Edwas

I see much that comes from personal perceptions, however. Through a parent’s eyes ANY progress is seen as tremendous and miraculous, but it may not seem so through the eyes of an experienced teacher who knows how things could be far better. Where these teachers are also parents of Deaf children and some also have CI’s, that is telling.

The fact is that today’s schools for the deaf still have a way to go and the onus still falls on the parents to fill in that gap. Home enrichment and home activities dovetail with formal instruction. These are simply enriched opportunities to read, to listen to reading, to watch captioned media, to interact with other children, to learn both visually and by hearing. Trips to the store, to family outings, to hobby fairs, etc. all provide language input and coax output.

What I don’t want to see are parents that beat the drums for CI’s as if they are the answer when they are not for most kids. It does NOT make Deaf children into Hearing children. Too much gets lost in the gaps and too much has to be done in the educational environment. Even children that are said to be developing “normally” and “up to their age level” are often found to be functioning at the lower level of their classroom of 20 to 25 Hearing children. We simply don’t know all the answers and must fight those decision makers that think they do before they blindly legislate our options.

What your school is doing is actually illegal. Call an IEP meeting and request that your daugher receive half a day in the oral program and half the day in the bi-bi program. The school CANNOT tell you no if they have both. If they want to refuse or deny your request, they will have to prove in a court of law that it is an undue burden. They must provide/meet the parents’ wants, along with the needs of the child. Teachers, principals, administrators, etc, are all there to assist the child and parents; not the other way around as many schools try to make it.