Translator: Katie Poole Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
One day, when I was walking back from the library with my class,
I started chatting with my students –
one student in particular, a third-grader.
The conversation started when I heard a loud “pop!”
and I said, “What was that?!”
And my student said, “Mah fingerrr.”
I said, “What happened? Did it hurt? Did you crack it?”
He said, “(Scoffs) It didn’t hurt. I do that all the time.”
And I said, “Oh yeah, my fingers crack a lot when I move them too.”
And he said, “Yeah, and my thumb of the leg – it cracks when I move it.”
And I said, “Yeah … Wait, your what?!”
“My thumb of the leg.”
In that instant, I thought it was strange
that a third-grader didn’t already know the word for “big toe.”
In the next moment, I recognized that this third-grader
was from a Spanish-speaking family, spoke primarily English,
and was attending a Deaf school where we use American Sign Language.
In the next moment,
I knew I needed to provide him a word for his growing vocabulary
without starting my next sentence with the word, “Actually …”
I needed to validate his knowledge,
to provide a new word for a concept he clearly already grasped.
I needed to address a slight misstep in juggling three – three! – languages
without sending the message
that this eight-year-old was bad at English.
In other words, I needed a human approach.
I’ve been teaching Deaf and hard-of-hearing students
in the classroom setting for almost ten years.
I am perhaps a bit unconventional.
I stopped counting my personal children’s book collection
at about 1200 books.
I recently dyed my hair purple for a student talent show,
and one time, I spent 15 minutes acting out various scenario
to try and help my students generate the words “dead” and “alive”
instead of just giving them the target words.
The Tony Award-winning scene that finally elicited the desired words
involved a deer, a bowhunter, and a very dramatic gutting!
Also my principal was watching, and I was sweating.
It’s safe to say that I am very passionate about my teaching.
I also take research very seriously,
and what I’ve found has been a bit disheartening.
The 2002 law, No Child Left Behind,
is no longer the legal guideline for educational policy,
but it was the dominant paradigm for an entire generation of instruction,
because it was the first law to mandate instructional practices
to be drawn from evidence-based research.
The Department of Education set forth guidelines for research to qualify,
but deafness is considered a low-incidence disability within special education,
and so our study populations are small,
and studies are difficult to replicate.
In the past 40 years of literacy research,
very few studies meet the criteria
for what is considered evidence-based research.
In one literature review that I read,
they only found 22 studies that qualified as empirically designed,
and of those studies,
not a single one studied or replicated the same intervention twice.
I read some of those studies, and I was faced with the reality
that literacy for Deaf students exists in fragmented parts.
Research, interventions, instruction
is delivered for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students
as vocabulary …
and spelling …
and grammar …
and fluency.
A lot of it is devoid of any context or any deeper meaning
that is attached to a student’s real world.
Much of it is focused on accuracy,
and a lot of it is devoid of any deeper meaning
that helps a student attach it to the world around them.
There’s one program that I have used in my classroom,
and I’ve read the supporting literature
that they use to support the intervention that they use.
Students make handmade flashcards,
and teachers are instructed to tear up the flashcards
if a student forgets some of the meanings of a vocabulary word the next day.
The trainer instructs teachers to smile while tearing up the flashcards,
and students then remake the flashcards,
and as the trainer smiles and laughs,
they never forget those words again!
I’ve used this program in my classroom,
but I’ve never torn up flashcards, um …
because programs like this, to me,
are the equivalent of treating students like puppies,
and rubbing their noses in their mistakes in an attempt to teach them a lesson.
Mistakes, as I see them, are opportunities for growth and not destruction.
I still take research very seriously,
but I really want something more human, more humane for my students,
something that treats them less like input/output machines,
and more like whole humans
that come to reading with a full, rich context of experiences,
and a whole world of experiences around them that they can bring to a text
and connect to what they’re reading.
So I took a cue from Paulo Freire,
and I let my students be the experts of their own experiences.
I listen to them before I assess them,
and I go from there.
I have one student – or had one student who had a very interesting habit
of combining all gendered pronouns into a single sign.
I thought that was odd, but I didn’t mark it wrong right away.
I just listened, and I watched.
She could go back and fix other things that she had mis-signed,
words like “can,” that have three meanings –
three common meanings and two slang meanings –
words like “like” and “make,” that have three and nine signs respectively,
she could go back and fix,
but she never did anything with the pronouns.
Understand, the pronouns have multiple signs.
There’s one way that I teach them,
there’s other ways that other teachers in the department teach them,
but this was an invention of her own design.
At the end of the passage, I asked her to retell the story.
I asked her some comprehension questions,
and it was clear to me that she knew what the story was about.
Her invented sign didn’t interfere with her meaning-making process at all.
As texts become more complex, it will be very important for her
to sort out referents in – in reference – ha! –
referents in reference to using pronouns,
but for now, her invention was facilitating fluency
in what is otherwise a very cumbersome process
in reading aloud in two languages at once.
What’s more, while she was reading,
she was able to stop and comment on the story,
make connections to her own life,
and make connections to other stories that we had read in class,
and then go back to reading exactly where she had left off.
