How Did I Learn English?

Teaching English to Form 1 (freshman level) students, and pre-language to nursery students really made me think about the concept and process of learning the English language as a Deaf person. Naturally, I started a philosophical conversation with myself (I am seriously going through a philosophical phase over the past couple of months – everything I read is somehow connected to everything I am doing, feeling, or thinking – feel free to skip this entry if it is not really your cup of tea), and this conversation begins with the question -

How did *I* learn? I’m probably not the best person to ask this, so bear with me as I go through the process of figuring this out!

How did all the grammar rules and exceptions become so innate to my writing? Right now, off the top of my head, I could only rattle off a couple of rules because they are the rules I had a hard time with (damn you, subject-verb agreement), but the other rules, when I type or write something I can just sense that it was not correct or did not jibe, and I just fix it. As I type this entry, I become much more aware of these self-corrections and I try to think about each grammar rule, after all, I will have to teach or re-teach many of these rules to the Form 1 students.

Past tenses, verbs, nouns, adverbs, spelling … of all this, I think the biggest obstacle for Deaf students is confidence.

There were a few memorable teachers from elementary school through graduate school, who, in addition to my parents, encouraged my love for reading (I think I picked up a lot of the innate grammatical rules from reading), encouraged me to write, and basically did not allow me to even consider the idea that I could not or would not.

On the other hand, I also have many clear memories of exceeding people’s low expectations and surprising the hell out of them, and wondering why that was so shocking. For example, I remember one teacher telling me on the first day of the year in her class in eighth grade that Deaf kids never did well in her class (self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone?). In hindsight, I realize that they were basically telling me that they did not expect me to excel, to be able to read a variety of material, be able to write as well as I do (granted, I’m no Shakespeare, but I think that I am slightly better than the writers for the National Enquirer), and because I had the support of all the other awesome teachers, my family, and my friends, I was more or less able to ignore the low expectations most of the time.

And, my kids? Most of them are not able to communicate at all with their families (basically expected to just shut up and help out with the house), have no access to books, and eagerly look forward to coming to school just so they have access to a language with their peers. Some of them are orphans (and that created another conversation and issue in itself), and the school is the only thing they really have in terms of communication and support. If someone like me, growing up with basically a silver spoon in my mouth in comparison to my kids, gets in a funk every now and then because of patronizing attitudes, low expectations of me, or audism, then I wonder, what the hell do my kids do? How do they do it?

Maslow and his theory of the hierarchy of needs plays a part in this – Maslow believes and I think it makes sense, if a person’s basic needs are not met, then he/she cannot move up to the next level of need – the basic needs at the base of the pyramid are food, water, and shelter, and then you move up to friendships, family, relationships, and then onto to material things and other factors that makes up our lives. If the kids have no decent support system, it is difficult to think about doing something like learning a second language, when you are just trying to build a support system.

So, sure, yeah, there are many issues in learning the English language as a Deaf person, as the idea of bilingualism is only starting to grow onto some of the teachers, (tho one thing that Kenya is light-years ahead of the United States, is that they have an official government sponsored curriculum for Kenya Sign Language and teaches KSL by itself in a full class period, while we have nothing even remotely close to that [as American Sign Language is only taught alongside all the other subjects, or for the lucky hearing students as a foreign language]), the struggle of the teachers with the idea of teaching without using phonics (Hooked on Phonics, people! That television commercial has scarred, I tell you, scarred me for life), and the challenge of the transition from a visual and three-dimensional language into a linear and two-dimensional language, I think the biggest thing that I can do as a teacher is to provide a safe space and expect more from the students than the other teachers normally expect.

See, I went off on a philosophical tangent and took all of you for a ride … back to the question –

How did *I* learn?

That will be an interesting thought process for me as I use the student workbook / teacher’s guide / curriculum to teach Form 1 English this year, and I am sure I will dredge up a few tidbits and stories of my own educational learning process, and if you are lucky, I will philosophize a little less.