Boys Town Hearing Study Gets Nearly $9M Grant

OMAHA, Neb. — Researchers at the Boys Town National Research Hospital are working to heal childhood hearing loss thanks to a multi-million-dollar grant.

 

Experts said that about 2 percent of children suffer from some type of hearing loss.

 

Leslie McCaslin takes her 16-month-old, Ava, to the hospital to see if the doctors there can help.

 

Ava has been wearing hearing aids since she was four-months-old.

 

Ava is full of energy but she’s also partially deaf. She suffers from bi-lateral mild to moderate hearing loss and has worn hearing aids since she was 4 months old.

 

“She can still hear, but she may have difficulties with some of the finer parts of language,” McCaslin said.

 

The doctors at Boys Town said their nearly $9 million grant should help children like Ava.

 

Mary Pat Moeller, PhD./Boys Town National Research Hospital

 

“There’s been a lot of research on children who are profoundly deaf and sign language. There’s been a lot less emphasis on children with mild and moderate degrees of hearing loss,” Dr. Mary Pat Moeller said.

 

The study will take place in a room where children can play and interact in a natural environment while the researchers observe behind a two-sided mirror.

 

“We’re able to let moms and babies play in a natural way and observe the infants development while they’re playing comfortably with their mother,” Moeller said.

 

Researchers will follow 400 children for three years and examine their academic, language and social outcomes.

 

Leslie McCaslin/Ava’s Mother

 

“Even just a couple of years ago, our children probably wouldn’t have had these advantages — I don’t think the technology or the knowledge was there,” McCaslin said. “Anything that we can do to contribute to those advances, we’re willing to do.”

 

The hospital is conducting the study in partnership with institutions in Iowa and North Carolina.

 

Anyone who would like more information is asked to call 402-498-6511.

Copyright 2009 by KETV.com.

‘The Deaf Kid Who Played Rock ‘N’ Roll’

 

His music lives on and sustains a grieving father

 

3/15/2009

 

Dan Berube performs“The Other Side,” a song composed by his late son, Derek

Stonington, CT – As he struggled with Crohn’s disease and a serious eye injury, 24-year-old Derek Berube would sit in the backyard of his parents’ Greenhaven Road home and talk to his father, Dan, for hours.

They talked about the things they loved: restoring old muscle cars, playing their guitars and, always, the lyrics and music of Bob Dylan.

”We talked about everything. I remember every word of those conversations like they were yesterday,” Dan Berube said last week as he looked across to the spot in the snow-covered yard where they used to sit on the grass during the spring of 2007.

Derek was profoundly deaf but could communicate with the help of hearing aids and by reading lips. He told his father about the things he still wanted to do – renovate his mother’s kitchen, repaint the engine compartment of the red 1970 Chevy Nova he had restored and build his dream car, a silver 1967 Shelby Cobra with a 427-cubic-inch engine.

But most importantly, Derek wanted to record the poignant but often angry songs he had written as he battled temporary blindness, the return of his Crohn’s disease, and an insurance company that refused to pay his workers’ compensation claim, draining his savings.

 

”I just want people to hear my music,” he’d tell his father.

THE OTHER SIDEPicking out dented cans at the grocery store
Haven’t even got a stove to cook on
Got paper in my wallet but it isn’t green
I won’t bother going to the atm machine
But everything is alright.
Heading out for life on the other side
having no problems kissin things goodbye
Starting to feel good and I don’t know why
Just gottah say the hell with it sometime
And just head for that life on the other side

– Lyrics by Derek Berube

Video in link: http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=f0dc661e-2394-45ba-af80-268f441b5282

That dream appeared to end on June 5, 2007, when Dan, who had not heard any music that morning from Derek’s bedroom above the garage, climbed the stairs to check on his son. It was in that room, where just about every day they had played “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” and where Derek had created his music, that Dan found his son dead from an overdose of prescription medication.

In the days after Derek’s death, Dan read the e-mails his son had sent to his friends about wanting to record his songs.

”When he was feeling better we’d talk about going to a studio and doing it, but unfortunately he didn’t make it. So now his wish is in my hands,” Dan said. “I told my brother-in-law, ‘Don’t let me let go of this dream.’ “

So last July, a little more than a year after his son’s death, Dan was at In Phaze Audio in Griswold recording “Stuck in the Middle,” the first of four songs he has recorded for what will be a 12-song CD.

”Derek would have loved to have been there. Who knows? Maybe he was,” Dan said.

Father passed on love of music

Derek was Dan and Eileen Berube’s middle son, in between Kevin, now 31, and the aptly named Dylan, who is a decade younger.

Unlike his two brothers, Derek would sit back and absorb things, but he “expressed his feelings about everything” to his father.

”He wanted to be like me, which is why we had a different closeness than I have with my other two sons. When Derek died, it was like my motivation went away,” said Dan, who is 57 and has been retired for a few years after working for the former Ortronics company in Pawcatuck.

After Derek’s death, Dan found his son had kept a meticulous computer log of all the money his parents had spent on him while he was sick, right down to the cost of cans of Boost he drank to keep up his strength.

”If you did something nice for Derek, he’d do something for you. That’s how he was with everybody. He was just a caring and giving kid,” Dan said.

Derek was a close friend of Pete Logan, who lived down the street and died nine weeks before Derek after battling cystic fibrosis his whole life. Pete Logan was just 21. Dan and Pete’s father are longtime friends.

Dan came from a musical family and has played guitar and drums since he was 13, so it was a given that his sons would, too. He also passed on his love of Bob Dylan, whose profound lyrics captivated him as a teenager in the ’60s.

”Derek grew up listening to Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen. Even though he also listened to Bush, Green Day and Nirvana, he used to say he was born into the wrong generation,” said Dan, who wears his son’s peace-sign necklace. “He was my inspiration, and I think I was his.”

When Derek was 10, Dan bought him his first guitar. It wasn’t long before Derek began learning Dylan songs. He quickly surpassed his father’s playing ability and, when Derek was 16, Dan began sneaking him into local clubs to play and listen.

Dan, his sons and other musicians would spend hours jamming and playing pool in the room above the garage that later became Derek’s bedroom and makeshift studio. Always with Derek was his loyal sidekick, Copper, his 12-year-old basset hound, who also wears a peace sign.

Today the room is much as it was on the day Derek died. Six guitars, a drum set, four amplifiers and PA system are arranged on one side. Light streams from skylights. A music stand holds a thick notebook opened to Derek’s songs. The computer that holds numerous videos of Derek singing sits on a desk. Posters of Bob Dylan adorn the walls and are now joined by photos of Derek working on cars and playing guitar.

Last week Dan pulled out a metal box. Among the items inside were several handwritten pages in which Derek had listed each of the songs he knew how to play, including 40 by Dylan, the date he learned them and what guitar he had used. Also inside are the strings that were on Derek’s guitar on the last day he informally recorded his songs at home.

He wrote ‘songs from the soul’

Derek’s hearing began to worsen when he was 13, leaving him with just a small fraction of normal hearing. He compensated by wearing digital hearing aids, learning to lip-read and using more amplifiers.

He graduated in 2001 from the American School for the Deaf in West Hartford, where he lived on weekdays. There, he played in the stairwells because that amplified his music. Dan laughed over the recollection of the day his son got into trouble because neighbors complained he was playing his music too loud at a school where few people could hear it.

“He called himself ‘the deaf guy who plays rock ‘n’ roll,’ “ Dan said. “But I never thought of him as a guy, so I changed it to ‘kid.’ “

In 2005, Derek was working as an apprentice sailmaker at Halsey-Lidgard Sailmakers in Old Mystic when a sail tack struck his left eye. Two surgeries followed but could only partially restore his sight, which he needed to read lips. Because of the surgery, doctors stopped the medication Derek took to control his Crohn’s disease. The Crohn’s returned and surgeons had to remove a portion of his small intestine and bowel and perform a temporary ileostomy, which brings intestinal waste into an external pouch.

Crohn’s is an incurable disease of the digestive system that causes diarrhea, weight loss, abdominal pain, vomiting and other symptons.

Derek became depressed as the insurance company handling his workers’ compensation claim refused to pay until ordered by the state Workers Compensation Commission. That did not happen until two days after Derek died.

” ‘Dad, I can’t do this anymore.’ I used to hear that a lot,” Dan said.

It was during this ordeal that Derek began to write his own songs.

”He felt like the world was against him. He was 23 years old and he had to go through more (stuff) than most people go through in their while lives. That’s what he wrote about,” Dan said. “They’re not the happiest songs in the world, but they’re songs from the soul.”

In “Stuck in the Middle,” Derek sings:

Stuck in the middle of a downpour

I’m going inside and closing the doors

Call me if the storm ever blows over

If not, I’ll see you in the next lifetime

Some days Derek would be too sick to play. But on those days when he heard his son’s music blasting from the bedroom, Dan knew Derek was having a good day.

”He would come up here and take his life experiences and put it to music,” Dan said.

Videos help father remember

One day last week, as he does most days, Dan climbed the stairs to Derek’s room, flipped on the amplifier and sat down on a stool in front of Derek’s notebook of songs.

 

He picked up one of the guitars and began to sing “The Game of Life.” His rough, cigarette-tinged voice and aggressive playing gave an edge to his son’s sometimes painful lyrics.

I’ve got a lot of problems and I’m on the run.

I always end up with an IV in my arm.

And now the good doc said that everything will be alright

And if it makes you feel any better, my boat just sank.

… I’m living in a hood that you never understood

Dan said his son wrote these lyrics based on a comment from one of Derek’s doctors.

Dan’s quest has been helped by the fact that Derek made videos of himself playing his songs. Dan studies them to figure out how to play the music. One was done just two days before Derek died.

In another, recorded in early 2007, the slightly built Derek appears wearing a gray T-shirt and sits down in front of his music stand. A small light illuminates the pages in the darkened room and the side of his face.

He begins to sing, his words slightly slurred because of his deafness. Dan’s eyes never leave the screen as he softly sings along.

”I’m so fortunate to have these,” he said. “You can’t imagine what this stuff means to me.”

As Derek sings, Copper begins to whine, which Dan said often happens when the dog hears Derek’s voice on the computer.

”Some days I can come up here and listen with no problem. Other days I have to shut it off because I can’t see the screen,” he said.

Both Dan and Eileen say they still have what they call “Derek Days” when they miss their son even more than usual.

”When Dan gets down about it he comes up here and listens to Derek’s music. I mostly just cry,” Eileen said. “He was just a beautiful kid with a beautiful soul.”

While Dan and Derek used to constantly quote Dylan’s lyrics, Dan now finds himself quoting his son’s songs. “All In a Day” is one of his favorites.

Woke up this morning

Looked at the clock

It didn’t feel like seven to me

Got my ass out of bed

shook off my head

OK let’s do this again

 

”We all can relate to that,” Dan said. “I just love his music. It’s what made him happy, and it’s what makes me happy.”

Stonington, CT

 

Beyond Words

Saturday, March 7, 2009

OSF Seattle actor Howie Seago employs sign language to find the rhythm of ‘The Music Man’

Michael Elich, as Harold Hill, left and Howie Seago as Marcellus Washburn in Oregon Shakespeare Festival's "The Music Man". OSF photo by Jennifer Reiley

By Bill Varble

Mail Tribune

Professor Harold Hill, the con man In Meredith Wilson’s “The Music Man,” has no sooner hit River City than he runs into his old pal and accomplice Marcellus Washburn. Marcellus says he heard Harold was into a steam car racket.

Harold: I was.

Marcellus: What happened?

Harold: Somebody actually invented one.

Dialog like that has to snap. And in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s new production of the beloved musical comedy, Marcellus is played by Howie Seago, who hears nothing Harold says. Seago is that rarity, a deaf actor.

Seago uses American Sign Language to “speak” his lines to actor Michael Elich, who plays Harold. Elich repeats Seago’s lines aloud, then responds by speaking and signing back.

“Marcellus just can’t resist Harold’s charm and powers of persuasion to assist him in his mission,” Seago says in an e-mail. “Fortunately, Michael and I have the same sense of what works and are open to each other’s suggestions and feedback.”

