gave me her sign name instead of spelling it out. The teacher asked her to spell it after she signed it to me and she was capable of doing that slowly. The next child did not know his own name. The teacher waved to him and signed his name to him. He imitated the teacher, but I was under the impression that he did not understand that sign was his own identity. The last child spelled out his whole name with a smile.

Although it was endearing to watch the students tell me their names, I was sadden by how far delayed they were from the hearing students at their same age. I have been teaching hearing preschoolers sign language for over a year now and I can notice a huge difference between the hearing preschoolers who vary from two to five years old and the deaf kindergarteners who are about five and six years old. Even though the deaf students are older than the preschoolers, their cognitive skills seem to be far below the preschoolers’ cognitive skills. The preschoolers are capable of asking questions and responding to their own situations while the deaf students in that classroom were not. The main reason for this: the deaf students did not acquire the sense of language that they needed at an early age.

Deaf children ARE capable of learning at the same pace as the other hearing students, even though they will often be a bit delayed at the vocabulary part and such. Usually what pulls them far behind is their lack of language at an early age. Hearing children are exposed to language everywhere through their environments by listening to everyone communicate to each other and making sounds. This is how hearing children acquire language typically. I learned in a special education class that deafness is not entirely a physical disability. It is a language disability. Deaf people are cut off from the world and society by their inability to communicate with other people through the “normal” mean of vocal skills. This is why sign language is so important to the deaf community. It greatly enriches their own personal sense of language and insight into the world as a human being. There is nothing wrong with giving speech therapy and such to deaf children, but it should not be regarded as the only way to allow the deaf children to communicate. It is physically impossible for deaf people to speak as accurately as hearing people do and although lip-reading is a wonderful skill to have, it is not reliable to use as a mean of communicating. Many words look the same with the lip shapes and it really is a guesswork on the deaf person’s part to understand what a hearing person is saying. This is why sign language is stressed as the most important method of teaching deaf children language. It doesn’t have to be the only method if the parents would also prefer their deaf child to have the ability to somewhat speak. Teaching sign language and speech would be greatly beneficial to the child, but it really varies with the child’s ability to comprehend speech and its ability to use the vocal cords. Speech, even if it is not perfect, would slightly help the deaf children prosper in the hearing world where sign language is rarely used. What to teach the deaf children at an early age is a very controversial subject in the deaf and hearing communities as many are divided among whether sign language or speaking, and my opinion on this is that there’s no harm in teaching deaf children both but I strongly recommend sign language as the primary means of communicating and educating.

Going back to the deaf classroom that I visited a couple weeks ago, I started out with my original plan of storytelling by signing the story with the picture book. However, I quickly noted that the students did not understand me, so I changed my approach and interacted with the students instead. With each pictures in the book, I asked them questions and taught them signs such as “how many are there? 1…2…3!” and “what’s this? Cat!” It was a delight teaching them new signs and I went through the book twice to make sure the students understood. They responded well to my facial expressions even though they didn’t understand my signs and it gave me hope that with more practices and lessons in sign language, they will be able to improve their language skills.

After this whole experience, I sat down with the teacher and asked her some questions. I asked the most important question in my mind first: do the parents sign? The teacher sadly answered that none of the parents knew sign, but one parent recently enrolled in an American Sign Language class. It broke my heart knowing that these deaf children had no way of communicating with their families at home and realized that it must be a difficult situation for everyone. This quickly explained to me the reason behind the poor progress with the deaf students. Although the parents are most likely not intentional with not giving their deaf child what he or she needs, they were probably misinformed or had no knowledge or resources on how to raise their deaf child. I am not in the right place to tell parents how to raise a deaf child because I’ve never raised a deaf child, but as a deaf person myself, I believe it is very important that a connection is established between the parents and deaf child through sign language. It makes everyone’s lives so much easier and more enjoyable. If a deaf child was exposed to sign language at a very young age, that child will have a higher chance of understanding English with a basic understanding of language through sign language. Regardless of age, it is not always too late to teach a deaf child or person sign language. It will greatly open their eyes to endless possibilities in this world as a human being.