Had I insisted on a strict accuracy model,
all of that would have been lost,
and all of that is the deeper purpose of literacy altogether.
I had taught that class for three years,
and as much as I learned about teaching literacy from them,
there’s still a lot about their brains
and the way that they access English print
that I didn’t fully understand.
That same student taught herself onomatopoeia
by reading graphic novels and comic books.
Now, if you don’t know,
onomatopoeia are English sound effects words,
and this student was profoundly deaf, or nearly so.
She taught herself
to read English print words that represent sound effects,
on her own, without any adult intervention,
and I didn’t know that she’d done that
until she came to me
and read similar words in a non-graphic format.
She was sitting in front of me with a book written in paragraph form,
reading words like “toot toot” and “chug chug”
and “swish swish” correctly the first time,
because she had already learned
how to read words like “pow,” “bang,” and “bam!”
I was absolutely amazed.
I had never seen a student do that before.
That was an absolutely crystallizing moment for me.
It was at that moment that everything I had experienced
in my classroom of Deaf and hard-of-hearing students,
everything that I was reading
about bilingual education of students who were hearing,
and all my frustration with studies
that were trying to put Deaf and hard-of-hearing kids
into boxes where they don’t fit,
finally sang.
Context is everything.
Everything is context.
Language is a very human experience.
It’s – everything that we do,
everything that we communicate is based on language,
and every one of us goes through a very typical –
typical (Scoffs) – language-learning process,
and my students needed to go through a process of language-learning
very similiar to what they went through with their mother tongue,
the same way we learned our own mother tongues:
in a safe environment, rich with context,
where it was safe to make mistakes,
where they were free from the embarrassment
of having their flashcards torn up by a sickly smiling teacher
who seemed to delight in their mistakes.
Mistakes are an opportunity for growth, not destruction or embarrassment.
And that seemed like a really simple concept,
and it kind of is, but at the same time,
it becomes really complex in a classroom of six students
who are all at different language levels,
but it forms the foundation that is the method to my madness.
Of course if you peek in on my classroom at any time,
it kind of just looks like madness,
but it’s the reason that I have so many books.
It’s the reason I dye my hair purple.
It’s the reason that I spend so much time talking about poop.
(Audience chuckling)
Context is everything, and it’s what I try to provide for my students.
So where does that leave me?
In the hallway, trying to provide a brand new word
for an eight-year-old who’s really, really shy and sensitive.
Well, I did what I always do.
I looked at him and I said,
“I know, right?!
My big toe cracks too, and when it does, I think it sounds like popcorn.”
(Applause)
One day, when I was walking back from the library with my class,
I started chatting with my students –
one student in particular, a third-grader.
The conversation started when I heard a loud “pop!”
and I said, “What was that?!”
And my student said, “Mah fingerrr.”
I said, “What happened? Did it hurt? Did you crack it?”
He said, “(Scoffs) It didn’t hurt. I do that all the time.”
And I said, “Oh yeah, my fingers crack a lot when I move them too.”
And he said, “Yeah, and my thumb of the leg – it cracks when I move it.”
And I said, “Yeah … Wait, your what?!”
“My thumb of the leg.”
In that instant, I thought it was strange
that a third-grader didn’t already know the word for “big toe.”
In the next moment, I recognized that this third-grader
was from a Spanish-speaking family, spoke primarily English,
and was attending a Deaf school where we use American Sign Language.
In the next moment,
I knew I needed to provide him a word for his growing vocabulary
without starting my next sentence with the word, “Actually …”
I needed to validate his knowledge,
to provide a new word for a concept he clearly already grasped.
I needed to address a slight misstep in juggling three – three! – languages
without sending the message
that this eight-year-old was bad at English.
In other words, I needed a human approach.
I’ve been teaching Deaf and hard-of-hearing students
in the classroom setting for almost ten years.
I am perhaps a bit unconventional.
I stopped counting my personal children’s book collection
at about 1200 books.
I recently dyed my hair purple for a student talent show,
and one time, I spent 15 minutes acting out various scenario
to try and help my students generate the words “dead” and “alive”
instead of just giving them the target words.
The Tony Award-winning scene that finally elicited the desired words
involved a deer, a bowhunter, and a very dramatic gutting!
Also my principal was watching, and I was sweating.
It’s safe to say that I am very passionate about my teaching.
I also take research very seriously,
and what I’ve found has been a bit disheartening.
The 2002 law, No Child Left Behind,
is no longer the legal guideline for educational policy,
but it was the dominant paradigm for an entire generation of instruction,
because it was the first law to mandate instructional practices
to be drawn from evidence-based research.
The Department of Education set forth guidelines for research to qualify,
but deafness is considered a low-incidence disability within special education,
and so our study populations are small,
and studies are difficult to replicate.
In the past 40 years of literacy research,
very few studies meet the criteria
for what is considered evidence-based research.
In one literature review that I read,
they only found 22 studies that qualified as empirically designed,
and of those studies,
not a single one studied or replicated the same intervention twice.
I read some of those studies, and I was faced with the reality
that literacy for Deaf students exists in fragmented parts.