Seago credits OSF Artistic Director Bill Rauch with using his deafness and sign language to highlight the relationship between Marcellus and the Professor, which Seago builds on with extensive use of facial expressions and body language. Harold’s familiarity with ASL, for example, suggests a long-term bond with Marcellus. Plus it hints that somewhere beneath his outer grifter, Harold has a heart.

In a press conference for OSF’s opening weekend, Rauch said that Seago is not merely a great deaf actor.

“He’s a great actor,” Rauch said.

Seago, a Seattle native, is new to the festival this year. His resume includes lots of television and film work, but he prefers the stage.

“In theatre, it is fairly well acceptable to … allow a deaf actor to portray normally hearing characters,” Seago says via e-mail. “Whereas in film and TV, it is rare to do so.”

Seago says the stage allows an actor more time to explore a character, offers more intense collaboration and presents the challenge of working without a net in that missteps cannot be edited out of a live show.

In rehearsals for “The Music Man,” Seago read lips, kept an eye on an ASL interpreter who was present and asked others to follow the script with a pencil.

“The interpreter gets worn out quickly,” he says.

Seago and Elich also worked out some cues between them to keep Harold and Marcellus on track, but he doesn’t want to reveal them lest audiences start looking for them.

“Don’t want to give away too much theater magic,” he says, adding a smile.

Seago, 55, was born deaf. His father was deaf, too. He attended an oral school for the deaf where speech and lip reading were encouraged. His mother helped him develop mimic abilities.

He was mainstreamed in high school and acted for the first time in college. As a student at California State University at Northridge, he majored in psychology and theater arts and learned American Sign Language.

He has worked as an actor, director and producer for more than 20 years, appearing at the Intiman Theatre, the Kennedy Center, the La Jolla Playhouse and elsewhere. He toured with the National Theatre of the Deaf in the early 1980s and founded Happy Handfuls, a touring troupe based in Los Angeles.

He helped create the television show “Rainbow’s End” for deaf children and appeared in TV shows such as “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and in the 1997 movie “Beyond Silence.” His breakthrough came in Peter Sellars’ production of “Ajax.” Talking Heads frontman David Byrne was so taken with his performance that he cast him as the king is his 1989 German production of “The Forest.”

Seago says one of his pet peeves is when “hearing” actors to portray deaf characters, especially if the roles involve American Sign Language or other elements of deaf culture.

“We cringe when hearing actors botch the signing of lines,” he says. “It’s like a person having taken only one lesson in speaking French and then having the gall to sing the French anthem in French at a public event.”

He says ASL is a beautiful language with its own syntax and grammar. He says hearing actors should no more play deaf people than white actors using makeup should portray African-Americans or American Indians.

“Acting roles for the deaf are rare,” he says, “so naturally we want all the opportunities for ourselves.”

Actor Patrick Stewart (Capt. Picard on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”) once said that using deaf actors brings a natural dramatic tension to the situation.

For signed performances for the deaf (something the OSF has done for years), Seago would like to see deaf patrons seated in the middle of the theatre and interpreters seated in front of and below the center of the stage. He says this would eliminate the need to look constantly back and forth between signs and stage action.

David Seago, deaf since birth, plays the part of Marcellus in Oregon Shakespeare Festival's "The Music Man" and plays the part using American Sign Language. Jim Craven

Seago can find humor in deaf culture. He once had a comedy routine in which he recruited deaf men from the audience to sing and sign a verse from “O Sole Mio,” a la Pavarotti, and have the audience vote on the best performance. The bit killed. It’s in a blog with photos at http://putzworld.blogspot.com/2007/03/howie-seago-teaches-deaf-people-to-sing.html.

An avid outdoorsman, Seago has hiked and gone cross-country skiing, and he plans to bring several kayaks down from Seattle, where his wife teaches deaf children in grade school.

He says he’d never experienced having to hold for applause at the end of songs, as he does in “Music Man.”

“That takes some getting used to,” he says.

He says it would be nice if hearing people would learn the manual alphabet to spell out words for deaf people, and to try to mime concepts that the deaf might not understand at first.

He says every parent of a deaf child should learn sign language. He was not allowed to use it as a child.

“I definitely would not be acting in OSF without this skill,” he says.

Deaf people are just like everybody else, he says. They want to be respected and to live a meaningful life.

“This is illustrated in Bill’s vision of ‘Music Man,’ ” he says, “as an example of how the lives of a community can be transformed and enhanced by the unique talents of each individual and the acceptance of others who may be different than us.”

Later in the season, Seago will be seen as Griffith and in the ensemble in the OSF production of “Henry VIII,” and as Barber and in the ensemble in “Don Quixote.”

Q&A: UFC fighter Matt Hamill

Matt “The Hammer” Hamill, 32, a native of Loveland, Ohio, is billed just below the main event at UFC 96, the mixed-martial arts fight card in Nationwide Arena tonight. Hamill was a three-time Division III national champion when he wrestled for Rochester Institute of Technology. He won a silver medal in Greco-Roman wrestling and a gold in freestyle at the 2001 Deaflympics. Hamill is a veteran of the reality TV show The Ultimate Fighter. He owns a 7-2 record in the UFC’s light heavyweight division. Hamill, a low-budget movie about his life, is soon to be released.

UFC fighter Matt Hamill of Cincinnati will take a 7-2 record into a fight against Mark Munoz tonight in Nationwide Arena.

 

Question: Have you been deaf your whole life?

Answer: Yes. I found out when I was just a little kid and my mother was trying to communicate with me. “Matt, Matt,” she would say, and there was no response. The took me to the doctor and they did tests. I can’t hear anything. Nothing. I am totally deaf. I have been since birth.

Q: Did you go to a school for the deaf when you were young?

A : No. I had an interpreter. Whatever the teacher said, the interpreter signed to me. If I went to a deaf school, it would not have been as much of a challenge. But I am more comfortable in the deaf community. I am not uncomfortable outside of it, but I am more comfortable in it. That is just my style.

Q: When did you start wrestling?

A: When I was 4 or 5 years old. My stepdad was the coach at Loveland (High School). Wrestling kept me busy. It kept me out of trouble. It was something that didn’t need much communication. It liked it because it was physical. It was rough. It was something I really enjoyed.

Q: You managed to take your wrestling as far as you could, didn’t you?

A: As a true freshman, I went to Purdue on a full scholarship. My goal was to be a national champion in Division I. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it there, so I transferred to RIT — in an area where there is a very large deaf community. It was a great experience there.

Q: Your stepfather got you into wrestling, which is one thing. Does your mother approve of ultimate fighting?

A: She looks at me and I’m happy. When I’m happy, she’s happy. She supports me in whatever I do.

Q: Was this what you wanted to do when you graduated college?

A: No. I hadn’t even thought about it. I had a degree in electrical engineering and I thought I’d get a good job somewhere in Utica (N.Y.), to be near my daughter. I met my ex-wife at RIT, and she lives in Utica. Somehow, I got on a different path.

Q: How excited are you to have a big fight in Ohio?

A: I was supposed to take another fight in Montreal. Montreal or Ohio? That was the question. I’m an Ohioan. I wanted to fight in Ohio where I’m close to my friends and my family and my fans. Two years ago at UFC 68 (in Nationwide Arena), I beat Rex Holman and I never felt a vibration like that in my career. It’s my home state, more deaf people are coming — and I can’t wait to feel the vibration. That’s how I get my heart in the fight. That’s why I came here. The vibration.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a law ensuring services to children with disabilities throughout the United States. IDEA governs how states and public agencies provide early intervention, special education and related services to more than 6.5 million eligible infants, toddlers, children and youth with disabilities.

IDEA was formerly known as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act but has grown considerably since. IDEA became a federal standard by an act of Congressional adoption in 1975 but has been amended many times since. The IDEA was most recently amended in 2004, which was a significant update.

Infants and toddlers with disabilities (birth-2) and their families receive early intervention services under IDEA Part C. Children and youth (ages 3-21) receive special education and related services under IDEA Part B.

IDEA is considered to be a civil rights law. However, states are not required to participate. As an incentive and to assist states in complying with its requirements, IDEA makes funds available to states that adopt at least the minimum policies and procedures specified in the IDEA regarding the education of children with disabilities. Since its inception, all states have chosen to participate.

As of 2006, more than 6 million children in the US receive special education services through IDEA. Many U.S. states are still resistant to educating special needs children appropriately even though they continue to accept federal funding. The federal and state enforcement agencies do not use strong enforcement methods or penalties.

The definition of related services in IDEA include, but are not limited to: transportation and such developmental, corrective, and other supportive services as are required to assist a child with a disability to benefit from special education, and includes speech-language pathology and audiology services, psychological services, physical and occupational therapy, recreation, including therapeutic recreation, early identification and assessment of disabilities in children, counseling services, including rehabilitation counseling, orientation and mobility services, and medical services for diagnostic or evaluation purposes. The term also includes school health services, social work services in schools, and parent counseling and training.

The US Department of Education, 2005 regulations that implemented IDEA states: “…to the maximum extent appropriate, children with disabilities including children in public or private institutions or care facilities, are educated with children who are nondisabled; and special classes, separate schooling or other removal of children with disabilities from regular educational environment occurs only if the nature or severity of the disability is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily.”
For more information, visit the IDEA website: http://idea.ed.gov.
Article Source:
Disabled World

Dogs to take centre stage at Blenheim Horse Trials

March 4, 2009

Pooches can look forward to some fun at the Blenheim Horse Trials this year.

The Blenheim Palace International Horse Trials is going to the dogs this year, with a canine competition in the offing and Hearing Dogs for Deaf People the nominated charity.Organisers are looking at the possibility of hosting a ‘Scrufts’ qualifier for the kennel club, and has James Wellbeloved once again sponsoring the dog creche and canine water bowls.

“Many of our visitors have dogs,” said event director Mandy Hervieu. “So getting canine-orientated sponsors and charities involved appeals to our public. When you see a Hearing Dogs display and see how they can train all types of dogs to help radically improve a deaf person’s life, you will be amazed. Having a dog creche and water bowls is much appreciated by dog owners. It’s great to be able to come to a top quality horse trials and bring your best friend for a great day out.”

The event, from September 10-13, is also putting on an extra CIC3* class for eight and nine-year-old equine stars of the future.

The horse trials is supporting Hearing Dogs in several ways. The Charity will be undertaking displays within the Blenheim Attractions Arena and manning the James Wellbeloved dog creche where the team hope owners will make a donation to leave their pooch to have a rest whilst they have lunch or watch the action from the grandstands.

“A hearing dog changes a deaf person’s life on many levels,” said Ruth Dunkin, spokeswoman for Hearing Dogs. “Deafness can be a very isolating and lonely disability; a hearing dog can offer a practical alternative to technical equipment with the added benefit of giving the recipient increased independence, greater confidence, companionship and a feeling of security.”

The dogs themselves vary from the largest, scruffiest mongrel to the smallest pedigree but are all easily recognisable by their distinctive burgundy jacket and lead slips.

Hearing Dogs for Deaf People was launched at Crufts in 1982. To date they have placed more than 1500 hearing dogs throughout England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands. Whenever possible, the dogs are selected from rescue centres, but they are also donated by breeders and members of the public, with the remainder coming from the Charity’s own breeding scheme.

Hearing Dogs for Deaf People receive no government funding and rely totally on the generosity of individuals and organisations to continue transforming the lives of deaf people.

Of the nine million people in the UK with hearing loss, around 70,000 have been profoundly deaf since birth and communicate using British Sign Language. Many of those who have lost their hearing in later life rely on lip-reading. A hearing dog’s burgundy coat can help break down the barrier to communication as it identifies its recipient’s otherwise invisible disability.

 

International Awareness Week celebrates diverse cultures, informs campus

Posted: 3 Mar 2009

Deaf people from different countries are diverse in their world views, in their sign languages, and in their communities. The purpose of Gallaudet’s International Awareness Week (IAW), held February 23 to 27, was to inform the community about the many cultures, languages, and traditions that enrich the University and the world. 

A student demonstrates a dance from her home country.

