you just don't join in the conversation.
I went to a morning tea yesterday for "Loud Shirt Day". It was a fund raiser for a centre for hearing impaired children.
I was invited by someone whose now adult son was born with a profound hearing loss. She still raises funds for the centre which educated him.
It's an oral/aural focussed centre. I was once offered a job there - and declined. I knew I needed to be trained before I could even contemplate taking on the role of teaching in such a school. I also believed, and still believe, that all profoundly dead children have the right to learn sign language.
In my early teaching days the thought was that children should not be taught to sign. If they did it was thought they would never learn to lip read or make the effort to speak. And yes all that is an effort - a huge effort.
I worked at weekends in a residential nursery school for profoundly deaf children. Signing was supposedly forbidden but it was impossible to eradicate it. I sometimes see those children, now grown and with children of their own. We sign to each other. The conversation is limited, not by their abilities but by mine. I know very little sign language - more than most people perhaps but not enough to hold a conversation. Despite that I still get hugged and introduced to their families.
But yesterday was different. M... was the only person there who had been born with a hearing loss. He can speak but it is very difficult to understand. There were about thirty people present and M...simply couldn't communicate with any of them except on a very limited social level. He wandered around trying not to look out of place.
He was wearing a brilliantly coloured shirt of flourescent colours in keeping with his mother's request to wear a bright coloured shirt. So I looked directly at him and said, "M..." and when I had his attention I said as carefully and clearly as I could, "That shirt is almost neon bright."
He got the message. His demeanour changed for a moment. He held his arms out, twirled around and then told me,
"I could stop traffic in this."
We laughed. It was a good moment. Then he had to greet other people - but not really communicate with them.
I wish we could stop the traffic more often.
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You know my position - Auslan should be compulsory as a second language from the very beginnings of kindy and school. Not only will it benefit the deaf community and society at large by enabling more people to communicate non verbally, it could also assist children with language or speech difficulties to communicate more easily. There are many reasons for people to be non-verbal and not necessarily deaf. When children present with difficult behaviours at school it usually means that a child has a need that isn't being met. Sometimes it is frustration due to difficulties with oral communication, especially if the child is tired or stressed. Having the signing alternative could also make life easier for the teachers to help their students and for students to be better understood before the child acts out with antisocial behaviour.
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