{"id":445,"date":"2013-09-27T09:00:27","date_gmt":"2013-09-27T14:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.wordpress.com\/?p=445"},"modified":"2020-11-04T15:06:26","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T15:06:26","slug":"juana-f-growing-up-deaf-in-the-public-school-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/2013\/09\/27\/juana-f-growing-up-deaf-in-the-public-school-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing Up Deaf in the Public School System"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine being the only deaf member in your family. How do you find a way to communicate if no one knows sign language? In my case, I learned how to speak and lip read. From the time of my diagnosis, at age four, this was my way of adapting to the world at large, and especially at home. But life at home was much easier than being at school.<\/p>\n

After being mainstreamed<\/a> in fourth grade, I became isolated. I knew I wasn\u2019t like the other kids so I tried my darndest to blend in. It wasn\u2019t easy making friends, but I befriended Doug, who was really sweet and patient when communicating with me. When he smiled and laughed at me, I couldn\u2019t see his eyes, and that made me laugh. When I broke my left wrist from playing on the rings (holy hell, that hurt<\/em>), I got a kick out of striking Doug on the arm with my cast. I might not have really understood him but that didn\u2019t seem to matter.<\/p>\n

Doug\u2019s kindness was important to me because I was bullied relentlessly by the other deaf students. Even though I was able to communicate with them, it wasn\u2019t good enough. If you think they accepted me as one of their own, you\u2019re wrong. In fact, they were even worse bullies than the hearing kids. One day, they\u2019d pretend to be my friend and throw around my shoulders the warmth blanket of their friendship and the next day, they\u2019d shun me, signing the word \u201chate,\u201d all behind the teacher\u2019s back so she never knew what was going on. It didn\u2019t occur to me to talk to the teacher about it.<\/p>\n

By junior high school, I became depressed. I so dreaded going to school that I would vomit every morning. It became so that my parents became concerned. Mama, being a kindergarten teacher, would sit with me in the morning and write down goals for the day, like \u201cToday, I will make a new friend\u201d written out on a large index card. But my depression continued, unabated. Because I feared the large crowds outside during lunchtime and didn\u2019t feel safe being alone, I would eat lunch in the restroom (yes, gross<\/em>) and then stay in the library until the bell rang.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know it at the time but I suffered from communication fatigue<\/a>. Ian Noon\u2019s words almost made me weep; I always felt guilty because I thought my weariness was because I wasn\u2019t trying my best to earn good grades (I was an average student overall but in literature and the social sciences, I was well above average) and because I was lazy. The thought of being lazy just made me feel even guiltier. It wasn\u2019t until I was an adult that I could finally understand that from the time of my diagnosis, my education was not going to be \u201ccomplete,\u201d because I did not have the full access I needed. It was as if intensive speech therapy and itinerant teachers were more important than having a sign language interpreter in my classes. The toughest work, of understanding and making sense of the overload of information, was all up to me to decipher. \u00a0<\/p>\n

As Mr. Noon says, \u201cWe can change the world. But we might need a nap and a cuppa tea every once in a while, so don\u2019t judge us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It wasn\u2019t until I was an adult that I could finally understand that from the time of my diagnosis, my education was not going to be \u201ccomplete,\u201d because I did not have the full access I needed. It was as if intensive speech therapy and itinerant teachers were more important than having a sign language interpreter in my classes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_generate-full-width-content":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[67],"genre":[],"age_category":[],"disability":[20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"age_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/age_category?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"disability","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disability?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}