 

Activities that take place each year during IAW promote interaction between deaf people. The English Language Institute Student Organization (ELISO) is involved with many of the activities, such as preparing and selling international foods to give the campus community a taste of the world’s many cuisines and to raise funds for the organization. The Center for International Programs and Services (CIPS) works with ELISO to present the week’s activities.

 

IAW activities showed many aspects of Gallaudet’s international community. A visual representation of its diversity appeared along Lincoln Circle in the form of dozens of flags from different countries waving in the wind, and international dance demonstrations in the Jordan Student Academic Center’s Marketplace showed many means of expression through movement. In addition, international students gave presentations about their countries and unique aspects of their cultures, demonstrated their countries’ sign languages, and performed cultural skits.

International students carry flags from their countries up the stairs of the the Jordan Student Academic Center

 

As in past years, CIPS and ELISO invited dance troupes from off campus to entertain the crowd with Chinese dragon dance and African dance forms. Each day, lunch crowds—and on Friday, the dinner crowd as well—had a chance to learn and experience a little more.

 

While IAW is a celebration of difference, it also encourages the community to embrace the ideals of international cooperation and teamwork. This is an effort that CIPS is involved with year-round, as a facilitator for international events at the University and partner institutions around the world.

 

-By Dr. Asiah Mason, director of CIPS

New generation of tactile devices to aid the deaf

by Rich Bowden – Mar 2 2009

Img: Tactile deaf aid device being used by Senior Research Scientist Charlotte Reed and research graduate student Theodore Moallem. Credit: Donna Coveney/MIT

 

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States are developing a device which can translate sound waves as vibrations able to be felt by the skin.

 

 

The technology will aid deaf people who currently rely on the imperfect lip reading as a means of communication. The tactile device is being worked on by the institute for those who are unable to afford the often prohibitive cost of cochlear implants.

“Most deaf people will not have access to that technology in our lifetime,” said Ted Moallem, a graduate student working on the project in a Feb. 27 Institute statement. “Tactile devices can be several orders of magnitude cheaper than cochlear implants.”

According to the MIT news release: Moallem and Charlotte Reed, senior research scientist in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics and leader of the project, say the tactile software they are developing could be compatible with current smart phones, allowing such devices to be transformed into unobtrusive tactile aids for the deaf.

“Anyone who has a smart phone already has much of what they would need to run the program,” including a microphone, digital signal-processing capability, and a rudimentary vibration system , says Moallem.

 

 

Though tactile devices have been in use for decades, the team hope to improve on these by providing deaf people with tactile cues that are tailored to boost lip-reading performance, says Reed.

The inspiration for the project came from the Tadoma technique, where deaf/blind people hold their hands to someone’s face while they talk to “feel” vibrations. The technique allows deaf/blind people to understand what is being spoken, so long as the person spoke clearly.

“We were inspired by seeing what deaf-blind people could accomplish just using the sense of touch alone,” says Reed.

Funding for the project was provided by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

We need to yell

Deaf school supports call for maintaining current state funding

By Vicky Wicks
For The Weekly News

Posted 3/2/09

Two advocates for deaf and hearing-impaired students met with concerned Rapid City people to pitch a plan for maintaining services currently provided by the South Dakota School for the Deaf in Sioux Falls.

Magnet schools are existing schools modified to add services for the deaf, Olsen said. If that approach isn’t taken, then deaf students will be scattered around the state in public schools not equipped to receive them.

Small schools will bear great expense hiring interpreters for just one or two students, and those students will be isolated if there are no other hearing impaired students, he said.

Olsen is pushing for the state Department of Education to take control of the School for the Deaf. Currently it’s under the aegis of the Board of Regents, which he said doesn’t understand that the deaf are bilingual ��” using ASL and English ��” as well as bicultural.

The Legislature should establish a commission on Education for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and a bill of rights for deaf children, Olsen said.

Puthoff said the school was established in 1880, nine years before South Dakota became a state.

The South Dakota Constitution provides for continuation and funding of a school for the deaf, Olsen said, and he doesn’t understand how the state can close the school without changing the Constitution.

“We need to wake up. We need to yell. We need to complain,” Olsen said.

Larry Puthoff, left, speaks about education for the deaf while Gary Olsen looks on. Puthoff and Olsen are advocates and lobbyists with the South Dakota Association for the Deaf

The school is on Gov. Mike Rounds’ list of cuts to balance the state’s 2010 budget.

Using American Sign Language, with interpreters for those few people in the audience needing them, Gary Olsen and Larry Puthoff with the South Dakota Association for the Deaf said that if the school closes, magnet schools should be created in or near Sioux Falls, Rapid City, and Pierre.

The two men, both retired from careers in education, gave their presentation at Communication Services for the Deaf on Tuesday, Feb. 17.

Sign of the times

ASL, a new world language option in St. Mary’s County schools, gains following in first year

Friday, Feb. 27, 2009

By SUSAN CRATON, Staff writer

Virginia Callis of Lexington Park, a senior at Great Mills High School, uses American Sign Language to communicate with Aigner Bivins during an assignment in their ASL class Friday afternoon. Below to the left, students make the signs for the letters, S,I,G and N, spelling the word "sign."

Meg Vickers stood up in front of her class Friday at Great Mills High School, and she told her students a story. It was a funny story about how Vickers’ dog had chewed up a student’s project the day before. The students laughed and asked if that student gets an automatic A on the project.

The students had to pay attention to understand the story, because Vickers hardly spoke during the telling of it. She used American Sign Language to say “Last night I arrived home. My dog was bad. My dog destroyed a … collage, my first-period student’s work.” She gave the sign for “destroyed” several times and then said the word, because it was a new sign to the class.

The class is one of four ASL classes being offered this year for the first time that, if two years are completed, fulfills the students’ world language requirement in St. Mary’s County public schools. In 2007, the state board of education voted to allow ASL as a recognized world language in Maryland’s public school curriculum, according to Linda Lymas, supervisor of instruction for English, ESOL and world languages for St. Mary’s County schools. St. Mary’s County schools also offer French, Spanish, German, Latin and Chinese language classes.

Two ASL classes are now held at Great Mills High School; the other two at Chopticon. Altogether, 93 students are taking the course. Vickers is the teacher for all the classes.

“We were very pleased and little surprised that so many students signed up” for the new course, Lymas said, noting that anytime a new class is offered, it’s difficult to gauge how popular it will be with students.

“Oh, I love it. I. Love. It,” Vickers said of her job. “I feel 10 years younger. We laugh. [The students] like to laugh.”

After telling the story about her dog’s naughty behavior, Vickers had the students stand in a circle and they played a form of Simon Says, where Vickers and then the students took turns using sign language to describe someone in the class. The student who understood all the signs and then located the subject got to lead the game next.

Then Vickers handed out collages of pictures of people and the students paired up and took turns describing a person in the collage, playing I Spy. The other student then pointed to the person being described.

It’s largely quiet in the room, with Vickers pointing to signs reading “ASL only” if the students lapse into verbal speech too much.

Several students noted that ASL was easier to learn than other languages they’ve studied. Virginia Callis of Lexington Park, a senior, took Spanish for four years. “I thought taking a third language would help me a lot,” she said of her choice to take ASL this year. “I enjoy the class.”

She noted that Spanish is harder because “you have to conjugate the verbs,” Callis said.

Ryan Dement of Lexington Park, a junior in the class, has already completed three years of French. “I would say learning French is harder,” he said. “This is easier because you’re getting immersed in the language.”

The games and conversation all look like fun in the class, but the students’ performance in those games is graded. As the students played I Spy on Friday, for instance, Vickers stood to the side and using a portable video player recorded the students’ performance. She grades the students after studying the video at home.

ASL is more than hand movements. It also employs facial expressions, palm orientation, movement and body language. “You have to look at the whole picture,” Vickers said. “You are a TV screen.”

ASL is the third or fourth most commonly used language in the United States, according to Vickers. So there are plenty of reasons to offer the course, she said. Some of the students have a family member who uses ASL. Some hope to use it in a future career.

Shawnese Taylor, a senior at Great Mills who takes Vickers’ class, has partial hearing loss herself. “I was very excited when I heard there was going to be a signing class,” she said Friday. She has been signing since she was 4. In the second-grade, Taylor attended a special school in Frederick for those who are hearing impaired. Taylor’s experience allows her to help the other students learn the language, she said.

Vickers is also hearing impaired. She said she functions with a hearing aid.

She didn’t have the chance to learn to sign until she was 18 because she would have gone away to school and her parents wanted to keep her at home. “It was very hard,” Vickers said. “And then I went to Gallaudet University. That was a whole new world to me … It was wonderful.”

Vickers hopes to take her students on field trip to Gallaudet in Washington, D.C., a university for deaf and hearing-impaired students, later this year.

One of Vickers’ students at Chopticon High School said she hopes to use ASL in her career. Lina Skarwecki, a senior, plans to join the Air Force and wants to work as a translator. She said she’d been wanting to take a sign language course for the past several years.

“It’s amazing. I love the subject,” Skarwecki said. “It’s my favorite subject. I love Mrs. Vickers.”

The plan is to offer both ASL I and ASL II in the county’s high schools next year. After completing this year’s course, Vickers said the students will know basic communication — their name, how to say things like “slow down” “thank you” as well as letters, numbers and colors.

“Next year it will be more dialogue, more three-word sentences,” Vickers said of the second-year course.

She hopes to offer a third year of independent study in ASL eventually, where advanced students will assist her in the lower-level classes, Vickers said.

Danielle Baker and Haylie Parks, both in their first year at Great Mills, are in Vickers’ class, and both plan to take ASL II next year and continue their study of the language.

“It’s a fun course,” Baker said, as the two took a break from their I Spy game.

Teri Brown relishes roles of author, mentor, tutor

By Kristen Forbes

The Times, Feb 26, 2009

Tigard, Oregon—“I’m one of those really weird people,” Teri Brown explains. “In order to throw myself 100 percent into something, I have to believe in it, too. My husband calls this ‘impractical.’”

Impractical or not, Brown is dedicated to her beliefs. Among them: She is a strong believer in the powers of self-education and literacy.

“I basically have no education, at all,” Brown says.

Nevertheless, she taught herself enough to climb the ranks of the freelance writing and advertising world, where she has devoted years to interviewing some of the nation’s foremost parenting experts, writing articles for a variety of publications (including Community Newspapers) and publishing both nonfiction and fictional books.

“I truly believe that even if you can’t afford college or can’t afford higher education, you can still become self-educated. It may not matter as much when you go to apply for a job, but it sure matters for the quality of your life,” says Brown.

In September, Brown took a position at Community Partners for Affordable Housing, a nonprofit organization that provides safe, healthy and affordable housing, as well as support and skill building activities, for those with the greatest need in the Tigard-Tualatin area and Southwest Portland.

At Greenburg Oaks, the CPAH property where Brown works as the after-school program associate, or as she calls it, a “glorified tutor,” Brown combines her passions for literacy and self-education by helping kindergartners through junior high students with their homework and reading. Character building, crafts, making connections: All are included in a day’s tutoring.

“A lot of parents are really happy to have their kids go to a place where they have to do their homework,” Brown says.

Many of these parents, she says, are transitioning out of homelessness and see the after-school program as an invaluable resource.

Teri Brown recently started a book club for teens at Greenburg Oaks, an affordable housing property owned by Community Partners for Affordable Housing. An author herself, Brown is a literacy advocate who believes a limited income should never limit one’s ability to become self-educated.

Once a month, the group goes on a field trip to take in a cultural event. The community has donated tickets for everything from the ballet to the Blazers for the after-school program.

“We can take the kids out to things they might never do on their own,” Brown says.

Brown, who home-schooled her own two children up until high school, sees value in presenting kids with opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to. This partly explains why, in addition to the tutoring she does for her job, she took on additional volunteer work at CPAH, forming and running a youth book club.

Brown knows a thing or two about young adult literature – in June, her debut novel “Read My Lips” was published. The book is about a young oral-deaf girl who uses her lip reading skills to get in with the popular crowd. Once she’s accepted there, the popular kids try to use her lip reading abilities to their advantage.

