My Wicked Problem

Audience:

Administrators at Eagle Heights Elementary School

Purpose:

The purpose of this page is to introduce administrators to a serious communication problem that one of my students is experiencing. I plan to convince administrators that a feasible way to solve this problem is to integrate Sorenson Communications into our deaf and hard of hearing program at school. I also want to inform administrators of what a video relay service is, the benefits of using it with our students, and what would be involved in setting up such a system in our school district.

What’s the Problem?

Because one of my students who uses American Sign Language as her main form of communication is moving to middle school in the fall, my other student who is an ASL user will be the only child in the school who uses sign language to communicate. As a result, she can communicate with her teacher and her interpreters, but there is no one else in the school who will be able to effectively communicate with her. Her parents also do not use ASL, and this particular student does not speak. Therefore, the only meaningful interaction that she gets to have throughout the day happens at school. This student often misses social cues because she has not had the opportunity to interact with a wide variety of other students who speak her language. Because of her lack of sign language exposure for most of her life, she is a fifth grade student, but her language skills reflect that of a three year old. She is currently going through the “why” phase, where she wants to know why and how everything works. The only way for her to increase her sign language skills is for her to be around good language models. Therefore, she needs to have the opportunity to interact with other deaf children who use her same language. Unfortunately, because of the low incidence of deafness, we do not have other ASL signers at the elementary level in our district, but we can use technology to connect her to good language models and help her to improve her language skills.

In our school district, collaborative learning skills are being pushed especially hard right now. I know that collaborative learning skills are important, not only in school, but in the world beyond school. How many jobs do you know of where you aren’t required to collaborate with your colleagues? I can’t think of many. However, it is very difficult to participate in collaborative group work when you don’t speak the same language as your peers. Therefore, this child has had very little opportunity to be involved in a collaborative learning environment. This student is just beginning to learn how to write. Therefore, using writing alone to assist her in communicating with her peers is not feasible. Also, because she cannot talk on the phone, she has not had the experience of using a phone to call and make an appointment, order food, make reservations, talk to friends, family, or community members.

Below is an info-graphic that displays the problem that we are experiencing:

Will this problem ever go away?

This is a problem that I am experiencing with a particular student at my school, but it is likely going to be a problem that I see reoccurring throughout my years as a deaf educator. 93% of children who are deaf are born to hearing families. 72% of families with children who use sign language as their main form of communication do not use sign langue with their children (Burzi 1). Therefore, I can expect that many of the children who will be coming to my program as sign language users will have had very little exposure to sign language before they reach school age. Deafness is also very low incidence. Only 2-3 out of every 1000 children will be born deaf or hard of hearing, and of these children less than half will use ASL in order to communicate (Burzi 1). Therefore, children who need to use sign language to communicate are very unlikely to run into other deaf sign language users unless they or their parents actively seek them out. As a teacher, in the coming years, it will be my job to help students foster communication with other deaf ASL users, and to help my students find good language models who can help them increase their communication skills.