Research, interventions, instruction
is delivered for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students
as vocabulary …
and spelling …
and grammar …
and fluency.
A lot of it is devoid of any context or any deeper meaning
that is attached to a student’s real world.
Much of it is focused on accuracy,
and a lot of it is devoid of any deeper meaning
that helps a student attach it to the world around them.
There’s one program that I have used in my classroom,
and I’ve read the supporting literature
that they use to support the intervention that they use.
Students make handmade flashcards,
and teachers are instructed to tear up the flashcards
if a student forgets some of the meanings of a vocabulary word the next day.
The trainer instructs teachers to smile while tearing up the flashcards,
and students then remake the flashcards,
and as the trainer smiles and laughs,
they never forget those words again!
I’ve used this program in my classroom,
but I’ve never torn up flashcards, um …
because programs like this, to me,
are the equivalent of treating students like puppies,
and rubbing their noses in their mistakes in an attempt to teach them a lesson.
Mistakes, as I see them, are opportunities for growth and not destruction.
I still take research very seriously,
but I really want something more human, more humane for my students,
something that treats them less like input/output machines,
and more like whole humans
that come to reading with a full, rich context of experiences,
and a whole world of experiences around them that they can bring to a text
and connect to what they’re reading.
So I took a cue from Paulo Freire,
and I let my students be the experts of their own experiences.
I listen to them before I assess them,
and I go from there.
I have one student – or had one student who had a very interesting habit
of combining all gendered pronouns into a single sign.
I thought that was odd, but I didn’t mark it wrong right away.
I just listened, and I watched.
She could go back and fix other things that she had mis-signed,
words like “can,” that have three meanings –
three common meanings and two slang meanings –
words like “like” and “make,” that have three and nine signs respectively,
she could go back and fix,
but she never did anything with the pronouns.
Understand, the pronouns have multiple signs.
There’s one way that I teach them,
there’s other ways that other teachers in the department teach them,
but this was an invention of her own design.
At the end of the passage, I asked her to retell the story.
I asked her some comprehension questions,
and it was clear to me that she knew what the story was about.
Her invented sign didn’t interfere with her meaning-making process at all.
As texts become more complex, it will be very important for her
to sort out referents in – in reference – ha! –
referents in reference to using pronouns,
but for now, her invention was facilitating fluency
in what is otherwise a very cumbersome process
in reading aloud in two languages at once.
What’s more, while she was reading,
she was able to stop and comment on the story,
make connections to her own life,
and make connections to other stories that we had read in class,
and then go back to reading exactly where she had left off.
Had I insisted on a strict accuracy model,
all of that would have been lost,
and all of that is the deeper purpose of literacy altogether.
I had taught that class for three years,
and as much as I learned about teaching literacy from them,
there’s still a lot about their brains
and the way that they access English print
that I didn’t fully understand.
That same student taught herself onomatopoeia
by reading graphic novels and comic books.
Now, if you don’t know,
onomatopoeia are English sound effects words,
and this student was profoundly deaf, or nearly so.
She taught herself
to read English print words that represent sound effects,
on her own, without any adult intervention,
and I didn’t know that she’d done that
until she came to me
and read similar words in a non-graphic format.
She was sitting in front of me with a book written in paragraph form,
reading words like “toot toot” and “chug chug”
and “swish swish” correctly the first time,
because she had already learned
how to read words like “pow,” “bang,” and “bam!”
I was absolutely amazed.
I had never seen a student do that before.
That was an absolutely crystallizing moment for me.
It was at that moment that everything I had experienced
in my classroom of Deaf and hard-of-hearing students,
everything that I was reading
about bilingual education of students who were hearing,
and all my frustration with studies
that were trying to put Deaf and hard-of-hearing kids
into boxes where they don’t fit,
finally sang.
Context is everything.
Everything is context.
Language is a very human experience.
It’s – everything that we do,
everything that we communicate is based on language,
and every one of us goes through a very typical –
typical (Scoffs) – language-learning process,
and my students needed to go through a process of language-learning
very similiar to what they went through with their mother tongue,
the same way we learned our own mother tongues:
in a safe environment, rich with context,
where it was safe to make mistakes,
where they were free from the embarrassment
of having their flashcards torn up by a sickly smiling teacher
who seemed to delight in their mistakes.
Mistakes are an opportunity for growth, not destruction or embarrassment.
And that seemed like a really simple concept,
and it kind of is, but at the same time,
it becomes really complex in a classroom of six students
who are all at different language levels,
but it forms the foundation that is the method to my madness.
Of course if you peek in on my classroom at any time,
it kind of just looks like madness,
but it’s the reason that I have so many books.
It’s the reason I dye my hair purple.
It’s the reason that I spend so much time talking about poop.
(Audience chuckling)
Context is everything, and it’s what I try to provide for my students.
So where does that leave me?
In the hallway, trying to provide a brand new word
for an eight-year-old who’s really, really shy and sensitive.
Well, I did what I always do.
I looked at him and I said,
“I know, right?!
My big toe cracks too, and when it does, I think it sounds like popcorn.”
(Applause)
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