Brown’s mother-in-law was a deaf advocate on the board for the Alexander Graham Bell Association, and her husband’s niece uses hearing aids and lip reading to communicate. Although this inspired the story, Brown insists it’s a lighter read.

“It’s a fluffy, beach read type book,” she says. “I didn’t want it to be a deaf issues book because I’m not deaf. I can’t really get my arms around what it would be like. I just wanted to have a story that starred a deaf girl.”

For the book club, Brown has been leaning on her writer friends to get books donated. She follows an every-other-month schedule: One month features a local author who is able to attend the meeting and answer questions, and the next month features an out-of-state author who participates in the meetings from afar. Their last guest author answered questions via Podcast.

Brown’s goal is to obtain funding to buy books for the club, rather than always relying on donations. She often dips into her own pocket to make the meetings special: She likes to serve the students foods they may not normally be exposed to, like crackers with Brie cheese or fondue.

Brown, a native Oregonian who has lived in Tigard for the past 19 years, says her hobbies never stray far from her work: She loves to read, write and teach others, so that’s what she does with her time. She also mentors a young writer who is working on a senior project in Yamhill.

In addition to her novel, Brown has two works of nonfiction published: “Christian Unschooling: Growing Your Children in the Freedom of Christ” and “Day Tripping.” Her Web site is www.teribrownwrites.com.

On March 10, the book club will hold its next meeting, where author Heather Vogel Frederick will be on hand to visit and sign her book “The Mother-Daughter Book Club.”

“I’ve been able to do this, mostly because of the generosity of my writer friends from around the country,” Brown says of keeping the book club going.

She hopes the generosity will expand to the community and others will share her vision for passing the value of reading onto the youth of Greenburg Oaks.

School for the deaf helps students blossom

By ALEXANDRA CALDWELL

Article published on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009

	Photo by ALEXANDRA CALDWELL Ivy Richardson of Largo, sits in her seventh-grade class at Blossom Montessori School for the Deaf in Clearwater.

CLEARWATER – Ivy Richardson came to Blossom Montessori School for the Deaf in Clearwater when she was 7. She could not spell her last name and was years behind her age group in school.

Ivy is deaf and had a hard time communicating and learning in a traditional classroom at Cross Bayou Elementary School in Pinellas Park. Now, as a seventh-grader, Ivy excels in math and loves to learn, said her mother, Stacy, of Largo.

Ivy was one of the school’s first students, and she attributes her academic success to the school. She grew up at Blossom, she signed.

Blossom Montessori School for the Deaf is one of two Montessori schools for deaf people in the United States and the only one in Florida, said Carol Downing, associate director of the school. The school is for kids ages 2 1/2 through 15 who are deaf, hard of hearing, those with cochlear implants or hearing kids who have a parent or sibling who is deaf.

“A lot of deaf schools have deaf students with hearing parents, which most of them have, but we bring in the CODAs (children of deaf adults,) the hard of hearing students, and we have kids with the cochlear implants because we know if it breaks, they’re deaf,” Downing said. “And the panic that can set in for a child who’s not ready to be deaf, everyone here is sensitive to that instead of being plunked down into a public school where no one understands the trauma of that child all of a sudden losing everything they’re dependent on, whether it’s a dead battery or a broken gizmo.”

Stacy first discovered her daughter was deaf when Ivy was about 2 years old, Stacy said. When she began public school, Stacy said Ivy felt extreme frustration because she couldn’t communicate or understand the lessons very well. Then she transferred to Blossom.

“I immediately noticed improvements in her academic progress, for here was a school that was equipped to handle her needs,” Stacy said. “Her needs include the use of effective communication, which for her is American Sign Language. I also firmly believe in the Montessori approach to teaching. Ivy’s language skills have improved immensely.”

The school was founded in 2003 by Julie Rutenberg, now director of the school. She had taken an American Sign Language interpretive

language course from Downing at St. Petersburg College and saw the need for a school when she did her contact hours with deaf kids in the public school system.

According to the Blossom literature, the Tampa Bay area is home of the fourth largest deaf concentration in the United States and 37 percent of children with minimal hearing fail at least one grade.

The teachers at Blossom all speak in both American Sign Language and spoken English. As a Montessori kid herself, Rutenberg realized the benefits deaf kids would get from the hands-on, tactile learning of the Montessori method.

In the Montessori classroom, words and concepts have physical objects that students can pick up and hold. Math is learned with beads – loose beads for 1 to 10, groups of 10 beads strung on a wire, 10 groups of 10 beads strung into a square, and 1,000 beads strung into a cube.

“If you’re deaf, then everything you learn is with your eyes,” said Maria Kadau, director of development at the school. “It’s very visual, so it’s good to enhance their visual senses with what they’re learning.”

The children up to age 6 are all in one classroom, then they go the 6- to 9-year-old classroom, then onto the 9- to 12-year-old classroom, and finally to the 12- to 15-year-old classroom. This way the younger students can learn from the older ones and the older students can help teach the younger students, Downing said. Sometimes kid speak – or kid signing – helps explain a difficult concept to a peer that finally makes it stick.

“We have the chance to let kids in the classroom feel empowered by teaching,” Downing said. “Instead of ‘Stop talking and turn around,’ it’s “I’ll give you 20 minutes with him to explain what you think that means and I’ll be back to check on you. And Ivy is really good in math, and she’s been instrumental in re-explaining something to her classmates. I’ve watched her in action and she comes up with some really funny examples and other students kind of go ‘Oh!’ and the teachers will go, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?'”

Classes have six to eight students in them, and there is lots of one-on-one time with teachers. Each day the children get a contract of what they must cover that day and then they decide when they want to learn that subject. This approach is used because kids’ brains learn different subjects better at different times of the day, Downing said, so the lessons are more effective when they are excited and ready to study that subject instead of being forced to do particular subjects at particular times.

“They make things interesting here,” Ivy signed. “Like math – you have to figure it out. And when you get frustrated, you don’t get upset. The teacher works with you one-on-one and makes you feel better about learning. I feel smarter all the time.”

Ivy said her teacher keeps her challenged and she feels a camaraderie with him because he is deaf, too. It’s wonderful that all the teachers teach in sign language so they do not have to rely on interpreters, she said. The teachers at Blossom make concepts stick, she said, and she is grateful she attends the school.

“I would be so bored (in public school,)” Ivy said, “because they don’t really have high expectations (of deaf kids) and things would be just baby easy. But at Blossom, it’s so much more challenging. I know it. And they just tell me I can be smarter and smarter and smarter.”

The hardest part of being deaf is just not being able to hear, Ivy said, and it is very hard to learn a language she has never heard. That is why it helps to learn with the Montessori method in which every word and concept has a tangible object, she said.

“When you write things down, it’s there (on the page,) but when you move things, you understand what they mean,” Ivy signed. “They have names and they’re objects and it’s related to the names, and then when you take the test and you have something you can remember. It sticks. You can pick it up and use it and put it back down and remember the name of it. And sometimes, if you think you’ve forgotten something, you can go back and remember the name of something because it is in your head. You’ve learned it with your hands, so it’s in your head.”

Ivy is full of ambition and wants to attend high school at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine and then go on to becoming either a veterinarian, nurse, scientist or an artist.

Ivy said the school has helped her family, too. There are monthly adult classes, and because of that, Ivy’s mom, grandmother and aunt have learned excellent sign language, which helps Ivy communicate with her family.

“I think this helps with respect,” Downing said. “Like Ivy’s mom – yeah, she has to learn sign language to talk to her daughter, but guess what? Her daughter has to learn English to talk to her. And as she said, it’s so hard when you can’t hear the language.”

The school also teaches social responsibility. For instance, starting in preschool, the kids decide when they want their snack, so they tell the teacher and then get their food themselves, take out a paper plate and napkin and then clean up after themselves. If they spill, they clean it up, and the students clean their own lunch room as well.

Children may enroll in the school at any age between 2 1/2 and 15 and at any time of the year, Downing said. Cost is $5,500 a year for preschool and $7,000 a year for the older students, although the actual cost is about $25,000 per year per child. As a nonprofit organization, the school relies on charitable contributions to fund the difference and other costs.

Shelley Neal: Cochlear implants let children live life with sound

February 25, 2009 @ 08:15 PM

 

The Herald-Dispatch

Cochlear implants deliver miraculous results to those who are profoundly deaf. Children who were once destined to live life in complete silence are now able to benefit from the advances made through modern technology. The cochlear implant is an excellent choice for parents who want their children to experience the world of sound.

Six-year-old Emily Neal was born deaf, but can now hear thanks to implant surgery conducted when she was an infant.

As the mother of a child with bilateral cochlear implants, my experience began when my daughter, Emily, was diagnosed with profound hearing loss in both ears. While other babies were learning to use their voices to communicate, Emily was learning to use her hands. Living the first year of her life in silence, Emily was oblivious to sound. Since no one else in her family knew sign language, Emily’s communication was limited to conversing with me, her mother.

During a visit with Dr. Thomas Jung, Emily’s neurotologist, I learned that Emily was an excellent candidate for the cochlear implant. Upon hearing this, I became overjoyed, yet uneasy, being as no surgery comes without risks. Emily was a happy child and loved beyond words. Why would I purposely send her into surgery when she is already perfect? Why can’t everyone just learn how to sign? These questions continually lingered in my mind, as I had a life-changing decision to make for my child. Nonetheless, a decision had to be made.

While spending time in prayer, I asked the Lord to use her for His glory and chose to go forward with the surgery. One month following surgery, Emily’s cochlear implant was activated. Immediately after activation, her audiologist, Pamela Vannoy-Adkins, turned the device on; Emily cried in horror! She was experiencing a new sense: sound. Going from a peaceful environment to one filled with noise, simply overwhelmed her. Once again, I questioned my decision.

Prior to surgery, Emily was attending speech therapy at Marshall University twice a week to learn sign language. After receiving her cochlear implant, Emily’s therapist, Amy Knell, focused on her oral communication skills. Emily was eager to learn and made every effort to understand the sounds around her and tried to make sense of them. Everyone marveled at her progress. After five years of intensive speech therapy and many prayers, Emily had reached her full potential and was discharged from the program. She has since undergone a second cochlear implant operation making her the first child in the state to acquire bilateral cochlear implants.

Today, Emily is a first-grader who makes straight “A’s,” and reading is her favorite subject. Had I made a different decision, Emily would either be in a school for children with special needs or would require a sign language interpreter throughout her life. Watching her interact with her peers and hearing the words “I love you Mommy,” validates the decision I made for her six years ago. The benefits of the cochlear implant far outweigh the risks. Thank God for Dr. Jung, the staff at Tri-State Otolaryngology, Amy Knell, the Scottish Rite Program at Marshall University and modern technology in the form of the cochlear implant.

Shelley Neal is a stay-at-home mom and a student. She resides in Chesapeake, Ohio.

Service or Companion Animals for Disabled Tenants

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

The Fair Housing Act
You are required to comply with The Fair Housing Act (FHA) if you rent private housing, housing that receives Federal financial assistance or State/Local government housing. Essentially, if you rent any property whatsoever, you must follow the laws established under the FHA.The FHA prohibits discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and family status.  It also prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability.  Under this section, owners of rental properties are required “to make reasonable exceptions in their policies and operations to afford people with disabilities equal housing opportunities.”

Who is considered disabled?
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines an individual with a disability to be

 “a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a person who has a history or record of such an impairment, or a person who is perceived by others as having such an impairment.”

Pretty broad definition! And, the ADA does not specifically name all the impairments that are covered (it’s probably a very long list).

Making exceptions
So, if you’re a landlord, you are required to make “reasonable exceptions” to ensure disabled folks are not discriminated against. For example, even with a “no pets” policy, you may be required to make an exception to accommodate a service or companion animal. While a dog wearing a special red “service animal” vest or a wheelchair-pulling canine are pretty obvious, other companion animals are not so easy to spot.

You might think a deaf tenant would always be allowed to keep a dog to help out when the doorbell or phone rings, or the fire alarm is activated.  Actually, a court decided that a dog owned by two deaf women had never been trained to assist them in any way, and therefore was nothing more than a “house pet”—and the landlord won its case.
 [Bronk v. Ineichen, 54 F.3d 425 (7th Cir.1995)]

In another case, a dog with no training as a service animal was found to be therapeutic solely because of his “innate qualities.” The tenants were allowed to keep him. In still another case, a mentally disabled tenant was not allowed to keep two birds and two cats “for companionship.”
[Auburn Woods  Homeowners Ass’n v. Fair Employment and Housing Commission, 121 Cal.App.4 1578, 18 Cal.Rptr.3d 669] [Janush v. Charities Housing Development Corp., 169 F.Supp.2d 1133 (N.D. Cal, 2000).]

What’s a Landlord to Do?
Because court rulings on this topic are as varied as the genetic makeup of a pound puppy, it seems there are no hard and fast rules to follow. Consider the following general guidelines, and remember: this is not legal advice!  Every jurisdiction is subject to individual case law, so always seek the advice of your attorney for specific questions on your local laws, as well as FHA and ADA. 

The law protects both physically and mentally disabled individuals. Don’t assume a person is not disabled based on appearance.

Not all trained service animals wear special vests or harnesses. Don’t assume a prospective tenant’s animal is not a service animal based on appearance.

Highly trained service animals, as well as companion animals who might not be specially trained, are not considered “pets.” Therefore, a “no-pet” policy would not apply.

Emotional support animals provide just that service—emotional support—to their owners.

It is reasonable to ask for proof of disability and need for a service/companion animal from a tenant’s physician or other health care provider in cases where the disability and/or need is not obvious.

It is reasonable to require all animals living on your property to be properly vaccinated and to follow any and all rules regarding leashing, waste disposal, etc.

While you cannot discriminate under the FHA, you are perfectly within your rights to screen all prospective tenants’ background and credit history.Sources: Americans with Disabilities Act, Fair Housing Act, Fair Housing Institute

Teens Acquitted of Plotting Attack at VSDB

Updated: Feb 24, 2009 01:12 PM PST

Teens Acquitted of Plotting Attack at VSDB

A judge has acquitted two teenaged boys accused of plotting a violent attack at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind.

A pair of hearing impaired students had been charged with conspiring to kill two or more people. Investigators say the targets were students and teachers at the Staunton school.

But a juvenile court judge has ruled there was not evidence that the boys actually intended to carry out the plans. A defense attorney says it was little more than an ill advised joke.

 

© Copyright 2000 – 2009 WorldNow and WVIR

A Mother’s Wish for Her Deaf Child

Author: Paula Rosenthal

A mother of a 5 year old deaf child recently blogged glowingly about her daughter’s acceptance of her deafness. The mother asked her daughter what kind of baby she wished for when she grew up, hearing or deaf, the child answered, “Deaf!” The mom went on to say that nothing would make her happier than to see her daughter marry a deaf man and have lots of deaf babies.

It is interesting to note that this child’s parents both have normal hearing and have recently decided to have her undergo cochlear implant surgery and rehabilitation. Due to the limits of her current deaf school placement, the parents are subsequently exploring a change in her educational program, possibly to an oral deaf school. The child is becoming bilingual, learning to speak and uses American Sign Language (ASL).

Like some of the other commenters on her blog, this woman’s wish for lots of deaf babies for her daughter really threw me and I couldn’t remain silent. I commended her for teaching her young daughter to accept herself and her deafness. It is such a key component to anyone’s self-esteem. But I also cautioned her that her daughter may not always feel this way. Parents shouldn’t be surprised if there are times when their child says, “Why me?” as they grow up. It is common, particularly during the teenage years when kids feel both internal and external pressure to “fit in” with their peers.

I’ve been hearing impaired and now deaf for nearly my entire life, diagnosed with a progressive hearing losa at age 3. When my daughter’s hearing loss was diagnosed a few weeks before she turned two, my mother and I briefly cried together. It isn’t easy having a hearing loss. Whether you use sign or spoken language, hearing aids, cochlear implants or nothing at all, a deaf or hard of hearing person always has to work harder than a person with normal hearing.

Obviously, like anyone else, we can be successful at anything we want and we can lead wonderful lives. But I wouldn’t (and didn’t) wish that I had a deaf child so she could be like me. I wished for healthy children, and most thankfully, I was granted that wish. I wish the same for my daughter, that she grows up happy, fulfilled and with healthy children someday. If they’re deaf or hard of hearing, so be it, but that’s not what I wish for her or them. Whether you view hearing loss as a disability or not, wishing for children with it is the same as wishing for blind children or crippled children. A physical challenge is just that, a challenge. Why would anyone want their child or grandchildren to start life that way? Life is challenging enough. What do you think?

Israeli Soldiers Shoot Deaf Palestinian Farmer, 4th Farmer Shot in 3 weeks

 Monday February 23, 2009

by Eva Bartlett – freegaza.org

The following testimony was written by Eva Bartlett, one of a number of internationals with the Free Gaza movement who have been accompanying Palestinian farmers in Gaza: What caused the Israeli soldiers to shoot a deaf farmer today (18 Feb)? Was he threatening?

Farm kids in Gaza

 Was it because the group of farm labourers had successfully worked quickly to harvest their day’s wages? Was the sight of retreating, unarmed, clearly non-threatening civilians too tempting to resist?

Whatever the motivation, the result is another casualty of Israeli soldiers’ malevolence: a 20 year old deaf farmer, Mohammad al-Buraim, working the land to support his family of 16, may not walk easily again. The bullet which targeted his ankle penetrated straight through and landed in the tire of the truck he’d been pushing.

Abu Alaa, owner of the land and Mohammed’s uncle, said: “When they first shot, we knew it wasn’t ‘warning’ shots. We started to run away. They shot again.”

Another farm labourer from Khan Younis, Yasser Rizek Samoud (20), was next to Mohammed when the Israeli soldiers’ shooting broke out.

“We had stopped our work and were ready to leave. The truck wasn’t starting. We were pushing the pickup truck. The Israeli soldiers started shooting at us from the border area. Mohammed was hit in the leg. I carried him about 2 metres before they started shooting again. We were able to get him to a truck on the road, which took him towards the town. An ambulance picked him up from the truck and took him to Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.”

Samoud attests there was quiet before the Israeli soldiers shot al-Buraim. “There weren’t any (Palestinian) fighters, there was nothing happening except for us farming. We work because we need to. We get 20 shekels a day, it isn’t a lot, but it’s the only work we can get.”

It was 18 February approximately 10:15 am and farmers were leaving the land they’d harvested, roughly 500 m from the Green Line. The lightly-dressed, unarmed farmers were clearly visible to and seen by the several Israeli army jeeps and the Hummer which had patrolled the border fence, stopping for long intervals to watch the farmers work, then moving on.

 The farmers’ proximity to the border fence was more than off-set by the very visible nature of their work and of all present, including the 5 international human rights workers wearing bright vests and using a megaphone. The farmers’ tools are a kitchen knife slightly sharper than one used for eating, binding cord, and donkey carts or pickup trucks to haul away the harvest.

Before the shooting occurred, the Hummer sat directly across from the working farmers for over 30 minutes, observing. There was no threat from the farmers who glanced worriedly at the vehicle from time to time but otherwise kept swiftly working. Israeli soldiers inside the vehicle would have had no problem seeing the actions of the farmers cutting and binding spinach and parsley, and loading it into the back of a small pickup truck. The farmers finished for the morning, packed the truck, and attempted to leave. Still unarmed.

The Israeli soldiers shot at the sides and backs of unarmed farmers pushing their pickup truck which had stalled. Even after al-Buraim had been hit, the shooting continued although the snipers would have been able to see that someone had been shot.

The firing continued as the farmers, surrounded by international human rights observers, walked away from the field and took shelter behind a nearby house, reaching it at around 10:30 am. Israeli soldiers continued to shoot at the farmers and internationals taking cover, for a period increasing their shots to every 5 seconds, with that unmistakably close “pftzzzz” of the bullets whizzing past.

After time, internationals evacuated farmers in 2 groups, again surrounding them as we walked, wary of the sniper’s abilities.

Given that the soldiers were shooting at the backs of retreating, unarmed, farmers and internationals, the pretext of ‘defending the border’ or Israeli soldiers’ having felt ‘threatened’ becomes blindingly transparent.

There was no shooting from the Palestinian side, no threat, no reason to shoot, other than malevolence. The farmers were clearly involved in the task of working the land, and the internationals accompanying them were visibly and audibly recognizable.

U.K. citizen Jenny Linnel also present during the shooting said: “The farmers were in the process of leaving when the IOF shot. And the IOF continued to shoot as the farmers tried to leave, continued to shoot, sniper-style, as the farmers cowered for cover. It was aggression for the sake of aggression.”

 The life of a farmer is never easy, and is all the more difficult for farmers in the “buffer zone,” the band of land which has been imposed and extended arbitrarily to 1 km from the Green Line (on the Gaza side, not the Israeli side) by the occupying force which insists it has ‘withdrawn from Gaza’ [yet somehow controls borders, imports and exports, and the entry of humanitarian aid (entry denied), and which can impose no-go zones in a land not its own, for its ‘safety’ (as with the separation wall cutting deeply into the west bank and carving the occupied land into smaller, militarily-controlled, chunks, the imposition of a “buffer zone” on Palestinian land in Gaza begs the question: if Israel is erecting the Wall and imposing no-go zones out of safety concerns, why not do so on Israeli land?)].

Were farming merely made difficult due to the ban of seeds and fertilizers into Gaza, as well as the ban on machinery replacement parts (extended to hospital equipment replacement parts, and replacement parts for basically anything that breaks down in Gaza), people could perhaps get on with it. But with Israeli soldiers’ near-daily shooting on Palestinians living on, working on, their land in an arbitrarily confiscated zone, then farming becomes seriously problematic.

Ironically, as we near-daily accompany farmers in these troubled ‘buffer zone’ regions, vigilantly keeping watch of the many jeeps scurrying to and fro and taking long pauses parked directly across from wherever we are farming, we see unhindered farming activity on the Israeli side: crop-dusters circle in wide arcs, tending the plots below with chemicals and planes unavailable to Gaza; tractors plow the land…in broad daylight! At a leisurely, unworried pace!

Back in the Gaza prison, farmers struggle with broken trucks, hand-harvesting, and an obstacle course of bullets.

Israeli soldiers have made a regular practice of targeting civilians, including farmers, in the arbitrarily-imposed “buffer zone,” a practice that continued throughout and despite the June 19 ceasefire.

And while the demeanor of the farmers makes it evident that they are accustomed to being shot at, they are nonetheless clearly afraid. Until this close call, their need to work the land had overridden fear for their lives. A sort of resigned determination seemed to guide them, along with the adage, “hek iddinya,”(”This is our life”), explaining in words and gestures that they have little option but to continue working the land, for the produce itself or for a mere 20 shekels a day.

Yet, Abu Alaa says they will not go back to the fields any time soon. “How can we go back? Its too much now, too dangerous. We will wait until it feels calmer.”

From his hospital bed, charismatic and likeable Mohammed al-Buraim, assures that he’ll be okay, even after the assault. But no way will he go near the field. “You think I’m crazy?!” he signs.

The shot was so near. It could have taken his life. Just a few feet up…just a slightly slower, slightly faster reaction… it was close. They were close to again killing an impoverished farm-worker.

On 27 January, in the same area, IOF soldiers killed 27 year old Anwar Zayed al-Buraim, shooting him in the neck while he picked vegetables on land approximately 600 metres from the Green Line. Anwar was Mohammed’s cousin.

These fertile rural eastern border areas of the Gaza Strip are emptying, because farmers, many of whom have farmed here for generations, are now too frightened to live and work on their own land. The confines of the Gaza Strip, which is just forty kilometers long and ten kilometers wide, are being shrunk even further by relentless Israeli invasions, by the imposition of an arbitrary and expanding “buffer zone” and by the targeting of civilians and farmers trying to live on and earn a living from their land.

Mohammed al-Buraim marks the fourth shooting of Palestinians in the ‘buffer zone’ in the last few weeks. The three shootings prior to Mohammed’s were: on 18 January, Maher Abu-Rajileh (24), from Huza’ah village, east of Khan Younis, was killed by IOF soldiers while working on his land 400m from the Green Line; on 20 January, at 1 pm, Israeli soldiers shot Waleed al-Astal (42) of Al Qarara, near Khan Younis, in his right foot; and on 27 January, Anwar al-Buraim was shot in the neck and killed.

While attacks on farmers in other border communities, especially those on the Israeli side, would not go unnoticed, somehow the international community remains silent about these deaths, injuries, and breaches of international law.

Just as the international community has stooped silently complicit to the siege on Gaza which has denied Palestinians of every conceivable means of existence and livelihood, so too are international leaders silent to the oppression of the farmers and fishermen, the poorest and the bravest, facing Israeli fire and ending up like Mohammed, Anwar, or 23 year old Rafiq who was targeted 2 miles off Gaza’s coast while in a small fishing boat. Israeli soldiers sprayed the boat with bullets, the ‘dum-dum- exploding bullets hitting Rafiq in the back and exploding into numerous tiny shrapnel pieces which pierced his lungs and remain dangerously close to his spine, impossible to remove.

These are not isolated and random instances. They are part of the policy of cutting off any means of self-sufficiency the Palestinians try to engage in, and of continuing in the efforts to break Palestinians’ will, efforts which have included a years-long, brutal siege, a 23 day bloody war killing over 1370 Palestinians, and the ongoing targeting of civilians throughout the Gaza Strip.

‘Pippin’ gives a new meaning to ‘stage hands’

February 21, 2009

Each evening just before curtain, Alexandria Wailes makes her way through a dark maze of wooden beams under the stage of the Mark Taper Forum. The 5-foot-8 actress hunches forward to avoid knocking her head against the ceiling, which is less than 5 feet high.

When a red cue light flashes, Wailes, who is hearing impaired, raises her hands through a pair of holes in the stage and performs the opening number of “Pippin” in sign language. Her disembodied song of seduction (“Join us / come and waste an hour or two”) is one of many scenes in which a pair of isolated hands steals the spotlight in this revival of Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson’s musical, running through March 15.

A low-tech but high-concept visual effect, the constantly reappearing hands play a multitude of roles in the show: sign-language interpreter (this is a Deaf West Theatre co-production); keeper of the rhythm (they occasionally snap to the beat); and any number of sight gags (a “severed” arm delivers some the production’s biggest laughs).

But theater buffs will recognize those hands as an hommage to Bob Fosse, the legendary choreographer who staged “Pippin” on Broadway in 1972. Fosse began his production with a pair of white-gloved hands emerging through a curtain of light — an image that has become the musical’s trademark symbol.

Director-choreographer Jeff Calhoun says he wanted to reference the “Fosse hands” without copying them. “It was the first idea I had,” he explains. “Fosse had the hands coming at you in a horizontal configuration, so I thought it would be interesting to have them emerge vertically from under the stage.”

Initially, he wanted the hands and arms to be clad in red, from elbow to fingertip. But lighting tests revealed that the red sleeves made the sign language difficult to read. He also envisioned a minimalist production dominated by shafts of light (another hommage to Fosse) but eventually opted for a more concrete approach with elaborate sets.

“Pippin” — which tells the story of Charlemagne’s young son, who strikes out on his own after rejecting his father’s tyrannical ways — is a musical steeped in optical illusion. (“Magic to Do” is one of its most memorable songs.) The crew’s resident magician is Tobin Ost, the scenic and costume designer. Ost devised a series of stage holes 8 inches in diameter that the cast can open and close from below using a simple hinge mechanism.

The crew collaborated with Deaf West to ensure that the holes were large enough to enable actors to sign in a comfortable and intelligible way. “We couldn’t have done this before the Taper renovation,” Ost says. The refurbishments added an extra 2 feet in height to the 576-square-foot space beneath the stage, enabling several actors at a time to move around. During performances, a stage hand is always present to act as traffic controller. (The crew keeps ice packs handy in case of head injuries and other collisions.)

For the scene in which Pippin comes across a Visigoth’s bloodied head and arm, actor Aleks Pevec sticks his head through one of the holes, while next to him beneath the stage, Wailes lends her arm to the scene. To coordinate the spoken and signed dialogue, Pevec, who can hear, squeezes his castmate’s hand to alert her when she should begin signing. The below-stage area also contains several closed-circuit monitors so deaf actors can watch the conductor and the orchestra during the musical numbers.

For the show’s famous orgy sequence, Calhoun and his crew constructed a special bed with latex masking so actors can hide underneath while their hands and arms poke through to caress Pippin’s body. The original Broadway production featured a bed full of writhing actors, but again, Calhoun didn’t want to copy Fosse’s staging.

Calhoun hopes to add more hand and arm choreography if “Pippin” transfers to Broadway. “You just can’t have dancing, because that would invite comparisons to Fosse,” he says. “It’s daunting to work under his shadow. The hands are meant to honor the sign language, but they’re meant to honor him as well.”

— David Ng

Top: Alexandria Wailes’ hands emerge in “Pippin”; middle: while under the stage, Wailes uses production notes and monitors as cues; bottom: Michael Arden, left, and Tyrone Giordano, who jointly portray the title character, rehearse with the hands. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

“God Created Me a Deaf Person for His Glory.”

Father Tom Coughlin began seriously thinking about a priestly vocation in high school when his eighth grade teacher, a Sister, gave him the book, “Burnt Out Incense” by Father Raymond, O.C.S.O. When he decided to pursue the idea of becoming a priest, little did he realize how long and winding the road would be.

n began seriously thinking about a priestly vocation in high school when his eighth grade teacher, a Sister, gave him the book, “Burnt Out Incense” by Father Raymond, O.C.S.O. When he decided to pursue the idea of becoming a priest, little did he realize how long and winding the road would be.

He began applying to various seminaries after he graduated from high school and each turned him down because he is deaf. He even approached the Carmelites and was refused due to the fact he could not participate in their choral office. He went on to graduate from Gallaudet University* in 1972 with a BA in English and in 1976 obtained his MA in Religious Studies from Catholic University. He entered the Trinitarians in 1972 and was ordained by Cardinal Lawrence Sheehan of Baltimore in 1977, thus becoming the first deaf priest to be ordained in the United States.

 

Father Tom Coughlin

It was at this time that Fr. Tom began a Catholic camp for youth and adults called Camp Mark Seven. He worked as a home missionary priest for the International Catholic Deaf Association for four years.

In 1985, he left the Trinitarians and was transferred to the Honolulu Diocese where he was assigned as chaplain for the deaf in 1987. In the process, he also earned a nursing degree as he was not able to find a nurse who could sign at his camp for deaf children because one was required in order for it to stay open. In 1993, he joined the Dominicans and later left after temporary vows. Cardinal O’Connor of New York invited Fr. Tom to set up a House of Studies for deaf seminarians in Yonkers, New York. The program was transferred to the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 2002 at the death of Cardinal O’Conner. Bishop Allen Vigneron of the Oakland Diocese erected Fr. Tom’s deaf community to the status of Private Association of the Faithful – one of the first steps in the creation of a creation of a religious institute. As result, the community moved from San Francisco to Oakland. In 2007 the community moved from California to San Antonio, Texas as the cost of living there was too high.

During those years, he met with so much opposition before and after ordination that he almost quit. “Most people were not prepared to welcome a deaf person. I was all alone but the vocation director Father Joseph Lupo told me ‘You have to open the door. You have to suffer so others won’t.’ And I saw his point. Following Christ you have to make sacrifices. One has to enter the mystery of suffering in order to pray better. Mary, Joseph, the apostles all suffered but they understood the meaning of God’s love.”

Another person who was supportive was Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, now the former master general of the Dominican Order. He was the one who suggested that Fr. Tom start his own Dominican community for the deaf. Cardinal Pio Laghi, former Apostolic Pro-Nuncio to the United States, also gave his support to Fr. Tom’s effort to start a community that would minister to the deaf.**

What has become of Fr. Tom’s move to San Antonio? As he puts it, “The vocations are coming to us.” That translates to nine members. One is in theology and hopefully will be ordained in about two years. There are three novices, one postulant, two are in philosophy and one is earning a master’s in Spanish. As all of the prayers and formation is done in sign language, if someone is interested he would have to proficient in signing in order to join.

Fr. Tom’s statement about vocations also refers to the fact that he is in contact with ten men who are interested in joining. At present, the down side to this community is that they depend one hundred percent on donations. And with today’s economy, that can be a real struggle. Along with his regular duties, Fr. Tom has been asked to officiate at baptisms, weddings, and funerals. When I ask him what his usual stipend was for administering these sacraments outside his usual commitments to deaf communities in Austin, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi, he replied that he sometimes has had to pay his own way as often these people are very poor.

When our conversation came back to his community and vocations, he mentioned that at the present his house is full. However, he is very interested in admitting more men so that the deaf in other cities such as Chicago and New York can benefit from their charism. For those who are not familiar with that term, it means gift. God gives a special gift or charism to each religious community to live out. And for Fr. Tom, that is best part of his ministry. He described it simply, “The Word became Flesh. In sign language God’s word is more clear’ not just verbal but made flesh. This is our charism.” Fr. Tom also commented, “I am profoundly grateful to Bishop Allen Vigeron for his support in helping to start my community for the deaf.”

There is also an everyday, ordinary reality that profound theology of the Incarnation. When I asked Fr. Tom what he thought the most important item he wanted people to know about ministering to the hearing impaired, he paused for a long moment. Direct and to the point, he replied, “To communicate in sign language. Deaf people shy away because speaking with voice is so difficult to communicate with the deaf.”

Like the various other cultures which enrich the American Church, deaf culture can also be a rewarding experience when approached with an open heart and respect. In fact, places I visited where the deaf and hard of hearing gather, I found were busy and active as well as inviting. I also found that learning only a few signs like hello and thank you went a long way in establishing a relationship.

While a definite deaf culture does exist outside my convent, in one sense, I also live in a deaf culture of sorts as I have been influenced by a number of my community sisters with various levels of hearing loss. One sister in her nineties teaches me how to stay young at heart thanks to her head-set hooked up to her small screen television. As a result she never misses a Notre Dame football game. Another sister in her eighties helped me become a better verbal poet. For her I had to choose my words carefully and as tersely as possible. Profoundly hard of hearing, she still relished conversation and interaction with the younger sisters. Those of us who took the time to be with her were enriched with her spiritual insight and great sense of humor. The operative word here is time.

Those experiences spilled over into my meeting the various deaf and hard of hearing women at the Diocese of Corpus Christi Office for Persons with a Disability. While there I discovered how eager they are to learn new skills as their hands danced like beautiful butterflies. This meeting helped me research a story for National Deaf Awareness Week. And as stories and meeting are wont to do, that story led to this one on Fr. Tom and after this story, there is no telling where this adventure will end. During Fr. Tom’s interview, he commented, “The deaf are still marginalized. They don’t know how to tell their stories. And that is important.” In the end, isn’t that’s what we all want—to tell our story and have someone really listen. But for someone to be there to truly listen, the question remains, “Who will respond to God’s invitation like Isaiah who said, ‘Here I am, send me.’?”

Litany in Honor of St. Francis de Sales, Patron of the Deaf

For the Church, that we may become more aware of the great giftedness of those with disabilities, — St. Francis de Sales, pray for us. For the Church, that we may like Christ, reach out and empower those with disabilities, — St. Francis de Sales, pray for us. For each local Church, that we may respond with care and respect to the needs of those with disabilities, — St. Francis de Sales, pray for us. For an increase of religious vocations to and by those with disabilities. — St. Francis de Sales, pray for us.

*Gallaudet University is the world’s only university for the deaf and hard of hearing. It is located in Washington, D.C. **To learn more about Fr. Tom’s community go to Dominicanmissionaries.org.

Important Religious and Secular Facts about the Deaf and the Hearing Impaired (nationally, state, and locally in my own area)

There are 5.7 million deaf or hearing impaired Catholics in the United States and only four percent of them attend Mass. I found in another article that a study that was done in 1961 found that 22 percent of American Deaf Catholics practiced their faith.

As of 2008, there are only nine deaf priests who serve this segment of the Church and only two deaf seminarians studying for the priesthood. One of these seminarians will be ordained in May of 2009 in San Francisco. The first deaf priest in South Korea studied here in the United States.

The Corpus Christi Diocese population is 392,430 of a total population of 560,614. When I asked Celia Mendez of the Office for Persons with a Disability the approximate number of deaf or hearing impaired persons in diocese, she said she didn’t know as many of the hearing impaired go to other faiths who are able to do more for them. Sad to say, Catholics with a disability are really feeling the pinch of the priest shortage. With priests already stretched very thin in terms of their many responsibilities, as a result, even with the best of intentions; persons with disabilities are often given little or no spiritual nourishment.

In the United States, there are approximately 1.2 million hearing impaired persons under the age of 18.

According the website http://www.deafunderstanding.com: “Approximately 1 of every 1,000 infants is born deaf while 6 of every 1,000 are born with some degree of hearing loss.” “93 percent of deaf children are born into hearing families; only 7 percent are born into deaf families.

In 1994, the National Institute on Deafness and Communications Disorders reported that 28 million people had significant hearing loss. Some 500,000-750,000 people had a profound hearing loss and some 10 million people had permanent hearing loss due to loud noise. The third most widely used language in the United States is American Sign Language. In Texas, 17 percent of the population age 18 and over have some level of difficulty in hearing. Vinton Cerf, “the father of the Internet” is partially deaf. The number of deaf/hard of hearing people in Nueces County is approximately 3,000. Last, but not least, for a young woman who would be interested in religious life and is hearing impaired, she can contact: Sr. Marianne Keena, CSJ., Vocation Director at http://www.csjsl.org . Her community came from France to the United States in order to teach the deaf.

He began applying to various seminaries after he graduated from high school and each turned him down because he is deaf. He even approached the Carmelites and was refused due to the fact he could not participate in their choral office. He went on to graduate from Gallaudet University* in 1972 with a BA in English and in 1976 obtained his MA in Religious Studies from Catholic University. He entered the Trinitarians in 1972 and was ordained by Cardinal Lawrence Sheehan of Baltimore in 1977, thus becoming the first deaf priest to be ordained in the United States.

It was at this time that Fr. Tom began a Catholic camp for youth and adults called Camp Mark Seven. He worked as a home missionary priest for the International Catholic Deaf Association for four years.

In 1985, he left the Trinitarians and was transferred to the Honolulu Diocese where he was assigned as chaplain for the deaf in 1987. In the process, he also earned a nursing degree as he was not able to find a nurse who could sign at his camp for deaf children because one was required in order for it to stay open. In 1993, he joined the Dominicans and later left after temporary vows. Cardinal O’Connor of New York invited Fr. Tom to set up a House of Studies for deaf seminarians in Yonkers, New York. The program was transferred to the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 2002 at the death of Cardinal O’Conner. Bishop Allen Vigneron of the Oakland Diocese erected Fr. Tom’s deaf community to the status of Private Association of the Faithful – one of the first steps in the creation of a creation of a religious institute. As result, the community moved from San Francisco to Oakland. In 2007 the community moved from California to San Antonio, Texas as the cost of living there was too high.

During those years, he met with so much opposition before and after ordination that he almost quit. “Most people were not prepared to welcome a deaf person. I was all alone but the vocation director Father Joseph Lupo told me ‘You have to open the door. You have to suffer so others won’t.’ And I saw his point. Following Christ you have to make sacrifices. One has to enter the mystery of suffering in order to pray better. Mary, Joseph, the apostles all suffered but they understood the meaning of God’s love.”

Another person who was supportive was Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, now the former master general of the Dominican Order. He was the one who suggested that Fr. Tom start his own Dominican community for the deaf. Cardinal Pio Laghi, former Apostolic Pro-Nuncio to the United States, also gave his support to Fr. Tom’s effort to start a community that would minister to the deaf.**

What has become of Fr. Tom’s move to San Antonio? As he puts it, “The vocations are coming to us.” That translates to nine members. One is in theology and hopefully will be ordained in about two years. There are three novices, one postulant, two are in philosophy and one is earning a master’s in Spanish. As all of the prayers and formation is done in sign language, if someone is interested he would have to proficient in signing in order to join.

Fr. Tom’s statement about vocations also refers to the fact that he is in contact with ten men who are interested in joining. At present, the down side to this community is that they depend one hundred percent on donations. And with today’s economy, that can be a real struggle. Along with his regular duties, Fr. Tom has been asked to officiate at baptisms, weddings, and funerals. When I ask him what his usual stipend was for administering these sacraments outside his usual commitments to deaf communities in Austin, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi, he replied that he sometimes has had to pay his own way as often these people are very poor.

When our conversation came back to his community and vocations, he mentioned that at the present his house is full. However, he is very interested in admitting more men so that the deaf in other cities such as Chicago and New York can benefit from their charism. For those who are not familiar with that term, it means gift. God gives a special gift or charism to each religious community to live out. And for Fr. Tom, that is best part of his ministry. He described it simply, “The Word became Flesh. In sign language God’s word is more clear’ not just verbal but made flesh. This is our charism.” Fr. Tom also commented, “I am profoundly grateful to Bishop Allen Vigeron for his support in helping to start my community for the deaf.”

There is also an everyday, ordinary reality that profound theology of the Incarnation. When I asked Fr. Tom what he thought the most important item he wanted people to know about ministering to the hearing impaired, he paused for a long moment. Direct and to the point, he replied, “To communicate in sign language. Deaf people shy away because speaking with voice is so difficult to communicate with the deaf.”

Like the various other cultures which enrich the American Church, deaf culture can also be a rewarding experience when approached with an open heart and respect. In fact, places I visited where the deaf and hard of hearing gather, I found were busy and active as well as inviting. I also found that learning only a few signs like hello and thank you went a long way in establishing a relationship.

While a definite deaf culture does exist outside my convent, in one sense, I also live in a deaf culture of sorts as I have been influenced by a number of my community sisters with various levels of hearing loss. One sister in her nineties teaches me how to stay young at heart thanks to her head-set hooked up to her small screen television. As a result she never misses a Notre Dame football game. Another sister in her eighties helped me become a better verbal poet. For her I had to choose my words carefully and as tersely as possible. Profoundly hard of hearing, she still relished conversation and interaction with the younger sisters. Those of us who took the time to be with her were enriched with her spiritual insight and great sense of humor. The operative word here is time.

Those experiences spilled over into my meeting the various deaf and hard of hearing women at the Diocese of Corpus Christi Office for Persons with a Disability. While there I discovered how eager they are to learn new skills as their hands danced like beautiful butterflies. This meeting helped me research a story for National Deaf Awareness Week. And as stories and meeting are wont to do, that story led to this one on Fr. Tom and after this story, there is no telling where this adventure will end. During Fr. Tom’s interview, he commented, “The deaf are still marginalized. They don’t know how to tell their stories. And that is important.” In the end, isn’t that’s what we all want—to tell our story and have someone really listen. But for someone to be there to truly listen, the question remains, “Who will respond to God’s invitation like Isaiah who said, ‘Here I am, send me.’?”

Litany in Honor of St. Francis de Sales, Patron of the Deaf

For the Church, that we may become more aware of the great giftedness of those with disabilities, — St. Francis de Sales, pray for us. For the Church, that we may like Christ, reach out and empower those with disabilities, — St. Francis de Sales, pray for us. For each local Church, that we may respond with care and respect to the needs of those with disabilities, — St. Francis de Sales, pray for us. For an increase of religious vocations to and by those with disabilities. — St. Francis de Sales, pray for us.

*Gallaudet University is the world’s only university for the deaf and hard of hearing. It is located in Washington, D.C. **To learn more about Fr. Tom’s community go to Dominicanmissionaries.org.

Important Religious and Secular Facts about the Deaf and the Hearing Impaired (nationally, state, and locally in my own area)

There are 5.7 million deaf or hearing impaired Catholics in the United States and only four percent of them attend Mass. I found in another article that a study that was done in 1961 found that 22 percent of American Deaf Catholics practiced their faith.

As of 2008, there are only nine deaf priests who serve this segment of the Church and only two deaf seminarians studying for the priesthood. One of these seminarians will be ordained in May of 2009 in San Francisco. The first deaf priest in South Korea studied here in the United States.

The Corpus Christi Diocese population is 392,430 of a total population of 560,614. When I asked Celia Mendez of the Office for Persons with a Disability the approximate number of deaf or hearing impaired persons in diocese, she said she didn’t know as many of the hearing impaired go to other faiths who are able to do more for them. Sad to say, Catholics with a disability are really feeling the pinch of the priest shortage. With priests already stretched very thin in terms of their many responsibilities, as a result, even with the best of intentions; persons with disabilities are often given little or no spiritual nourishment.

In the United States, there are approximately 1.2 million hearing impaired persons under the age of 18.

According the website http://www.deafunderstanding.com: “Approximately 1 of every 1,000 infants is born deaf while 6 of every 1,000 are born with some degree of hearing loss.” “93 percent of deaf children are born into hearing families; only 7 percent are born into deaf families.

In 1994, the National Institute on Deafness and Communications Disorders reported that 28 million people had significant hearing loss. Some 500,000-750,000 people had a profound hearing loss and some 10 million people had permanent hearing loss due to loud noise. The third most widely used language in the United States is American Sign Language. In Texas, 17 percent of the population age 18 and over have some level of difficulty in hearing. Vinton Cerf, “the father of the Internet” is partially deaf. The number of deaf/hard of hearing people in Nueces County is approximately 3,000. Last, but not least, for a young woman who would be interested in religious life and is hearing impaired, she can contact: Sr. Marianne Keena, CSJ., Vocation Director at http://www.csjsl.org . Her community came from France to the United States in order to teach the deaf.

Video phones improve communication for the deaf

2/19/2009 11:17 AM
By: Bonnie Gonzalez

	Interpreting Manager Byron Bridges.

At a call center full of employees, complete silence might be an indicator of an unproductive staff, but the silence at one Waco call center doesn’t mean that at all.

Communication Service for the Deaf is the first center of its kind in Waco.

“This service provides them access so that they can communicate with hearing people, or for hearing people to communicate with deaf people. It works both ways,” Interpreting Manager Byron Bridges said.

	Web Extras
• Find more information at the Communication Service for the Deaf Web site. • Learn more about CSD Contact Centers • Read about CSD’s Core Competencies. • Check out SIGNews, a newspaper for the signing community.

At the new call center in Waco, two full time interpreters and five part-time interpreters answer calls.

“And so the deaf individual with their video phone at home calls the operator here and say ‘Call my doctor,’ for example,” Bridges said.

 

See the video

http://www.news8austin.com/shared/video/video_pop.asp?destlist=62359

	With the video phone, you can see emotion.

Texas State Technical College student Eduardo Accardte agrees.

 

 

 

 

Copyright ©2009TWEAN News Channel of Austin, L.P. d.b.a. News 8 Austin

First deaf Miss Universe hopeful is in Birmingham heat

Feb 14 2009 by Jane Tyler, Birmingham Mail

Birmingham, UK—WHEN contestants for Miss Universe Great Britain line up on stage in Birmingham in the spring history will be made.

Among them will be 22-year-old Siobhan Brindley-Lewis.

What will make her stand out from the other beauties won’t be her long legs, dazzling smile or perfectly-styled hair, but the fact she is deaf.

Siobhan, from Quinton, will be the first profoundly deaf woman to reach the finals of a mainstream British beauty pageant after securing a place as one of the 40 finalists out of 500 entrants.

Like the other girls in the event at the International Convention Centre on May 3 she will show off her perfect size 8 body in a bikini, evening gown and little black dress rounds.

The winner will go on to the Miss Universe final this summer, which is owned and run by American tycoon, Donald Trump. 

But it will be when the eight-person judging panel interview her that she will stand out – relying on lip reading to get through.

Siobhan has been deaf since contracting meningitis at the age of three.

She had a cochlear implant fitted when she was seven to help her hear better, but went to the mainstream schools of Percy Shurmer in Balsall Heath and Shenley Court Sixth Form.

Siobhan trained as a beauty therapist at Walsall College and the University of Derby at Buxton.

Her only previous experience in beauty pageants was in Miss Deaf UK last year when she won the best evening wear category.

“I saw an advert for Miss Universe Great Britain and decided to apply because I want to encourage other disabled people to do what they want to do,” she said.

“Even if I don’t do very well, it will be good experience and hopefully will help with my career.”

To prepare for her stage debut Siobhan is at the gym seven days a week to keep her weight at a perfect 9st 6lbs for her 5ft 6ins height.

“I try not to let my disability stop me from doing anything and have a very positive ‘can do’ attitude to life,” she said.

“My role model and inspiration is Ellie Simmonds who won gold medals at the Beijing Olympics despite being disabled.”

Lawmakers ready to sue to save Scranton State School for the Deaf

BY SARAH HOFIUS HALL
STAFF WRITER

Published: Saturday, February 14, 2009

When the governor proposed terminating funding for the Scranton State School for the Deaf, he did it with little research and no firm transition plan, state legislators say.

Lawmakers said the meeting proved to them what they had guessed — that the state had done little research on the only state-owned school of its kind and how cost-effective an alternative could be.

“This transition will not be smooth,” said Rep. Kevin Murphy, D-113, Scranton, adding that there is no projection of the cost per student for alternativee services. “That question has to be answered.”

Gov. Ed Rendell’s administration says the discussion and debate is all part of the “budget process.”

In Mr. Rendell’s 2009-10 budget released last week, he proposed eliminating all funding for the school, which was $7.35 million for this school year. A plan is now being developed for the Northeastern Educational Intermediate Unit to partner with the nonprofit Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf to provide services — likely at the 10-acre campus in the city’s Green Ridge section, which currently serves 107 students.

State Sen. Robert Mellow, D-22, the Senate Democratic minority leader, will offer an amendment to a bill that would halt the school’s closing until legislators can review results of a comprehensive study of the school.

If that doesn’t happen, Mr. Mellow said on Friday that he would go to court to “get what we need to make an intelligent decision.

“I would not hesitate for a moment to do that,” Mr. Mellow said. “I will never turn my back on them.”

Mr. Mellow said he is not “fighting closure,” but “fighting process.”

“There may be a better way to educate the children,” he said. “We just can’t spring it on them. If there’s a better way of doing it, you phase it out.”

Legislators have said they did not learn of the plan until the morning of the governor’s budget address, and school officials first learned of the plan the night before.

Michael Race, spokesman for the Department of Education, said many of the concerns of the lawmakers would be addressed over the next few months.

“All the concerns they’re expressing, that’s what the budget process is for,” Mr. Race said.

State officials have said operating the school is too expensive — about $80,000 per student — and that it can be done more efficiently. About $5 million for the transitional costs is included in the state budget.

“We’re confident that none of these kids are going to miss out on an education or not have the services they need,” Mr. Race said. “We have as much concern for these students as the lawmakers do.”

Mr. Smith said regardless of the budget process, more research was needed before the closure was proposed.

“When the governor announces his budget, this is a beginning of a long journey,” Mr. Smith said. “But at the same time, do you realize the emotions you are playing with?

“If these kids aren’t fragile enough, now you just broke them.”

School Superintendent Monita Hara, Ed.D., said she wanted to see a cost analysis to see how the services the school provides could be available at a lesser cost through another provider.

“We, at SSSD, feel that the Pennsylvania Department of Education does not present us as a viable option,” she said. “We could be the flagship school for the state.”

The lawmakers are now demanding answers — and say they are willing to take the issue to court, if needed.

“How do you take a special needs child and basically throw them out and say, ‘We don’t have a plan, but we’ll get back to you?’ ” asked Rep. Ken Smith, D-112, Dunmore. “These are the kids who come to the plate with two strikes against them. We have to have an answer for them.”

At a meeting this week, legislators across the region spoke with representatives from the state Department of Education, including Education Secretary Gerald L. Zahorchak, Ed.D., and officials from the School for the Deaf.

Happy 200th birthday, President Lincoln

President Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday will be tomorrow. Students in more than one school district in Pike County have been learning about Lincoln as his 200th birthday approaches.
Last Thursday at Pikeland Community School (PCS) in Pittsfield, Warren Winston, a member of the Pike County Historical Society, and Illinois State Historical Society, spoke to fifth-graders about Lincoln.
Students learned many things about Lincoln, including how he was responsible for establishing the first university for the deaf in the United States.
“When Abraham Lincoln was president he signed a bill that established a college/university for deaf people called Gallaudet University,” Winston said.
If one looks at the statue of Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., he or she can see that one of his hands is shaped in the sign language letter “A,” and in his other hand he or she can see the sign language letter “L,” which are Lincoln’s initials. Winston said it is not known for sure if these letters are really supposed to be seen in Lincoln’s hands. It is possible that the sculptor of the statue, Daniel Chester French, could have done this because he would have known the letters since he had a deaf son.
A handout was given to the students that told about the urban legend surrounding the statue. The handout also included a picture of the statue and all of the sign language alphabet letters. Students were encouraged to practice signing the letters “A” and “L” with Winston.

Palestine’s School For the Deaf

Feb. 12th, 2009 at 1:21 AM

9 year old K is on the right with the blue backpack on her chair

Before the strikes, the group 14 Friends of Palestine asked E and me to make contact with a little girl they sponsor via Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children. It’s taken a while for us to catch our breath and follow this up, but we got there today. We followed our usual pattern; meeting at Al Shifa hospital, grabbing a falafal sandwich, then striding off down the dusty streets ignoring all the beeping taxis that want to drive us (shared taxis are as close as Gaza gets to public transport.)

20 minutes later, I am startled by the wholeness of the Atfaluna building. Several of the buildings nearby are in small concrete pieces, but Atfaluna has grass, Atfaluna has windows. I doubt Israel avoided Atfaluna deliberately, since they bombed schools and hospitals, so Atfaluna also has good luck. Inside, we meet S, our initial contact, who has arranged for us for K’s social worker M to take us to visit her family. They live in Shayjaiee, in four rooms – K’s parents, and their 7 girls (born in a row), followed by 4 boys, the last one a smiley 5 months.

K’s mum S is a friendly woman, who tries mostly in vain to coax her girls, just home from school, to appear for us in anything other than shyly giggling glimpses, though we do eventually manage a photo with some of them. She manages to introduce us to two of the little boys with the lure of the arabic sweets we’d brought. We ask her how the Israeli strikes had affected them; she says they stayed in their home for the first ten days but the rocket attacks then became too close and frightening and they moved in with their downstairs neighbours, that being the only place they had to go.

K’s mum S in the kitchen

The bread shortage has hit them hard, she says, describing bargaining for a bag of flour and being 20 shekels (about £3) short. A wave of guilt hits me; if only we had got to see them before the attacks, they would have had the equivalent of K’s dad’s salary for a month (he’s a cleaner) that we are bringing them today from 14 Friends of Palestine. S, apparently not giving this a moment’s thought herself, cheerfully says they did manage to get the flour after all in the end, and I remind myself the bread shortage continues, and the money is just as welcome now.

K’s family in the room the girls’ bedroom

K’s home is very simple, they don’t have much, and when we ask S what the donation might go on, it’s clear they will carefully keep themselves in the basics for the children to be well and comfortable: mattresses, floor mats, food, clothes, gas maybe. J from 14 Friends of Palestine said we could use our discretion as to whether to buy the family things or hand over the donation itself, and it’s clear to us that the family will know better what they need than we will and use it wisely. Also at J’s suggestion, we’ve kept a little money back to buy some unnecessary things for the children that we think K’s parents might feel they shouldn’t buy with it themselves, so we’ll be back another day with the rest of the donation and maybe things like coloured pens, drawing books… we’ll see what’s available that looks like it will last a series of small hands.

E heads off to see if 18 year old Abd at Al Wafa is managing to imagine some sort of life for himself in a wheelchair yet. Back at Atfaluna, I am taken in to meet K, in amongst a class full of beaming kids. She leaps from her chair, glowing at finding herself the centre of attention. M signs to her that we come from Jane and 14 friends, and have met her family. She introduces herself to me with her sign name, a curving stroke of her finger from her forehead to her cheek, imitating the sweep of her dark curly hair. I am pleased to be able to return the sign name I was given once, the placing of an imaginary hat on my head (I like hats.) I meet also her sister S, also deaf, a calm 14 year old, smiling in her own more restrained class.

Then I am taken down to the kindergarten class, in a series of green carpeted rooms that imitate a lush outdoors that Gaza city children don’t see, except here where there are also gardens outside. They also bubble over with enthusiasm for a visitor, and I learn the Palestine sign for salaam aleikum. Surrounded by energetic and joyful small people, I realise what incredibly expressive faces and bodies deaf children can develop, with space and permission to move, from supportive teachers, many of whom are deaf themselves. Next I go to see some of the traditional craftwork the adults who work here produce.

This place is amazing. For the first time ever, I am seeing what Palestinians look like when they are surrounded by beauty: by art, by books and resources, by unbroken, unbombed, undamaged, working things. It makes me want to cry. (Currently a lot of random stuff makes me want to cry; I didn’t cry for any of those broken, bombed, damaged children in my ambulance and I guess that sadness is waiting somewhere deep.)

That makes me think of the modern sweeping design of the Jabalia Red Crescent building. I saw the Jabalia building before Israel fired shells at it, when it was new and whole like Atfaluna. It still works, only one room is burnt out. But now it looks like everything else in this place. Big shell holes, smaller bullet holes. Blackened patches.

300 children are studying at Atfaluna. 150 are on the waiting list. While it continues to stay in one piece, they will grow up with a vision that hearing Gaza children will simply have to imagine; what the world looks like when it isn’t all dust and crumbled concrete.

Scranton State School for the Deaf in jeopardy; Enjoys good news

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The cheering started before the game did.

As junior Demetrius Curtis took warm-ups with his team in the auditorium at the Scranton State School for the Deaf, a buzz ran through the crowd.

“Go Demetrius Go” and “1,000 points” adorned neon-colored signs.

At a time when students and their families are grappling with last week’s bleak news of a potential closing, everyone seemed focused on their newest feel-good story.

Demetrius, 18, who is deaf, sat eight points away from 1,000 in his career, eclipsing a mark few have reached in SSSD history.

But his story starts much earlier, long before Demetrius entered SSSD.

“He’s been playing basketball since he was 15 months old,” the Pocono Summit youth’s mother, Judith Curtis, said. “His cousin used to babysit him and sat him under a basketball net.”

Since then, she said, he’s always loved the game.

Coach Doug Boersma said he knew such a player had a unique opportunity at SSSD.

“Students like Demetrius may not have the ability to play” in other schools, he said. “Being a student here gave him the ability to play.”

And then there is his unselfish attitude.

“He’s a great team player, and he understands his role defensively,” Mr. Boersma said.

But the pressure of Tuesday’s game affected Demetrius’ play against the New York State School for the Deaf, and he struggled early on.

“I was out of control,” he said after the game. “I wanted to make the 1,000th point.”

Eventually, he settled in and, midway through the second quarter, drove to the net, gently dropping the ball in to break the mark.

Play stopped as teammates and opponents rushed the floor to congratulate Demetrius on his achievement.

“It’s exhilarating,” Demetrius said. “It’s a fantastic feeling to know I’ve scored 1,000 points.”

SSSD won the game, 53-39.

Mr. Boersma downplayed Demetrius’ deafness in the feat. “Since all of our athletes are deaf, this is an accomplishment,” he said. “But it doesn’t play into his athleticism at all.”

Demetrius has, however, taken advantage of more than basketball at SSSD. He also attends culinary classes at Lackawanna County Career Technology Center. Demetrius’ mom credited the school for her son’s successful development.

“This school has helped him grow tremendously,” Ms. Curtis said. “He loves coming to school, and this school is a wonderful place for deaf children.”

Superintendent Monita Hara, Ed.D., felt sure Demetrius’ success won’t be limited to the hardwood.

“He’s going to go very far in life,” she said.